RIP Scalia

[Patty_O_Furniture]

My condolences to the Koch brothers for their loss.

[GIGObuster]

@septimus

And again, you only quote debunkers.

Start a Pit thread “Septimus is foolish about Shakespeare’s authorship” if you need to further vent your ignorance. Meanwhile, I’ll pose a simple question:

If the case for Oxford is so weak, why do Justice Stevens and many other intelligent people (who ctually consider the evidence instead of just regurgitating from debunking sites) think Shakespeare was not the author?

Well, just more ignorance, Stevens had an opinion, that did not convince the other judges that looked at the evidence then with him.

http://www.skeptic.com/insight/false-balance-and-the-shakespeare-authorship-debate/

There have actually been moot court hearings on the authorship question before. On September 25, 1987, three sitting US Supreme Court justices–William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, and John Paul Stevens–heard arguments supporting the claims of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. The justices ruled in Shakespeare’s favor. The proceedings were filmed for posterity. Ordinarily, Supreme Court rulings can’t be appealed, but **Oxfordians are persistent and had the case retried on November 26, 1988 before three British law lords. The British judges upheld the American verdict.
**
Those decisions didn’t change anyone’s opinion, of course. The Oxfordians didn’t bow to the wisdom of some of the greatest legal minds of the English-speaking world. Instead, they continued their campaign to sway the hearts and minds of the general public. Eventually, they even swayed some Supreme Court justices. For instance, former Justice Stevens later became convinced that Oxford had written Shakespeare based on depressingly fallacious reasoning.

[septimus]

@GIGObuster

Well, just more ignorance, Stevens had an opinion, that did not convince the other judges that looked at the evidence then with him.

There have actually been moot court hearings on the authorship question before. On September 25, 1987, three sitting US Supreme Court justices–William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, and John Paul Stevens–heard arguments supporting the claims of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. The justices ruled in Shakespeare’s favor…

No: more ignorance by GIGObuster. Blackmun later changed his mind and came out on Oxford’s side. Before Scalia’s death the present court was 2-2 with 5 undecided. But this fact – that many intelligent people have bothered to consider the Oxfordian case, and then agree with it – will have no effect on you, blindly quoting debunkers over and over and over … with arguments demonstrating that you don’t have even the slightest clue about the Oxfordian hypothesis.

But please start another thread, GIGO, if you insist on repeating your ignorant dependence on Skeptic.prattle – quit hijacking this thread.

[MrDibble]

Scalia’s dead, mmm? Let’s hope for another ten years* at least* before Notorious RBG joins him…

@septimus

But please start another thread, GIGO, if you insist on repeating your ignorant dependence on Skeptic.prattle – quit hijacking this thread.

You’re the stupid shit who brought it up in the first place, and won’t stop posting in extra-large bold type about it, you open the new thread.

[BigT]

@HMS_Irruncible

Sarcasm is the weak tool of the incompetent mind. If you want to lionize someone, don’t do it on account of their sarcasm.

Sour grapes much? It actually takes higher level thinking to both use and understand verbal irony than to use ordinary language. It requires a processing above the literal meaning.

This is like those people claiming people who use expletives have a smaller vocabulary–when they actually tend to have a larger one.

[leftfield6]

A bigot whose opinions/votes have made life demonstrably worse for women, people of color, gays, immigrants, and almost every other minority group has died, and you wankers want to argue about his wacko Shakespeare beliefs??

I don’t buy into the whole “every man’s death diminishes me” crap. I’m glad he is fucking dead, since he was obviously not going to retire. The judicial stage is better without him on it.

[BrightSunshine]

@oft_wears_hats

As for nice things, he was married, only once, for 56 years. Assuming it was a happy marriage, he must have been doing something right at home. I sincerely hope that I get 56 years with my wonderful wife.

Her wife was equally hateful? Does that count as doing something right?

[BrightSunshine]

@HMS_Irruncible

As to his family? He died at 79 of natural causes, continually the beneficiary of government healthcare. I hope I and everyone in my family are as lucky.

Plus, his widow will get a hefty survivor benefits courtesy of the federal government to the tune of ~$100k/year for the rest of her life. Even though they have a networth of $5 million, gained largely as a result of his position on the court.

[Ludovic]

I for one am not glad that he is dead, politically speaking. It’s about the worst time it could have happened. A few months earlier or later, and it would have become politically untenable for one side to either block or “ram through” (relatively speaking) the nomination before the next presidency. But as it is, it’s the only damn thing anyone’s going to be talking about for the next year, and that can’t be good for the country.

[Zakalwe]

So Scalia died in Texas? I guess now we know what Jade Helm was actually about. Man, that Obama really plays the long game, don’t he?

[CGav8r]

@BrightSunshine

Plus, his widow will get a hefty survivor benefits courtesy of the federal government to the tune of ~$100k/year for the rest of her life. Even though they have a networth of $5 million, gained largely as a result of his position on the court.

Cite for death benefits?

[Fiveyearlurker]

@Ludovic

I for one am not glad that he is dead, politically speaking. It’s about the worst time it could have happened. A few months earlier or later, and it would have become politically untenable for one side to either block or “ram through” (relatively speaking) the nomination before the next presidency. But as it is, it’s the only damn thing anyone’s going to be talking about for the next year, and that can’t be good for the country.

Rammed through relatively speaking? He’s got almost one year. That would be the longest confirmation ever. By a lot. No need for ramming. Plenty of time.

[Morgenstern]

@BrightSunshine

Plus, his widow will get a hefty survivor benefits courtesy of the federal government to the tune of ~$100k/year for the rest of her life. Even though they have a networth of $5 million, gained largely as a result of his position on the court.

Too fucking bad the widows of veterans killed in the desert don’t get a blessing like that.

[Ludovic]

@Fiveyearlurker

Rammed through relatively speaking? He’s got almost one year. That would be the longest confirmation ever. By a lot. No need for ramming. Plenty of time.

I’m not saying that a rational person would say that now. I’m saying that if Scalia had died a few months later, then Obama took another month or so in picking a nominee, that there would be a sense of rushedness, accurately or not, to the process. On the other hand, if he had died a few months earlier, the GOP would squawk but no one would listen to them. We are in the exact middle, where conservatives think they have a shot at believable blockage and thus will clog up the political system for the maximal amount of time.

[BrainGlutton]

@Sitnam

Scalia was disgusting, and his actions really hurt people.

Especially his actions in the 2000 election.

[The_Hamster_King]

@Ludovic

We are in the exact middle, where conservatives think they have a shot at believable blockage and thus will clog up the political system for the maximal amount of time.

Thus making their obstructionism glaringly obvious for all to see. Obama should try to see how many nominees he can get rejected during the rest of 2016.

[Fiveyearlurker]

@The_Hamster_King

Thus making their obstructionism glaringly obvious for all to see. Obama should try to see how many nominees he can get rejected during the rest of 2016.

It’s going to be difficult to justify rejecting Srikanth Srinivasan. He was approved by the Senate 97-0 two years ago. If anything, liberals appear to not be thrilled with him.

[BrainGlutton]

RationalWiki:

Scalia considered himself a textualist and a Constitutional originalist, a rather meaningless term. “Textualism” means he interpreted laws by their plain meaning. For example, if there was a law on sex crimes and it mentions “forcible rope,” he would’ve viewed this obvious error as referring to tying people up, not nonconsensual sex.[5] His originalist view was that he, and only he, knows exactly what James Madison meant (though Scalia was proven to not know what Antonin Scalia meant[2]). In many instances it is fairly cut-and-dried, such as his support for the constitutionality of the death penalty on the grounds that the Framers would never have thought of it as cruel and unusual. However, given that they all died around 150-200 years before the invention of the Internet, it is unknown exactly how he is able to discern their opinions on matters such as internet security. He believed that the Fourteenth Amendment only applies to… recounts in Florida, that axes shouldn’t be carried in public but rocket launchers might be permissible,[6] and the Eighth Amendment prevented forcing him to read a 2700-page health care bill, but not torture.

In reality though, he was just a cultural warrior dressed in a robe, and he was willing to abandon his supposed originalism so long as it served his ideological agenda.[7]

Humor

• Scalia worked for the Supreme Court as a part-time clothes-dryer and full-time wingnut scold.
• Scalia almost exploded in his dissent when Lawrence v. Texas was decided in favor of sodomy.
• As mentioned, Scalia was considered the foremost advocate of legal originalism, a doctrine that says that all legal decisions should be based on what the “originators” thought, despite the fact that they’re all dead and we really can’t ask them, and despite the fact that in 2011 he voted to make Corporations “persons.” In practice, he just picked the most right-wing fringe option he can think of and then constructed a legal figleaf around it.
• Clarence Thomas was thought to be under the control of Scalia, something akin to the way hardened lifers in prison will take tender young men under their wing as soon as they get off the bus. Today, however, Thomas has been seen staking out his own positions more, often even loonier than Scalia’s (though not always).
• Oddly enough, Scalia was also the only prominent conservative in U.S. politics today with a sense of humor: at the White House Press Club party entertained by Stephen Colbert (who was sweating bullets to power), Scalia was not only the only audience member laughing, but he joined in the fun with some “ethnic sign language” directed back at the podium.
• If Scalia was a “real American” like one of the Framers, he would do as many of those original settlers would have argued, change his name to something more sensible, pronounceable, spellable, and pro-American.
• In one of those moments of “What you talkin’ 'bout, Willis,” he and Ruth Ginsburg were very close friends. We don’t know what the attraction is, either.
• He was even a hunting buddy of fellow Supreme Court Justice and Obama nominee Elena Kagan.[8]
• “It has been rendered the solemn duty of the Supreme Court of the United States, laid upon it by Congress in pursuance of the Federal Government’s power “[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States,” to decide, What Is Golf.” — Scalia’s dissent in PGA Tour, Inc. v. Casey Martin[9]

Less than humorous

• On 9 March 2012, Scalia attempted to assert that the outcome of Bush v. Gore was 7-2 and not 5-4.[10]
• On 10 December 2012 during a presentation to Princeton, Scalia was asked about how he could vote in favor of laws banning gay marriage and responded "If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder?”[11] To make up for it, though, district judges continue to give him a taste of karma by citing his slippery slope dissent against United States v. Windsor when striking down state bans.[12]
• On 8 September 2014, two mentally-handicapped black men were released from prison (after spending 30 years on death row) when DNA evidence confirmed that they were not guilty of raping and killing a child. Why is this relevant to Scalia? Well, the case was the main rationale for his steadfast support of the death penalty for two decades.[13]
• His son Paul is a Catholic priest involved in Courage International, a reparative therapy lay ministry.[14]
• Scalia came under fire for suggesting black students would succeed in “slower-track schools” rather than more competitive colleges.[15]

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

@Fiveyearlurker

It’s going to be difficult to justify rejecting Srikanth Srinivasan. He was approved by the Senate 97-0 two years ago. If anything, liberals appear to not be thrilled with him.

Unanimous approval a few years ago doesn’t mean anything about the future. Do you know what other judge got a unanimous vote in the Senate?

[Fiveyearlurker]

@Airman_Doors_USAF

Unanimous approval a few years ago doesn’t mean anything about the future. Do you know what other judge got a unanimous vote in the Senate?

Bork was rejected in a bipartisan manner. Do you see that happening here?