Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently made news by suggesting that the right to own a hand-held rocket launcher might be constitutionally protected. He based his reasoning on the word “bear.” The right to keep and “bear” arms means, for Scalia, that you have the right to any weapon that you can carry. So, no cannons, but stinger missiles and rocket propelled grenades are okay. You have to wonder about a guy who goes about settling legal questions this way. He also believes that the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision was wrongly decided. That case established a married couple’s constitutional right to buy and use contraception because there is an inherent right to marital privacy in the Constitution. Justice Scalia disagrees, and he thinks the voters of the several states should decide whether or not you and your spouse should be able to buy a condom, the Pill, or any other family planning device. Yet, he is totally outraged that the government can give you a tax penalty for failing to buy health insurance.
Scalia is nuts, but he’s squarely in the mainstream of contemporary Republican thinking.
Read this after an hour’s adventure trying to get a wayward bird out of my house. So my first visual was the scene of a loose bird in Scalia’s house where he reached into his closet and pulled his rocket launcher out, shouldered it on his slumped shoulders and fired.
I’m definitely enjoying the thought of a loose rocket twisting about through Scalia’s mansion.
I can bear my own personal suitcase nuke? And the big nasty tyrannical socialistic government has no right to regulate it? Cool. No problems inherent in that one, nosiree. Next time I hear someone prowling around downstairs, there goes the neighborhood!
If suitcase nukes are outlawed, only outlaws will be vaporized by suitcase nukes…
Griswold v Connecticut is going to be a major battleground as all these state-level anti-contraception/abortion lawsuits eventually come to land at the SCOTUS doorstep.
if there’s no expectation of marital privacy, I think someone needs to insist that Scalia and Mrs. Scalia reveal the intimate details of their sex life with America.
We have a right to know if he’s into BDSM, if she straps it on and rides him like a bronco, and if they ever incorporate scat play.
I think this needs a small edit: “Scalia is nuts, so he’s squarely in the mainstream of contemporary Republican thinking.” It’s a cause and effect thing.
Attempted snark aside, the sad, scary thing is that Scalia really is nuts. He gives new meaning to “high court”. With the composition of the court, that means an insane person has more power than the president, Congress, or any other governmental authority. And there’s hardly a peep of common sense from a thoroughly numbed-out citizenry. And given the composition of Congress, there’s no chance for an objective look at impeachment.
Even without the contradictions with other statements, the “bear” argument is nuts. “Bear” doesn’t mean “what you can carry in your arms”. The Hiroshima bombers were “bearing” nuclear bombs. Etc. etc. All is takes is a basic grade-school knowledge of simple English and/or history to know his belief is nuts. Interesting that there was a long discussion here yesterday (?) about the dialectical notion of history, because this development screams out that the American system of government is strangling on its internal contradictions.
If he wants to politic on social issues, shouldn’t he retire from the SCOTUS and take his nut-case road show on the road? The red-hot, grizzly mama would be honored to join him and give Antonin something to ogle in-between his sputters. He could also earn an income closer to what he feels entitled to and have more free time to fish with Cheney.
Fish with Cheney? I’d like to see him hunting with Cheney.
Scalia’s nuts, not crazy.
Naw, he’s not nuts.
He has purposefully authored a set of byzantine, recursive “principles” that allow him to take any side of any question at any time. In short, he’s a hack.
“Scalia is nuts.”
Totally agree. This premising the entirety of his 2nd Amendment thinking on the word “bear” is just insane.
In fact, Scalia’s seemingly random resort to seizing upon a single word and utterly narrowing his very ability to think is stupefying. Textualism, my eye!
Bet Scalia would be the first to call the cops is someone was walking down his street carrying a shoulder fired missile.
Heck, the Anaheim police are decked out in riot gear against peaceful protests. The FBI and other law enforcement agents are wearing khakis and steel helmets to conduct a raid to search a Portland “anarchist”‘s house, confiscate his computer equipment, and issue grand jury subpoenas.
It’s really a matter of whose technology is considered a weapon. Not exactly equal protection under the law.
Sadly, he is not the only nut sitting on the United States Supreme Court.
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