\u201cWe have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation<\/strong> […] That is jaw-dropping. It is an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people\u2019s Representatives in Congress and the Executive.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But just the day before Scalia had signed on to the Court’s majority decision to strike down the Voting Rights Act – which, of course, was democratically adopted legislation by the people’s representatives. In fact, the law was just reauthorized by congress in 2006 with a vote in the senate of 98-0 and in the House by 390-33. The reauthorization was signed by then-President George W. Bush who effusively praised the bill.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Scalia condemned the VRA previously despite its broadly bi-partisan approval in congress. He belittled it as a “racial entitlement”<\/em> that was somehow immune to the “normal political process.”<\/em> He even noted the huge majority vote it received, but portrayed that with derision as if it were a defect.<\/p>\n “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\u2019s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. […It is] a phenomenon that is called ‘perpetuation of racial entitlement.’ Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political process.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So on one day Scalia takes a position that congress is incapable of making valid decisions on behalf of the people and, consequently, the Supreme Court must step in to make the decisions for them. That was his justification for striking down the VRA. However, the very next day Scalia bitterly castigates his colleagues for taking action to invalidate a law that had been enacted by the people’s representatives, and he repudiated the notion that it is the Court’s role to second guess the congress. That was the gist of his dissent on DOMA.<\/p>\n Literally overnight, Scalia went from asserting the Court’s authority over congressional actions, to asserting that the Court had no such authority. So the question is: Is that just Scalia being a hypocritical jerk, or is the 77 year old jurist suffering from a cognitive disorder?<\/p>\n The rulings today from the Supreme Court will undoubtedly dominate the part of the news cycle that isn’t filled with testimony from the George Zimmerman trial. The decision on California’s Prop 8 was essentially a punt wherein the Court ruled that the plaintiff did not have standing to bring the case. The result is that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[544,60,1039],"class_list":["post-10013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-antonin-scalia","tag-supreme-court","tag-voting-rights"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-2Bv","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8221,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=8221","url_meta":{"origin":10013,"position":0},"title":"GOP Voter Suppression Struck Down By The Courts Again – That’s 7 Straight Victories So Far","author":"Mark NC","date":"10\/16\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This election cycle has been stained by some of the most cynical and anti-democratic legal maneuvers ever perpetrated on the American public. Over the past few years, in states where Republican governors assumed power, they quickly set about abusing their position in order to corrupt the democratic process and deny\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10350,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=10350","url_meta":{"origin":10013,"position":1},"title":"Media Goes Silent As Texas Defends Constitutionality Of Racial Discrimination","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/11\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"In what may be the most under-reported story of the year so far, the media has virtually ignored the shameful response by the state of Texas to a Department of Justice challenge of voter discrimination in the state. Be Sure To \u201cLIKE\u201d News Corpse On Facebook In June, the right-wing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9987,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=9987","url_meta":{"origin":10013,"position":2},"title":"Gutting Voting Rights: Supreme Court Gives Racist Republicans Just What They Wanted","author":"Mark NC","date":"6\/25\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This morning the Supreme Court issued their decision on one of the most highly anticipated cases of the year. The Court ruled that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, that provides for review of potentially discriminatory practices in jurisdictions with a history of voter suppression, is no longer necessary.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7422,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7422","url_meta":{"origin":10013,"position":3},"title":"Graphic Evidence Of The Bigotry In Fox News Coverage Of The Arizona Supreme Court Ruling","author":"Mark NC","date":"6\/25\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Today the Supreme Court issued its ruling on the controversial Arizona law against undocumented immigrants. It was a partially mixed decision, however, any objective appraisal would have to note that three of the four major components of the law were struck down, and the fourth (the most controversial part requiring\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9993,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=9993","url_meta":{"origin":10013,"position":4},"title":"Judicial Bipolar Disorder: Republicans Respond To Court Ruling","author":"Mark NC","date":"6\/25\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This morning the Supreme Court issued a decision on the Voting Rights Act that struck down Section 4 which provided for constitutional reviews of voting practices in jurisdictions where there has been a history of discrimination. As might be expected, opinions began flying around as soon as the news hit\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6781,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=6781","url_meta":{"origin":10013,"position":5},"title":"Remember When Conservatives Were Against Unelected Judges And Judicial Activism?","author":"Mark NC","date":"4\/5\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"In another brazen exercise in hypocrisy, conservatives have launched a coordinated attack on President Obama for remarks that were entirely reasonable and uncontroversial. The President was asked by a reporter how he would respond if the health care reform bill currently being debated by the Supreme Court were to be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10013"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10017,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10013\/revisions\/10017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"Antonin](\"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/Pix\/Misc\/scalia-cognitive-disorder.jpg\")
<\/center>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"