Sieg Frickin' Heil

[filkertom]

I understand this man believes he is qualified to be a judge:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he believes "abstract moralizing" has led the American judicial system into a quagmire, and that matters such as abortion and assisted suicide are "too fundamental" to be resolved by judges.

"What I am questioning is the propriety, indeed the sanity, of having value-laden decisions such as these made for the entire society ... by judges," Scalia said on Tuesday during an appearance at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

In some cases -- and in response to a question from the audience, he acknowledged Brown vs. Board of Education was one -- there is a societal benefit when a court rules against prevailing popular opinion, but generally speaking it is fundamentally bad for democracy, he said.

Read the whole thing. He's insane. He uses the example of suffrage, wherein a disenfranchised group of people protests until it gains rights, as an example implying why the opponents of same-sex marriage should be allowed to prevent rights. He says there was no legal precedent for recusing himself from a case involving Dick Cheney when he was Cheney's hunting buddy.

Gaaaah.

Comments

Who decides?

[janet-coburn.livejournal.com]

^$?
?I know, the "who can marry" debate has not reached the Supreme Court. Right now the issue is reciprocity--until now each state could legislate its own marriage rules (permissible age, degree of consanguinity, etc.) and all the other states have to accept that people legally married in state A have legal-marriage rights in state B, even if state B's rules have different requirements (a higher age, for example).

Now we have the unmanageable mess of some states defining marriage in a way that allows same sex marriage and others refusing to acknowledge those marriages. At some point it may be necessary for a federal authority or procedure (legislature, court, or constitutional amendment) to remedy this by A) saying states can each define marriage and everyone has to recognize them (the status quo), or B) stepping in and defining marriage for everyone, so no one could disagree about it.

Traditionally, the definition of marriage has been a state issue and each state makes its own rules (although Utah had to agree to give up polygamy in a compromise to be permitted statehood). Therefore, there is little reason to support option B as a logical move. Option A requires that nothing be done. We all sit tight, and states that want same-sex marriage can have it and everyone else has to shut up and acknowledge it.

This strikes me as the right solution--until I think about Utah and what might happen should the Mormon majority vote in plural marriage (though that's unlikely as the mainline LDS church has renounced it formally and only break-away fundamentalist sects practice it). At that point I give up thinking about politics and morality, and go kill a few brain cells with a nonspecific liquid analgesic.

I do think Scalia is a huge jerk and hate the idea that he has so much power to affect the lives of me, my friends, and my loved ones.

But, bottom line, I should have had the iced tea.