Saturday, June 22, 2013

Last Call For Scalia

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wants people to know he's not interested in making momentous decisions about rights and freedoms and social issues, because A) it's hard and B) it's hard, dammit.

With a potentially ground-breaking decision on gay marriage expected next week, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Friday morning that he and other judges should stop setting moral standards concerning homosexuality and other issues.

Why?

We aren’t qualified, Scalia said.

In a speech titled “Mullahs of the West: Judges as Moral Arbiters,” the outspoken and conservative jurist told the N.C. Bar Association that constitutional law is threatened by a growing belief in the “judge moralist.” In that role, judges are bestowed with special expertise to determine right and wrong in such matters as abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, the death penalty and same-sex marriage.

Scalia said that approach presents two problems: Judges are not moral experts, and many of the moral issues now coming before the courts have no “scientifically demonstrable right answer.”

As such, he said, it’s a community’s job to decide what it finds morally acceptable, not the courts’.

Shorter Scalia:  TYRANNY OF THE MOB FOREVAH.

So yeah, that whole Constitutional fundamental rights thing?  Naah, those aren't guarantees, those are "what the community finds morally acceptable" and stuff.  So yeah, it's totally cool to hate gay people or brown people or immigrant people because as long as 50% +1 find it morally acceptable to do so, it's cool to discriminate.

Besides, not discriminating is hard, people.  Just take it from Justice Wario here.

Perhaps he should, you know, resign if it's just too hard to adjudicate stuff.  That's just me talking.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/06/21/4121621/nc-lawyers-listen-as-justice-scalia.html#storylink=cpy

The Netroots Of The Issue

This morning House minority leader Nancy Pelosi spoke at this year's Netroots Nation conference in San Jose (And Imani Gandy and Elon White are there, the lucky bastards.)  She faced some tough questions from the audience about NSA leaker Edward Snowden, but faced them and answer them she did.  Here's what I predicted when the event happened:




And of course, Politico's coverage from Emily Schultheis didn't disappoint with the headline "Nancy Pelosi booed, heckled at Netroots Nation 2013".

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was booed by progressive activists Saturday for defending President Obama on the NSA’s surveillance programs and suggesting that alleged leaker Edward Snowden broke the law. 
Speaking in a wide-ranging Q&A session at this year’s Netroots Nation conference, Pelosi said it’s unfair to equate Obama and former President George W. Bush on the issue of surveillance. 
“People on the far right are saying oh, this is the fourth term of President Bush,” the California Democrat said. “Absolutely, positively not so.” 
As Pelosi was saying the country needs a “balance” between security and privacy, Marc Perkel, a 57-year-old activist from Gilroy, Calif., started shouting at Pelosi during her answer and was escorted out of the room. 
“It’s not a balance. It’s not constitutional!” he yelled. “No secret laws!” 
Others in the room began shouting as well, saying things like “Leave him alone!” or “That’s what a police state looks like right there!”

It's boring how predictable Politico's hatred of the Democrats is, it really is. It's always "DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY" when the real story is "Nancy Pelosi engages critics, leads discussion on NSA policy at Netroots Nations".  Which is frankly exactly what we should be seeing from our elected leaders.

But no, that's not the headline with our "liberal" media.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!