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Julian Sanchez | June 14, 2005

Why would a conservative justice who's voted to give the Commerce Clause teeth in the past turn his back on states' rights in the Raich decision? Mark Moller takes a fantastic voyage into the brain of Antonin Scalia.

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|6.14.05 @ 11:24AM|#

So it's due to his anal need for rules and not the fact he puffs a quarter ounce a day and wants to throw everyone off the track?

Thanks for clearing that up!

|6.14.05 @ 1:17PM|#

He may be an asshole, but at least his opinions are funny.

|6.14.05 @ 4:49PM|#

I think you're being overly generous in assigning a principled legal basis to Scalia's action, and overlooking his oft-demonstrated glee at screwing his ideological enemies, and at using legal doctrine he normally disdains (and they like) as the method of screwing them.

For example, he never really had a kind word for people claiming violations of their voting rights. If you read his Voting Rights Act opinions and dissents, they're full of this imperious contempt for anyone making a claim that comes up short of Klansmen administering literacy tests at polling stations. Then you read his opinion in Bush vs. Gore, and he bases his reasoning on these dainty, precious readings of the Act and case law to build an argument in support of those voters who would get screwed if the contested ballots were reviewed (while completely dismissing concerns for the voting rights of those who might be getting screwed by the faulty, inaccurate machinery).

No doubt someone is going to pop up to argue that the facts of the case so obviously support the reasoning of the decision that it couldnl't possibly have the political cast I describe. But if you read what Scalia wrote, the tone of his writing is the type of sneering sarcasm you see on blogs when somebody obviously doesn't believe the arguments they're making, and is only making them to rub them in the face of an opponent who has often made them in good faith. "Why isn't George Bush invading Saudi Arabia? I thought Freedom was On the March." You know what I mean. This is exactly how Scalia's discussion of voting rights issues reads in his Bush v. Gore decision.

And it's the same thing here. Scalia doesn't like the filthy hippies who stank up the universities with their patchouli and marijuana cigarettes, and will happily sign onto whatever legal doctrine is most convenient for handing down a decision that pisses them off.

Right wing baby boomers are at their most dishonest and thuggish when it comes to an issue that, in any way, touches on marijuana or Vietnam.