Channel-hopping last night brought me to CSpan's replay of Scalia's funeral at the Catholic basilica D.C. As a fan of Scalia's wit and scholarship (but not of his meaner opinions), I thought he deserved better than what he got from his family and friends in one huge, cold, ugly cathedral.
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Jeffrey Toobin writes about Scalia in the New Yorker. Excerpt:
Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed. Belligerent with his colleagues, dismissive of his critics, nostalgic for a world where outsiders knew their place and stayed there, Scalia represents a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor. The great Justices of the Supreme Court have always looked forward; their words both anticipated and helped shape the nation that the United States was becoming. Chief Justice John Marshall read the new Constitution to allow for a vibrant and progressive federal government. Louis Brandeis understood the need for that government to regulate an industrializing economy. Earl Warren saw that segregation was poison in the modern world. Scalia, in contrast, looked backward.
And about right wingers in general? How 'bout this?
Republican intransigence is a sign of panic, not of power.
