Uh-Oh, Scalia Screws Up Royally. Time To Retire.

Uh-Oh, Scalia Screws Up Royally. Time To Retire.
by pollwatcher
Daily Kos
Apr 30, 2014

The Obama administration won a rare Supreme Court victory regarding the rights of the EPA to regulate pollution from coal plants. Instead of the usual 5-4 decision against anything the Obama Administration wants, this decision was a 6-2 decision. And you get 1 guess as to who the 2 opposed were. Yep, Scalia and Thomas.

Well, the minority dissent opinion was written by Scalia, and according to this report from TPM Scalia really screwed up the opinion.

"This is not the first time EPA has sought to convert the Clean Air Act into a mandate for cost-effective regulation. Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457 (2001), confronted EPA's contention that it could consider costs in setting [National Ambient Air Quality Standards]," Scalia wrote in his dissent, which was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.

The problem: the EPA's position in the 2001 case was exactly the opposite. The agency was defending its refusal to consider cost as a counter-weight to health benefits when setting certain air quality standards. It was the trucking industry that wanted the EPA to factor in cost. The 9-0 ruling sided with the EPA. The author of the ruling that Scalia mischaracterized? Scalia himself.

The conservative justice's error was noted by University of California-Berkeley law professor Dan Farber, who called it "embarrassing" and a "cringeworthy blunder."

But wait, it gets better.

"This gaffe is doubly embarrassing because Scalia wrote the opinion in the case, so he should surely remember which side won!

... "It is a mind-blowing misstatement of a basic fact of the American Trucking Association ruling which Justice Scalia himself wrote. And it's not just a stray passage -- it's the basis for an entire section of the dissent,"

Looks like someone isn't taking their job very seriously, or maybe it's time to "spend more time with the family". Of course, does anyone really believe Scalia isn't the most political of the Justices?

Justice Scalia Tells Law Students ‘Perhaps You Should Revolt’ If Taxes Become Too High

Justice Scalia Tells Law Students ‘Perhaps You Should Revolt’ If Taxes Become Too High
By Adam Peck
Think Progress
April 19, 2014

During an event at the University of Tennessee’s law school on Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia suggested to the capacity crowd that perhaps they should revolt against the U.S government if their taxes ever get too high.

During a question and answer part of the event, a student asked Scalia about the constitutionality of a federal income tax. Scalia assured the questioner that the tax was in fact permissible by the constitution, but added that if it ever became too high, “perhaps you should revolt.”

The remark, first reported by the Knoxville News Sentinel, has become a common rhetorical flourish for conservatives nationwide during the Obama presidency.

A state Tea Party chairman in Mississippi called for armed rebellion ahead of Obama’s reelection in 2012, and a Texas Judge told a local news station that he was prepared to join a “civil war” if Obama agreed to sign away U.S sovereignty to the United Nations. Michele Bachmann found herself in hot water in 2009, shortly after Obama took office, for calling upon a violent uprising against Obama, and faced accusations of using treasonous language.

Supreme Court justices have largely refrained from such rhetoric. Still, in recent years, Scalia has shifted even further to the right than when he was first appointed.

Days later, at a joint appearance with fellow Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Scalia offered a bit of ironic commentary on inflammatory rhetoric. “It sometimes annoys me when somebody has made outrageous statements that are hateful,” he told the audience at the National Press Club. “Sometimes the press will say, ‘well, he was just exercising his first amendment rights’…You can be using your first amendment rights and it can be abominable that you are using your first amendment rights. I’ll defend your right to use it, but I will not defend the appropriateness of the manner in which you are using it.”

The oath taken by Justice Scalia:

"I, Antonin Scalia, do solemnly (swear or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

Scalia appears at 'tea party' House meeting

First Clarence Thomas' wife took a leading role in a Tea Party organization that takes in large donations. Now this.

Scalia appears at 'tea party' House meeting
The justice's participation sparks new concerns about the Supreme Court's appearance of impartiality. Lawmakers said he discussed the Constitution and his judicial philosophy.
By David G. Savage and Kathleen B. Hennessey
Los Angeles Times
January 24, 2011

Justice Antonin Scalia's appearance at a meeting organized by the House Tea Party caucus and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on Monday provoked new cries from liberals and some academics that conservative justices are shedding the appearance of impartiality.

The session, part of what Bachmann calls a series of constitutional seminars, was closed to the media. Lawmakers said Scalia advised them to read the Federalist Papers and to follow the Constitution as it was written.

University of Texas law professor Lucas A. Powe, a historian of the liberal Warren Court, said Scalia's appearance made the court look partisan. "He is taking political partisanship to levels not seen in over half a century," Powe said...