Scalia Is Dead

[Barry Egan]

 

[thisismyusername]

Anyone have his "greatest hits?"

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

I felt like a crappy person today for being a bit glad that he died.

that was probably still more empathy than he usually had.

[Stoney Mason]

He was not a good dude. That's about all I can say.

Now we get to have the obstructionist party doing their bit for an entire year.

[Human Snorenado]

Anyone have his "greatest hits?"

This is borderline Hunter S. Thompson eulogizing Nixon level hate



https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/02/13/good-riddance-to-bad-rubbish-3/

Antonin Scalia is dead, and the world is a better place. He was a wretch of a human being, and I don’t even want to pretend I am anything less than giddy at his passing. If there is a hell, may he rot for eternity next to Andrew Breitbart, and may he be taunted for eternity by the ghosts of the people he helped sentence to death.

[Great Rumbler]

Okay, so, what happens now that the court is 4 conservatives vs. 4 liberals for the next 10 months?

[Human Snorenado]

If any case ends up 4-4, the lower court ruling stands but isn't considered precedent

[brob]

 

[CatsCatsCats]

Real talk: no one that fat reaches 80 so no surprise

[CatsCatsCats]

[Yeti]

Of the many celebrity deaths of 2016, this one is the least sad.

[octopushover]

(Image removed from quote.)

 

lol

hates everything except video games

[VomKriege]

I'm always a bit uncomfortable with the Thatcher eulogy effect but he did sound quite the asshole.

[Trent Dole]

You thought a Kotaku employee was one of the good guys.

[archie4208]

(Image removed from quote.)

 

lol

hates everything except video games

He would have made a great NeoGAF mod. 

[Dickie Dee]

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

[benjipwns]

This thread is lacking in the new professionalism.

[Madrun Badrun]

(Image removed from quote.)

[Joe Molotov]

(Image removed from quote.)

Savage. 

[Boogie]

Real talk: no one that fat reaches 80 so no surprise

William Shatner says fuck you.

Also, my grandfather.

[Madrun Badrun]

lol

[Samson Manhug]

1. Scalia took important stands to preserve the Fourth Amendment, which forbids unreasonable, warrantless searches by government of our personal effects and papers. Scalia wrote the majority opinion in the US v. Jones (2012), finding that if law enforcement sneaks under your car while it is parked in your driveway and attaches a GPS to it, that is a search under the Fourth Amendment. The court reversed the conviction of a drug dealer who had been so tracked without a warrant. Many in the police and FBI had argued that you are in public when you are driving around so it is not a violation of your privacy to track you as you go about your daily routine. In this case, the routine involved drug dealing. But civil libertarians replied that no one expects to be tracked 24/7 and that being subjected to such an intensive scrutiny for months at a time is in fact a form of search, for which a warrant should be obtained. Scalia here pushed back Big Brother.
2. In Kyllo v. United States in 2001, Scalia wrote the majority opinion that the government can’t use infrared imaging to look inside your home from the street without a warrant.
3. Scalia concurred in a crucial ruling by the court that the Environmental Protection Agency has the right to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. SCOTUS found in the EPA’s favor 7-2. President Obama is using this ruling to essentially close down most old, polluting coal plants. As these are replaced by cleaner natural gas or in many cases by wind and solar, half a billion tons a year of CO2 emissions could be avoided this way. That is a pretty powerful environmental legacy, to which Scalia contributed.
4. In EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Scalia last summer wrote the majority decision. The court found that the stores had to offer Muslim-American Samantha Elauf a faith accommodation even if she did not ask for one. A&F had declined to hire her when she interviewed for a sales job wearing her Muslim headcovering or hijab because the firm said it had a policy against employees wearing hats. Everyone recognizes that if she had explicitly stated that she wore hijab for religious reasons the company could not have discriminated against her. But she didn’t say anything about her faith. Scalia and 7 colleagues found that the store was in error; they had to honor her conscience whether she asked them to or not. While some critics saw this ruling as a dangerous exaltation of religion over other kinds of rights, I would argue that accommodating the conscience of citizens is a progressive principle. It is the same notion that underlies allowing conscientious objectors to opt out of war-fighting, which I believe is also progressive. For the most part, putting personal values that do not harm others above property rights and other regimenting structures is progressive.
5. Scalia also joined the rest of the court in deciding that a jailed Salafi Muslim had a right to grow a beard. Prison officials argued that a beard might make it difficult to identify the prisoner, and that he might be able to hide contraband in it. In fact, he offered only to grow a short beard. Scalia, a conservative Catholic, actually castigated him. Religious commands are categorical, he said. The Salafi had to grow a big bushy beard if that is what he thought God commanded. (Most Muslims don’t agree with the Salafi interpretation and the vast majority of Muslim men don’t wear beards). I was amused by Scalia scolding the Salafi for being willing to compromise. The reason a progressive can approve of this ruling is that a beard does not affect anyone else, and victimless practices should be allowed in a liberal society. The Justices found that the prison officials could surely find other ways to make sure the Salafi prisoner could be recognized and to prevent him from carrying around a hacksaw in his beard. The conservatives on the court admittedly cited the Hobby Lobby decision here, but Sotomayor and Ginsburg dissented from that reference, the latter precisely because growing a beard only affects the individual, not anyone else. In general, increasing prisoners’ rights with regard to their own persons is progressive.

http://www.juancole.com/2016/02/top-5-scalia-rulings-that-helped-progressives.html

 

[chronovore]

Surprisingly, I've heard that he and Notorious RBG are good friends. I'm going to bet they didn't talk much about politics. Or at least not civilly. But I'm sorry for her loss.

I'm also shocked at Samson Manhug's list of stuff on which I honestly appreciate the deceased's opinion.

But, still, a jerk just about three ways from Sunday. 79 is a reasonably full life, and I'm happy he's not making more decisions about women's rights and REALLY FUCKING SHORTSIGHTED decisions on what freedoms religious people have to ignore their government.

[benjipwns]

Yeah, he and RBG were really good friends. I think her and Thomas are too. And Thomas and Sotomeyer. It's either Stevens or Souter who nobody liked/likes. I'm going to assume Stevens since he has that whole theory about the real authorship of Shakespeare's works and I like pretending he works all conversations back to that.

Usually roughly half of Supreme Court cases are decided 9-0 (or 8-0 or 7-0, etc.) so there are opportunities for every justice to rack up "good" votes for "either" side as they strike down just flat out stupid state laws/lower court decisions. Unanimous decisions are actually increasing over the last few decades. Only 21% of the Vinson Court's (late 1940's) decisions as a whole were unanimous.

In his last five years, Justice Stevens had the highest rate of dissent (being usually in the 5-4 minority) at 30%, and even then he voted 39% of the time in an unanimous decision.

These days 60-70% of cases overturning lower courts are unanimous.

I think it's a factor of appointing almost only lower federal court judges, that's a pretty recent phenomenon when you take the entire history of the Court.

A lot of the Court's cases are ignored, or even parts of them. Everyone looks at the 5-4 central decisions of the Obamacare case and Bush v. Gore for example, when both had 7-2 decisions on certain parts of the cases where even the progressives were going "lol no" to something.

[benjipwns]

Also, IIRC, something like 80-85% of cases over the last decade are either 5-4 or 9-0.

[Joe Molotov]

2. In Kyllo v. United States in 2001, Scalia wrote the majority opinion that the government can’t use infrared imaging to look inside your home from the street without a warrant.

And that's why the New Republic didn't know he was building Starkiller Base. Thanks, Scalia.

[benjipwns]

In an interview with The Washington Post, former President Clinton said he “always kind of liked" Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Saturday while on a hunting trip in Texas.

Washington Post reporter Abby Phillip tweeted out Clinton’s remarks Saturday evening.

“Even though we disagreed on nearly everything, I always kind of liked Justice Scalia,” he reportedly said about one of the court’s most reliable conservative members.

Clinton also said Scalia’s passing came as a “great surprise.”

“He’s so full of life,” he reportedly said. “So vigorous. I thought he’d live to be 100.”

[Great Rumbler]

Pro tip: Politicians on different sides of the ideological aisle never hate each other nearly as much as their supporters do.

[benjipwns]

Pro tip: Politicians on different sides of the ideological aisle never hate each other nearly as much as their supporters do.

Yeah right, next you'll say Marvel and DC film makers don't hate each other either. Or the heads of Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony.

Somebody just made themselves look foolish on the internet.

[Phoenix Dark]

I'm sure Thomas has plenty of white females friends

[Phoenix Dark]

http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=195308780

[Mandark]

See a lot of people, including a ton of non-conservatives, make some reference to Scalia's brilliant intellect.

Say what you will about the guy, he knew how to maintain a personal brand.

[Brehvolution]

Didn't Scalia have the opinion that court didn't have the responsibility to reverse a death penalty decision even if new evidence is found to exonerate the the person?

[Joe Molotov]

Didn't Scalia have the opinion that court didn't have the responsibility to reverse a death penalty decision even if new evidence is found to exonerate the the person?

Yes.

[benjipwns]

Didn't Scalia have the opinion that court didn't have the responsibility to reverse a death penalty decision even if new evidence is found to exonerate the the person?

The Party doesn't make mistakes.

[Rufus]

Didn't Scalia have the opinion that court didn't have the responsibility to reverse a death penalty decision even if new evidence is found to exonerate the the person?

Because it would be too much work to review new evidence or something along those lines.

[benjipwns]

Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390 (1993), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled by 6 votes to 3 that a claim that the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits the execution of one who is actually innocent is not ground for federal habeas corpus relief.

Rehnquest's majority is a little more of a "sorry, the process doesn't allow it" but Scalia's concurrence:

We granted certiorari on the question whether it violates due process or constitutes cruel and unusual punishment for a State to execute a person who, having been convicted of murder after a full and fair trial, later alleges that newly discovered evidence shows him to be "actually innocent." I would have preferred to decide that question, particularly since, as the Court's discussion shows, it is perfectly clear what the answer is: there is no basis in text, tradition, or even in contemporary practice (if that were enough) for finding in the [506 U.S. 390, 428]   Constitution a right to demand judicial consideration of newly discovered evidence of innocence brought forward after conviction. In saying that such a right exists, the dissenters apply nothing but their personal opinions to invalidate the rules of more than two thirds of the States, and a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure for which this Court itself is responsible. If the system that has been in place for 200 years (and remains widely approved) "shocks" the dissenters' consciences, post, at 430, perhaps they should doubt the calibration of their consciences, or, better still, the usefulness of "conscience shocking" as a legal test.

I nonetheless join the entirety of the Court's opinion, including the final portion, ante, at 417-419 - because there is no legal error in deciding a case by assuming, arguendo, that an asserted constitutional right exists, and because I can understand, or at least am accustomed to, the reluctance of the present Court to admit publicly that Our Perfect Constitution * lets stand any injustice, much less the execution of an innocent man who has received, though to no avail, all the process that our society has traditionally deemed adequate. With any luck, we shall avoid ever having to face this embarrassing question again, since it is improbable that evidence of innocence as convincing as today's opinion requires would fail to produce an executive pardon.

My concern is that, in making life easier for ourselves, we not appear to make it harder for the lower federal courts, imposing upon them the burden of regularly analyzing newly-discovered-evidence-of-innocence claims in capital cases (in which event, such federal claims, it can confidently be predicted, will become routine and even repetitive).

...

I do not understand it to be the import of today's decision that those holdings are to be replaced with a strange regime that assumes permanently, though only "arguendo," that a constitutional right exists, and expends substantial judicial resources on that assumption. The Court's extensive and scholarly discussion of the question presented in the present case does nothing but support our statement in Townsend and strengthen the validity of the holdings based upon it.

[Rufus]

Legalese, suffused with the rigidity and callousness of a comment section troll.

It must be nice to have unshakeable beliefs in anything.

[Joe Molotov]

Justice Scalia's death was either a perfect storm of coincidence, or indeed the result of foul play.

Consider the coincidences that had to occur for it to play out the way it did, and not be foul play.

1) Scalia visiting a ranch in Texas, which is a state where a judge can declare death without even seeing the body.
2) Scalia usual bodyguards were not in attendance with him at the ranch.
3) Scalia's son planning to accompany his father in the two-person room, then dropping out for an unknown reason.
4) The family being adamant about declining an autopsy.
5) The almost immediate embalming, when the need for an autopsy was still being reviewed.
6) Immediate declaration of death by natural causes, then changed to heart attack, then back to natural causes.
7) The first justice of the peace rushing to declare death by natural causes, and declining the autopsy virtually moments before another justice of the peace could be on hand to hold off on declaring cause of death pending an autopsy.
8) The report that Scalia died peacefully in a neatly arranged bed and had a pillow over his head.
9) Scalia's prominence as a show-stopper for the Hussein agenda and his
death just before there were to be several major cases reviewed.

I suppose that anybody who believes all this is just coincidence for a "peaceful" death also believe that Loretta Fuddy was the sole casualty of an airplane crash when she was seen to have survived like everybody else. Or that Vince Foster committed suicide.

Sadly, I could go on and on.

[Rufus]

Sadly, I could go on and on

[benjipwns]

On April 22, 2011, Obama asked Loretta Fuddy, director of the Hawaii Department of Health, for certified copies of his original Certificate of Live Birth ("long-form birth certificate"). Accompanying the letter was a written request from Judith Corley, Obama's personal counsel, requesting a waiver of the department's policy of issuing only computer-generated certificates. Corley stated that granting the waiver would relieve the department of the burden of repeated inquiries into the President's birth records.

On April 25, 2011, Fuddy approved the request and witnessed the copying process as the health department's registrar issued the certified copies. The same day, Corley personally visited the department headquarters in Honolulu to pay the required fee on Obama's behalf, and received the two requested certified copies of the original birth certificate, an accompanying letter from Fuddy attesting to the authenticity of same, and a receipt for the processing fee. Fuddy said that she had granted the exception to its normal policy of issuing only computer-generated copies by virtue of Obama's status, in an effort to avoid ongoing requests for the birth certificate.

On December 11, 2013, Fuddy traveled to Kalawao County for an annual meeting with the county's Hansen's disease patients in Kalaupapa as part of her duties as both Mayor and state health director.[1][8] Fuddy and other officials concluded the meeting and boarded a plane to return to Honolulu. Her plane, a Makani Kai Cessna Caravan 208B, crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the north coast of Molokai shortly after takeoff from Kalaupapa Airport at approximately 3:30 p.m.[1][3][4] Fuddy, who was 65 years old, eventually died from shock while she and the others awaited rescue.[1] The eight other people on the plane, who included Deputy Health Director Keith Yamamoto, Kalaupapa National Park administrator Rosa Key, and the Makani Kai pilot, survived the crash and were rescued

[Brehvolution]

Sadly, I could go on and on.

10) Mitch McConnell had a document saying the GOP would block the Obama nominee while the corpse was still warm.

[Brehvolution]

[Steve Contra]

Scalia dying and then that dunk contest.  Some major Ws that day

[benjipwns]

With confirmation that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead Saturday morning with a pillow over his head and his clothes unwrinkled, nationally syndicated talk-radio host Michael Savage called for an investigation on the level of the presidentially appointed probe into President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.

“Was [Scalia] murdered?” Savage asked his listeners.

“We need a Warren Commission-like federal investigation,” he said. “This is serious business.”

Savage said an immediate autopsy of the body is needed.

“There was no medical examiner present. There was no one who declared the death who was there. It was done by telephone from a U.S. Marshal appointed by Obama himself,” he said.

SAVAGE: Donald I need to come back to the topic we've been all screaming about here which is Scalia, was he murdered? I know it's pretty brutal to say that and I'm not wanting to drag you into this but this is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. I went on the air and said we need the equivalent of a Warren Commission, we need an immediate autopsy before the body is disposed of. What do you think of that?

TRUMP: Well I just heard today and that just a little while ago actually -- you know I just landed and I'm hearing it's a big topic -- that's the question. And it's a horrible topic, but they say they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow. I can't tell you what -- I can't give you an answer. You know usually I like to give you answers but I literally just heard it a little while ago. It's just starting to come out now, as you know, Michael.

SAVAGE: Well I've been covering it for an hour and a half, there's a lot more to it than that. There was no medical examiner present, there was no one who declared the death who was there, it was done by telephone from a U.S. marshal, appointed by Obama himself. So let me not try to drag you into something you haven't studied because I don't think it would be fair to you and to the audience. I think after you look into these facts, Donald, you yourself will have to come to some different conclusions than you may think.

[Stoney Mason]

I think we've all known for a long time that Obama put a hit on him.

[Mupepe]

I'd hit it

[Joe Molotov]

Trump has been known to indulge in some outlandish conspiracy theories in his day, like Obama not being born in America, or WMDs not being in Iraq.

[Human Snorenado]

Obama should nominate Anita Hill

 

[Madrun Badrun]

[Great Rumbler]

With no apparent sarcasm, an Arizona attorney on Sunday proposed that the late Justice Antonin Scalia's votes in cases pending before the Supreme Court should still count even though he died before the court issued its rulings.

"There’s no Ouija board required to figure out how Justice Scalia would vote on these things, he’s already voted," attorney Kory Langhofer said during a discussion on Phoenix, Arizona, television station KPNX. "We're at the second-to-last step in how these cases unfold when Justice Scalia died."

Langhofer explained that the justices have already heard some cases, discussed them and taken an initial vote. He said that Scalia may have even written a draft opinion before he passed away.

"We know exactly what he thought. And it’s not unprincipled to say we should give affect to that," he said.

Hey, I thought conservatives hated it when dead people still voted.