rationalizations are more important than sex

If you still think you need a reason to elect a Democrat for President, not just in 2008, but for the next 20 years or so, here's a good one for you. An interview with "Justice" Antonin Scalia* wherein he displays his Republican credentials by taking the side of those who support torture:

"You can't come in smugly and with great self satisfaction and say 'Oh it's torture, and therefore it's no good'," he said in a rare interview.

Yes, yes I can say it's no good. One of the defining points of "civilization" is that it refrains from violence as a matter of course, that it attempts to spare others pain and death, sometimes even at a cost to itself. It's called "morality" and it is one of the things that the Republican Party claims for itself, even as it tortures prisoners, invades nations and denies healthcare for it's own citizens. As for smug, can you get much smugger than the current administration? George Bush et al have the mien of spoiled children who know that whatever they do, the punishment (if any) will be nowhere near as great as the rewards to themselves, and forget the cost to any others.
No, it is not the anti-torture crowd that is smug, but Antonin Scalia. This man is not fit to serve on a court of men who are supposed to be "objective". He has often expressed opinions about issues which may potentially appear before him in court, and there have been occassions upon which he should have recused himself, and has not. Can a Supreme Court Justice be impeached? Or maybe the next President should do as FDR thought of doing. Maybe not. Whatever, the lasting legacy of the Bush Administration will be our Supreme Court and it's Authoritarian Activism, and we will be stuck with that legacy for decades.
I'd heard warnings about the stacking of the Courts for years, and frankly I have no problem with a rather conservative court - that's the function of judges, really, to step back and say. "whoa". But these judges that have been put into place by the Republican Party under the guise of "stopping an activist judiciary" are themselves at least as radical (the other way) as those they are proposed to be stopping. The function of the Supreme Court should not be to dismantle decades of their own decisions, yet that is what the SCOTUS appears poised to do.
We cannot reverse this trend (not without radical leadership on the left, which it is quite clear that the Democratic Party is not going to provide), but we can at least halt it, by the simple act of electing Democrats to office (and, if necessary, throwing them out in favor of different Democrats for the next term). I really dont like the Democrats, their passive enablement of the Republican party is almost as much to blame for this mess as the GOP itself. But however unpleasant chemotherapy may be, it's usually better than cancer.
The decades since the election of Ronald Reagan, even during the Clinton Administration, has seen a shift in government priority from providing for the general welfare of the People, to providing for the general welfare of the Corporation, in the theory that what's good for Business is good for the People. This is nothing more than another form of trickle-down economics, voodoo theory the bankrupcy of which has been expressed even by its one-time proponents. The Courts have played their part in this shift, as much as Congress or the regulatory arms of the various Administrations.

As for Antonin Scalia, if you want further proof of his radicalism, read these words:

Justice Scalia is often described as the most conservative member of the court - but it's a charge he denies.

Instead, he says he's an "originalist," which means he interprets the text of the US Constitution as it was written.

He both attacks and mocks the idea that the Constitution is a "living document" which needs reinterpreting in the light of social change.

Can I just say, "What the fuck"???
As it was written? Was he there?
Do we really need a Supreme Court justice who thinks that the Founding Fathers deliberately wrote their Constitution in sweeping and rather vague terms because they intended for it to be rigidly followed based on the events of their times? What's the point of having a judge; in this case, why not stack the court with Historians instead? Or, Authoritarian Assholes...

Oh wait, we did that.


* of the Supreme Court, I know I dont really have to tell you that, but I'm not feeling very hopeful today.