I hope he ends up in the same place as the Framers of the US Constitution, and they tell him that he was repeatedly wrong about his interpretations.
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A big difference here is that Scalia was still in his position. Celebrating Thatcherās death seems off to me, even if she did leave a bad legacy. By that point, it didnāt make any difference to the rest of us if she was alive or dead. As for Scalia, 79 is a good innings and dying peacefully in your sleep during a holiday is not a bad way to go. Itās sudden and I feel sorry for his family, but there are some real positive consequences that could come from this and I donāt feel too bad about celebrating that.
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Byron:
Posterity will neāer survey
A nobler grave than this
Here lie the bones of Casgtlereagh;
Stop, traveller, and p***.
The saying āDe mortuis nil nisi bonumā (lit. of the dead nothing but good) dated from a day when people believed that the unquiet dead would arise as vengeful spirits, so you did not want to attract adverse attention. But nowadays the vengeful spirits are in the Republican Party and have already started attacking Obama. So we should be free to say what we like about Scalia. Which, in my case, is that he resembled the Ayatollah Khomeini in his idea that the law should be about the opinions of long dead old guys who could not possibly have foreseen a modern society, because that meant his opinions could be as regressive as possible. He also resembled the medieval academics who believed that Aristotle was 100% right and that no disagreement was possible, even though Aristotle wanted research and experiment and overthrew ideas current in his own time.
Of course Scalia was intelligent. A supercomputer is a big computer. You can use it to forecast weather or you can use it to design hydrogen bombs. Scalia was the designer of hydrogen bombs.
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Finally. I canāt say Iām too sad about this.
What? His family and supporters will mourn him, and he died at a relatively advanced age. I donāt revel in his death, but Iām happy heās no longer part of the court.
Side note: I think I might owe @nungesser money.
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Well thanks, youāve fucked up Glamour Profession now.
āOf course it is our moral heritage that one should not hate any human being or class of human beings. But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensibleāmurder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animalsāand could exhibit even āanimusā toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of āanimusā at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct[.]ā
ā Justice Antonin Scalia, Romer v. Evans 1996
See, itās not that we hate him. Itās just moral disapproval of his judicial conduct.
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Oh, thereād have been street parties in the mining towns and the riverbanks where the shipyards were if sheād not survived the Brighton bombing in the 80s too, I imagine. Still, those wounds run deep here.
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For the last few years she had dementia. I hated the mad old bat but my mother eventually died of dementia and I wouldnāt wish it on anybody. (Mind you, her heavy abuse of the whisky bottle might have been a factor - some of her weirder outbursts were most likely the result of drink, either drunkenness or hangover.)
Scalia was very, very lucky in the way he went, even if he doesnāt (now) appreciate it.
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I think Iād regret his death more if he werenāt so callous about stays of executions. He stated he was part of a āmachinery of deathā where his role was to make sure those deaths happened (even working to prevent new evidence from being heard in capital cases), and hectored justices who granted stays on principle. He didnāt feel badly seeing others die when he had a hand in ensuring it, and I canāt feel too badly that a guy like thatās gone from this world. I am mostly sad that I donāt believe in a hell, since heās one who fully deserves to be there now.
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No chance. If he argues his way past St. Peter into Heaven (doubtless by going all strict construction on the Gospels) heāll be in the special bit of it reserved for Catholics who believe that non-Catholics donāt go to Heaven. Thereās high walls around it and every day they have to listen to interminable lectures by St. Thomas Acquinas before 4 hours of compulsory optional harp practice. There are CCTV cameras pointed at the audience and the video is beamed out to the liberal bits of Heaven for their amusement.
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The special Catholic Heaven where you donāt get to hang out with Miles Davis, David Bowie, and the greats, and youāre trapped listening to harp music all day seems close enough to Hell.
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I hated him before he died. I fail to see the difference his heartbeat should make to the matter.
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According to one strand of Catholic theology Heaven is very close to Hell - so close that the blessed can watch the damned being tormented.
Catholic laity are usually very nice people. Parish Catholic clergy are often extremely hard working people who deeply care for their congregations. Catholic theologians1 are as a whole a bunch of perverse kinkos. And Scalia was basically a Catholic theologian who drifted into the law, much as an iceberg drifts into the path of a ship.
1 Except for Liberation theologians, Hans Kung and Irenaeus, obviously.
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Honestly, the justice I had in mind was dear olā RBG. I thought Scaliaās fiery hatred would keep him alive for years, like a cauldron in his heart.
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To be fair, a few Catholic theologians try to find a kinder, gentler path in theology. Sadly, the system is designed to punish those who favor being humane over being sadistically orthodox. Scalia relished wearing the sadistic orthodoxy hat:
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Only Catholics could believe that in HEAVEN you get to watch, for eternity, people being tormented in hell. Someone actually came up with that shit. āYou know what my idea of a perfect eternal existence is? Front row forever seats overlooking hell - I want to see non-believers and unrepentant sinners being prodded with red hot pitchforks for all of eternity.ā
Thatās the most fucked up shit Iāve heard. And I went to Catholic school for 12 years and then a Jesuit University (which shouldnāt even count as Catholic IMHO).
Yes, itās only some but still.
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I havenāt been following the details, but havenāt some candidates already called for blocking every nomination by Obama?
Thatās hardly honoring the dead and not saying anything of substance. Thatās playing political games.
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Cruz, Rubio, and Carson have said we should wait 'til after the inauguration next year. McConnellās declared that the Senate wonāt approve a nomination saying that āthe voters should be given a say in the matter.ā Clearly the voters should have their say by ousting the obstructionists - there should be electoral ramifications for declaring you wonāt do be doing your job for a year.
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But if Congress isnāt going to approve a nomination for the SC until the next president is in office, weāll have deadlock! What happens when a tied supreme court canāt resolve a tie in the presidential election?
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I didnāt hate him. I thought he was very intelligent, and even occasionally witty. That said, I also believe he made America substantially worse during his time on the bench, and that he committed the cardinal sin of imposing his personal beliefs on the rest of us in the guise of āconstitutional originalismā. When it suited his position, anyway.
Am I happy that the man is dead? No, not exactly. Am I happy that we have a chance now to have a better Supreme Court, and a better America? Yes. Oh dear god yes. Unfortunately, due to the nature of an appointment to the Supreme Court, Scalia had to die so that we might have a chance to make America better.
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