Monday, October 19, 2009

I Didn't Know Supreme Court Justices Could Be That Stupid

Well, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia proved recently that either he's such an idealogue that he's willing to ignore reality, and float off into an alternate neocon universe, or he has no compunction about making specious arguments merely for the purpose of furthering his cause. Scalia actually had the balls to claim that a cross at a war memorial on Federal land is not a religious symbol. Read page 39 of the transcript of Salazar v. Buono at http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/08-472.pdf . The case involves a cross on Federal land in Mojave National Preserve. The important part that none of the newspapers are covering is that the current cross, along with the last few before it, were (re-)placed in the last few decades, after the land was already Federal property. In this part of the oral arguments made before the bench, Peter Ginsburg tries to explain to the judges that the war memorial does not (and never has had) any symbols of the religions of other (American) veterans, unlike National Cemeteries:

"MR. ELIASBERG: Well, Justice Scalia, if I may go to your first point. The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of Christians. I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew.
(Laughter.)
MR. ELIASBERG: So it is the most common symbol to honor Christians.
JUSTICE SCALIA: I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that's an outrageous conclusion."


What Scalia is claiming is that the cross of the war memorial represents all war dead.

Yeah, right.

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