Scalia To Graduating Class: Human Species Is 5,000 Years-Old

Antonin Scalia is a United States Supreme Court Justice (1982-present) unfit to hold the position.

Notes Jeffrey Tayler in Salon: "Last week, Justice Antonin Scalia delivered a commencement speech at an all-girls Catholic High School in Bethesda, Maryland. He warned the assembled, 'You should not leave Stone Ridge High School thinking that you face challenges that are at all, in any important sense, unprecedented. Humanity has been around for at least some 5,000 years or so and I doubt that the basic challenges as confronted are any worse now, or alas even much different, from what they ever were."

This was Scalia in his element, openly displaying an ignorance of science and a perverse embrace of religion, demonstrating his delight of playing the troll, more significantly the corrupt troll.

Scalia made headline a few years back when he told Jennifer Senior of New York Magazine that Scalia believes "hell" is real, and so is the "Devil," but He/It doesn't possess people "very much anymore ... because he’s smart ... [and] got wilier." (Mal Contends)

That's Scalia for you, unpredictable and usually incoherent, ever the ideological troll who becomes petulant when the Court doesn't embrace Scalia's crazy animus towards gays, women, Democrats and other segments of humanity held in disfavor by the Republican Party.

As America awaits the Supreme Court's decision in King v. Burwell—whether the five GOP justices decide to invalidate and ultimately eviscerate the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)—no doubt Scalia is enjoying himself playing with another segment of America whom Scalia and the GOP hold in disfavor, The Uninsured: Adam and Eve never had healthcare, why should Americans get it?

Scalia Around the Bend in ObamaCare Law Case

Updated - "To reject the government’s defense of the law, the justices would have to suspend their own settled approach to statutory interpretation as well as their often-stated view of how Congress should act toward the states."

I have no doubt that the justices who cast the necessary votes to add King v. Burwell to the court’s docket were happy to help themselves to a second chance to do what they couldn’t quite pull off three years ago. To those justices, I offer the same advice I give my despairing friends: Read the briefs. If you do, and you proceed to destroy the Affordable Care Act nonetheless, you will have a great deal of explaining to do — not to me, but to history. (Greenhouse, NYT) (See also Moncrieff, The New Republic; and Lithwick, Slate)
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Justice Antonin Scalia may be playing devil's advocate or he may just be playing, not taking too seriously the lives and health of Americans.

In Oral arguments in King v. Burwell, Scalia is enjoying himself contemplating millions of Americans losing their health insurance because of a four-word phrase that comports less-than-perfectly with a nearly 1,000-page law, the Affordable Care Act, but fits well to sensible, fair-minded jurists. (Barnes, Washington Post)

It's a game for Scalia and his brand of jurisprudence, an incoherent game with no rules but a game nevertheless.

Scalia's intellectual legal nemesis, Richard Posner, in his book Reflections on Judging (Harvard University Press. 2013) notes Scalia's appetite for "'gotcha' jurisprudence" (p.182).

Scalia is a goof. But he may have to go along with his betters this time.

From SCOTUSBlog:

After the Solicitor General briefly discussed the standing issue, he outlined the government’s two broad arguments on the merits. The first is that the government’s interpretation of the statute, which makes subsidies available on exchanges created by both the states and HHS, is the best way to give meaning to all the words of the statute. The second point is that the government’s reading “is compelled by” the structure and design of the statute–specifically that it was designed to ensure state flexibility in setting up exchanges, to avert death spirals, and to provide affordable care for all. He argued that in light of these goals, Congress simply could not have intended for the statute to function as intended.

That provoked an immediate and sharp response from Justice Scalia, who said that “of course” Congress could have enacted a statute that functions the way petitioners describe. Justice Scalia then engaged the Solicitor General in a back and forth about whether statutes can ever be written in less-than-optimal ways, and about whether they can ever be nonsensical. The argument implicit in the questioning was that even if Congress wanted to enact a law that works, it doesn’t mean that it actually did so. In that sense, Justice Scalia seemed to be drawing an even harder line than the petitioners.

... Justice Scalia’s questions are very interesting in light of recent statements he’s made reiterating that statutes should be read as a whole. Of course, the government urges such a reading in this case, arguing that a holistic reading supports its view of the subsidy provisions, but the petitioners make whole-statute arguments as well even as they emphasize the particular words in Section 36B that support their argument most clearly.

The GOP's War on Marriage and the 14th Amendment

Equal protection and due process—we have come a long way, baby but 14th Amendment cases involving marriage rights is one battle of a wider war launched by the GOP and judges such as Antonin Scalia against the 14th Amendment.

U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby has directly applied the Supreme Court’s decision (United States v. Windsor (2013)) that struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act to a state’s (Utah) ban on same-sex marriage on Constitutional grounds.

"The Constitution protects the choice of one’s partner for all citizens, regardless of their sexual identity," U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby writes in his 53-page opinion. Utah is blazing a path for Australia, India and Russia.

Judge Shelby writes: ''The court holds that Utah's prohibition on same-sex marriage conflicts with the United States Constitution's guarantees of equal protection and due process under the law. The state's current laws deny its gay and lesbian citizens their fundamental right to marry and, in so doing, demean the dignity of these same-sex couples for no rational reason,'' reports Erik Eckholm and John Schwartz in the New York Times.

As noted by Dylan Scott in Talking Points Memo, Shelby cites anti-same-sex marriage Justice Scalia several times from this statist reactionary's dissent in United States v. Windsor (2013) using Scalia's words comprising legal logic leading to Constitutional rights ultimately being guaranteed to Americans of the same sex who wish to be married:

From beginning to end of Shelby's opinion Friday, in four different citations scattered throughout, he favorably cited Scalia's dissent, buttressing his legal analysis with Scalia's warnings.

In its 5-4 decision in June, the Supreme Court held that the federal Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional because it violated individual liberty, but did not rule that all state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional. In his dissent in the case, United States v. Windsor, Scalia wrote that the majority opinion's logic would inevitably lead to the state bans being declared unconstitutional ... .

Scalia is right.

Consider also Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v. Texas (2003): "Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda (sic), by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct. ... One of the most revealing statements in today’s opinion is the Court’s grim warning that the criminalization of homosexual conduct is 'an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres.'"

How ghastly, criminalization that is.

Moral opprobrium is indeed an evolving concept now attaching to jurisprudence, as Justice Scalia may not have anticipated.

Seventy percent of American cannot legally marry. There are 76 Countries where anti-gay laws are as bad as or worse than Russia’s. Mauritania is one of four African countries where same-sex relations between men can result in the death penalty. Homosexuality is illegal in 41 out of 53 Commonwealth countries.

As the Toronto Globe and Mail writes, "The global struggle for sexual justice for all has come extraordinarily far in a short time, but it's far from over. "(Robert Leckey. December 13, 2013)

Advise reading Judge Posner's new book Reflections on Judging (Harvard University Press, 2013) and checking out Posner's book for holiday fun as Posner devotes part of Reflections eviscerating Scalia's "textualism" or "originalism." Posner ridicules Scalia's approach as 'gotcha' jurisprudence (p. 182) in Posner's turgid yet acerbic style.

Not just Judge Shelby and Scalia has taken to effectively using Scalia at Scalia expense.


Consider Scalia in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), in his own bizarre dissent:

Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda (sic), by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.

Moral opprobrium is indeed an evolving concept morphing into jurisprudence, as Justice Scalia feared.


Consider Laurence H. Tribe's piece on Hollingworth v. Perry (2013). Tribe writes: "But Justice Scalia – in a portion of his dissent that Chief Justice Roberts conspicuously declined to join – couldn’t resist the temptation to use the occasion to insult the Court’s majority, and Justice Kennedy in particular, in essentially ad hominem (and ad feminem) terms. I write this comment principally to highlight the extraordinary character of this particularly vitriolic and internally inconsistent dissent." (Tribe. DOMA, Prop 8, and Justice Scalia’s intemperate dissent. June 26th; SCOTUSBlog)

More than 30 states, including Wisconsin, have passed amendments or laws restricting marriage to a man and a woman.

The Supreme Court has not ruled on whether state constitutional amendments limiting marriage to a man and a woman are inherently unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. That challenge may reach the Supreme Court in 2016.

And Scalia would be only to happy to follow his Party as it blasts away at gays, blacks, Latinos and whichever group the Republicans can find to blame for America's challenges.

Antonin Scalia: Devil, Hell Are Real; Wily Satan Affects Human Affairs

Antonin Scalia, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, has long appalled thinking Americans for his brand of authoritarian, incoherent jurisprudence.

Scalia is a bigot, a troll, so it is no surprise to read in Scalia's meandering thoughts on metaphysics and evil in Jennifer Senior's New York Magazine interview that Scalia believes in hell, the Devil who is both "smart" and who "got wilier" in his evil engineering project still to be accepted and put into production in human affairs.

Want to know why Scalia votes the way he did in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) and Bush v. Gore (2000)?

Because Scalia is a goof.

An excerpt from Jennifer Senior's interview with Scalia in New York Magazine:

Scalia ... When I’m dead and gone, I’ll either be sublimely happy or terribly unhappy.

Senior (NY Mag) You believe in heaven and hell?
Scalia: Oh, of course I do. Don’t you believe in heaven and hell?

Senior (NY Mag) No.
Scalia: Oh, my.

Senior (NY Mag)Does that mean I’m not going?
Scalia:  [Laughing.] Unfortunately not!

Senior (NY Mag) Wait, to heaven or hell?
Scalia: It doesn’t mean you’re not going to hell, just because you don’t believe in it. That’s Catholic doctrine! Everyone is going one place or the other.

Senior (NY Mag) But you don’t have to be a Catholic to get into heaven? Or believe in it?
Scalia: Of course not!

Senior (NY Mag) Oh. So you don’t know where I’m going. Thank God.
Scalia: I don’t know where you’re going. I don’t even know whether Judas Iscariot is in hell. I mean, that’s what the pope meant when he said, 'Who am I to judge' He may have recanted and had severe penance just before he died. Who knows?

Senior (NY Mag) Can we talk about your drafting process—
Scalia:  [Leans in, stage-whispers.] I even believe in the Devil.

Senior (NY Mag)You do?
Scalia: Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that.

Senior (NY Mag) Every Catholic believes this? There’s a wide variety of Catholics out there …
Scalia: If you are faithful to Catholic dogma, that is certainly a large part of it.

Senior (NY Mag) Have you seen evidence of the Devil lately?
Scalia: You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore.

Senior (NY Mag) No.
Scalia: It’s because he’s smart.

Senior (NY Mag) So what’s he doing now?
Scalia: What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.

Senior (NY Mag) That has really painful implications for atheists. Are you sure that’s the ­Devil’s work?
Scalia: I didn’t say atheists are the Devil’s work.

Senior (NY Mag) Well, you’re saying the Devil is ­persuading people to not believe in God. Couldn’t there be other reasons to not believe?
Scalia: Well, there certainly can be other reasons. But it certainly favors the Devil’s desires. I mean, c’mon, that’s the explanation for why there’s not demonic possession all over the place. That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place. He used to be all over the New Testament.

Senior (NY Mag) Right.
Scalia: What happened to him?

Senior (NY Mag) He just got wilier.
Scalia: He got wilier.

Senior (NY Mag) Isn’t it terribly frightening to believe in the Devil?
Scalia: You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.

Senior (NY Mag) I hope you weren’t sensing contempt from me. It wasn’t your belief that surprised me so much as how boldly you expressed it.
Scalia: I was offended by that. I really was.

Scalia the Troll, Logic and The Future

Bigots unhappy, as GOP goes dark

Update: See also Laurence H. Tribe's DOMA, Prop 8, and Justice Scalia’s intemperate dissent.

A reader notes that there was no affirmatively declared right to marry in Justice Kennedy's United States. v. Windsor opinion, just an equal protection affirmation that an animus towards a class of Americans is not permissible.

True, and Justice Kennedy has earned the appellation of what Justice William O. Doulgas (1939–75) used to deride as "spaghetti spine."

Kennedy's opinion should have been much more broad, and sweeping.

But the foundation for a final federal Constitutional challenge has been laid.

The current discriminatory marriage regimes in the states are "too incoherent to survive" in the wake of Windsor, as Rachel Meadow opined on MSNBC.

David Weigel notes Antonin Scalia's dissent in Windsor —just 24 hours after invalidating the crown jewel of civil rights legislation, the democratically adopted Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, et al—in which Scalia writes without irony, "We have no power to decide this case. [Windsor] And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation. The Court’s errors on both points spring forth from the same diseased root: an exalted conception of the role of this institution in America."

Don't look for coherency or consistency from Scalia; he remains little more than an ideological troll.

But Kennedy would embarrass himself to rule in the future that states can utilize a political animus towards gays, and that this is permissible under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.

Another GOP effort to stop voters

Too many blacks and other non-desirables
are voting, says GOP --- today!

Update: On June 25, 2103, the United States Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, in an act of partisan insanity that stains the Supreme Court as corrupt and willing to do almost anything to help the Republican Party in its pursuit of power, (Shelby v. Holder, Cornell).

Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Breyer, Justice Sotomayor, and Justice Kagan join, dissenting:

In the Court’s view, the very success of §5 of the Voting Rights Act demands its dormancy. Congress was of another mind. Recognizing that large progress has been made, Congress determined, based on a voluminous record, that the scourge of discrimination was not yet extirpated. The question this case presents is who decides whether, as currently operative, §5 remains justifiable, 1 this Court, or a Congress charged with the obligation to enforce the post-Civil War Amendments “by appropriate legislation.” With overwhelming support in both Houses, Congress concluded that, for two prime reasons, §5 should continue in force, unabated. First, continuance would facilitate completion of the impressive gains thus far made; and second, continuance would guard against backsliding. Those assessments were well within Congress’ province to make and should elicit this Court’s unstinting approbation.
1 The Court purports to declare unconstitutional only the coverage formula set out in §4(b). See ante, at 24. But without that formula, §5 is immobilized. ...
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Wisconsin is not alone in the Republican Party's project to halt voters from voting.

Across the nation the Republican Party has introduced some 180 bills just since 2011 intended to stop Americans from voting the last eight years in states where the GOP has gerrymandered control.

As the Brennan Center notes, "In 2011 and 2012, 19 states passed more than two-dozen measures that would have effectively made it harder to vote, the biggest rollback in voting rights since the Jim Crow era. These measures included voter ID laws, early-voting cutbacks, and curbs on community-based voter registration drives ... ."

The GOP and Tea Party implausibly claim non-existant voter fraud necessitates their obstruction schemes.

As has been increasingly noted now by legal observers, the Voting Rights Act also gives the federal courts the power to add to the jurisdictions now covered by Section Five mandating federal DoJ preclearance.

The motivation behind the GOP effort to invalidate the Voting Rights Act (VRA) is clear: On the state level, enact as many schemes as possible to stop voters; on the federal level in the Courts take the teeth out of the very federal law that stops the Republican Party from enacting such state voter-obstruction schemes.

"This upcoming legal battle unfolds against the backdrop of the recent struggle over voting rights — and in the wake of a clear demonstration of the vital need for strong laws to protect democracy," write Wendy R. Weiser and Diana Kasdan.

Democracy would sure be easier for the Republican Party without those pesky American voters.

In Wisconsin, Mike Tighe has a piece from westcentral Wisconsin on Scott Walker and the Wisconsin GOP's latest effort attempt to keep people from the polls.

And it's not just voting, the atavistic states rights movement is making a comeback in states controlled by the Republican Party, in part because of that autocratic effort of President Obama to expand Medicaid and provide healthcare to millions of more Americans.

Such tyranny.

As for the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, Justice Scalia's asinine comments about racial entitltlements" aside, Myrna Pérez predicts a possible deference to Congress in the Shelby County case on the Voting Rights Act.

Notes Pérez:

Although it is true several of the Justices expressed skepticism [in oral arguments] that the coverage formula targeted all of the worst offenders of the VRA, similar concerns cropped up during the oral argument four years ago in NAMUDNO (Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder (NAMUDNO)) [2009]. Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose vote might be determinative, asked approximately the same number of questions to supporters of the Voting Rights Act in NAMUDNO as he did on Wednesday. And the tone of the questioning in NAMUDNO was similarly, if not more, hostile to the VRA. ...

Ultimately, the question comes down to one of deference to Congress. The 15th Amendment of the Constitution makes clear that it is Congress’ job to determine where racial discrimination deeply infects our electoral processes, not Shelby County’s or the Court’s. It is certainly the Court’s job to evaluate whether Congress did its job appropriately, but the Constitution does not require that Congress have been perfect in its determination, and importantly, Congress devised workable mechanisms through the VRA’s bail-out and bail-in provisions to account for instances in which Congress’ determination was off base, or no longer applicable. The compelling evidentiary record of modern-day need, made even more pronounced by the recent wave of restrictive voting laws that appeared heavily in covered states, and the broad authority given to Congress by the Constitution to prevent racial discrimination in voting, make upholding the coverage formula an easy case for the Court.

Scalia shows his true colors

Scalia - (Reuters/Brendan Mcdermid/Salon/Benjamin Wheelock)

Update: There is a new Scalia Doctrine: Now, jurists should consider the "legal realist" school of jurisprudence but with a new variation. No longer is the intent of the legislators and language of the statute paramount. Now, Scalia can divine what legislators really wanted to do no matter that the 2006 Voting Rights Act reauthorization was passed 98-0 in the U.S. Senate and 390-to-33 in the House. Call it Scalia's "Really wanted" doctrine, a method he employs because he knows how legislators really wanted to vote but could not because, in part, legislation has appealing sounding names like the "Voting Rights Act".

Said Scalia the incoherent in orals: "And this last enactment, not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same. Now, I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It’s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes." ...

"I don’t think there is anything to be gained by any Senator to vote against continuation of this act. And I am fairly confident it will be reenacted in perpetuity unless — unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution. You have to show, when you are treating different States differently, that there’s a good reason for it.That’s the — that’s the concern that those of us who — who have some questions about this statute have. It’s — it’s a concern that this is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress. There are certain districts in the House that are black districts by law just about now. And even the Virginia Senators, they have no interest in voting against this. The State government is not their government, and they are going to lose — they are going to lose votes if they do not reenact the Voting Rights Act. Even the name of it is wonderful: The Voting Rights Act. Who is going to vote against that in the future?"
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Antonin Scalia is no brilliant jurist hard at work on deep questions of constitutional law.

Oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder have shown him to be—if a reader needs convincing—a bigoted ass toying with the lives and civil rights of millions.

As Joan Walsh writes in her piece, The Supreme Court justice treats voting rights as a goody given away by pandering politicians:

Four slow-moving ambulances brought up the rear as student leader John Lewis led 600 peaceful protesters dressed for church on the voting rights march that would become known as Selma’s Bloody Sunday, on March 7, 1965. They stayed peaceful; law enforcement officials didn’t. Trampled by police horses, choked by tear gas, beaten with billy clubs – Lewis had his skull fractured – the marchers would need more medical help than the four cars could provide. The ugly melee made national news that night: ABC broke into its presentation of “Judgment at Nuremberg” with footage of the violence, and viewers couldn’t be entirely sure where Nazi atrocities ended and their own country’s began.

Now, not far from Selma, Shelby County, Ala., is trying to take the teeth out of the Voting Rights Act that Lyndon B. Johnson hustled through Congress after Bloody Sunday. Even though the act was reauthorized by a Republican-dominated Congress in 2006 on a 98-0 vote in the Senate (it was 390-33 in the House), and signed by President Bush, and even though its constitutionality has been upheld by the Supreme Court four times, there is evidence that the current right-wing court majority would like to overturn at least part of it. Court conservatives once represented a reaction against the court’s supposed overreach into realms best left to Congress, and its willingness to ignore earlier court decisions. Now they seem set to say Congress has no business here, and that their Supreme Court predecessors who upheld the act were either mistaken or the blinkered creatures of their idiosyncratic eras.

Unbelievably, Antonin Scalia derided the act as a “racial entitlement,” prompting gasps from the crowd gathered to hear the arguments Wednesday. (As Rachel Maddow noted, Scalia seems to live for those gasps.) And he blamed Congress for pandering for votes by keeping that “racial entitlement” alive. The cynical Scalia sounded like Mitt Romney blaming his loss on President Obama delivering “gifts” to his coalition.

Dershowitz on Innocent Man Case

Scalia's Catholic Betrayal
by Alan M. Dershowitz

I never thought I would live to see the day when a justice of the Supreme Court would publish the following words:

This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged ‘actual innocence’ is constitutionally cognizable.

Yet these words appeared in a dissenting opinion issued by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas on Monday. Let us be clear precisely what this means. If a defendant were convicted, after a constitutionally unflawed trial, of murdering his wife, and then came to the Supreme Court with his very much alive wife at his side, and sought a new trial based on newly discovered evidence (namely that his wife was alive), these two justices would tell him, in effect: ‘Look, your wife may be alive as a matter of fact, but as a matter of constitutional law, she’s dead, and as for you, Mr. Innocent Defendant, you’re dead, too, since there is no constitutional right not to be executed merely because you’re innocent.’ ...

Scalia: The New Joe McCarthy

Update: Gitmo Ruling Enters The Election: 'One Of The Worst Decisions' In History

via mal contends - The hysterical dissent by the always colorful Justice Scalia in Boumediene v. Bush/Al Odah v. United States offers a glimpse into the fearful mind of the rightwinger in which can be viewed watery reflections of Senator Joe McCarthy.

[Pictured above-left are Center for Constitutional Rights staff and Co-Counsel, dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.]

Scalia, scolding five of his breathen, offers his dissent from the majority’s decision, including his terrified opinion that, "It (the majority opinion) will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

Wow. I never knew that habeas corpus, due process, the rule of law, and the separation of powers were such dangerous dynamics to have in a country.

Damn liberals. And that goes double for you, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton.

We ought to bring back loyalty oaths and raise Joe McCarthy from the dead to expose these Islamo-fascists sympathizers who are going to get us killed.

But today is a day for celebration for liberty as we smile at the fears of Scalia and his ilk who never could stomach the notion that "the Framers viewed freedom from unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty, (understanding) the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom," or that quaint idea, in Hamilton's formulation, that the "... practice of arbitrary imprisonments, in all ages, is the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny." (Justice Kennedy)

As a commentator on this piece flushes out, those engaging in fearmongering combined with an implicit hostility to civil liberties tend to have as a goal the diminishment of said liberties.

Below-right is our famed Senator McCarthy pictured from the early 1950s, protecting America from the Communists and sympathizers among us (from McCarthyism, The Fight for America, 1952). You know, McCarthy even kind of looks like Scalia.