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.
