Has Nino "The Fat Blowhard" Scalia had "a bad week" -- or a bad life?

There's a rumor going around that the Supreme Court's ideological bloodlines have become somewhat blurred. Sounds crazy to me. With regard to the chief justice, for example, WaPo's Robert Barnes (see below) might want to check out these tracts in his own paper. (No, I'm not going to provide links. I have my limits.)

by Ken

We're hearing more and more lately -- nowhere near enough, but more and more -- about drones, to the point where we may be forgetting the old kind of drone, a person who talks a blue streak and never actually says anything. If you look it up in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of the Washington Post's own Beltway hyperdrone, Chris Cillizza.

It turns out that our Chris made sort of the same connection I did on Thursday, between Justice Nino "The Fat Blowhard" Scalia's shutout on the Supreme Court's health-care ruling and his meltdown Monday when the Court struck down most of the Arizona let's-beat-up-on-immigrants law -- and he not only read his whole dissent, which he does a lot, but indulged in a tirade against the president, utterly irrelevant to the case or the decision, that led Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. to argue that "Scalia must resign."

Oh, Chris didn't actually make the same point. He just connected the two events. My hypothesis was that our Nino wigged out on Monday because he knew he was going down again on Thursday. I don't see any indication that Chris understands what happened either time, or why it matters. He clearly sees this only in terms of Beltway reality, which has only incidental connections to real reality. In fact, he only brings it up in connection with some nonsense he's concocted called "Worst Week in Washington," "a weekly award honoring inhabitants of Planet Beltway." (That's his phrase, "Planet Beltway." Note that links in the post can be found onsite.)

Who had the worst week in Washington? Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

By Chris Cillizza, Published: June 28

For Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, it's been a rough few days.

Not only did Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who had seemed to be Scalia's conservative-brother-in-arms, cast the decisive vote upholding President Obama's health-care overhaul, but earlier in the week, in his dissent on the Arizona immigration law, Scalia trod all over the idea that the Supreme Court is above politics.

In a little-noticed (at first) rejection of the high court's majority opinion that much of the Arizona statute was preempted by federal law, the ever-quotable and occasionally controversial Scalia said that the ruling "boggles the mind" -- particularly in light of Obama's recent decision to stop deporting some illegal immigrants under 30 if they were brought here by their parents as children.

"The president has said that the new program is ‘the right thing to do' in light of Congress's failure to pass the administration's proposed revision of the immigration laws," Scalia wrote. "Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think so."

Cue outrage.

Scalia's critics seized on the comment as evidence that the conservative justice had put his politics before the law. E.J. Dionne Jr., a liberal columnist for The Washington Post, went as far as to call for his resignation, writing: "What boggles the mind is that Scalia thought it proper to jump into this political argument."

Scalia isn't likely to take Dionne's advice -- and this week of controversy is likely to be the smallest of ripples when one looks back on the breadth of his career. And a bad week can turn into a good week down the line; just ask a past worst week winner, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who was dinged for his poor performance in arguing the administration's health-care case before the court in March. He had to be breathing a sigh of relief when the verdict came down Thursday morning.

Antonin Scalia, for showing too much partisan political leg, you had the worst week in Washington. Congrats, or something.

The most embarrassing thing here, from the Post's standpoint, is their Chris's open avowal that he truly has no idea why E. J. Dionne Jr. thinks that Scalia "must resign. After all, "this week of controversy is likely to be the smallest of ripples when one looks back on the breadth of [Scalia's] career."

Of course the Scalia tantrum isn't just about this "bad week"; it really is about "the breadth of his career," which is the career of a dimwitted thug who has used the law to enforce a rigid, ultra-extreme ideological agenda.

Nothing prevents a Supreme Court justice, once confirmed, from voting any which way he likes, and in the normal course of things Chris would be right -- Nino the Human Blimp's reputation would be untarnishable, despite the evident reality that he's never been anything but a thuglike ideological hack. But then he went and made a blatantly political speech right there on the bench of the Supreme Court.

No, I don't suppose it's going to end his judicial career. But it's sure going to step up the spread of the toxic stench he gives off.

One footnote regarding the curiously narrow focus of Beltway reality. Note that reference to the Blimpman's "little-noticed (at first) rejection of the high court's majority opinion that much of the Arizona statute was preempted by federal law." My attention was drawn to his astonishing performance by Jeffrey Toobin's Tuesday newyorker.com blogpost , "That's Just Nino: Scalia's Arizona Dissent." I think next-day reporting qualifies as more or less immediate, and as noticing at first.

I think that, to anyone who takes the law or the Supreme Court seriously, Jeffrey Toobin's coverage qualifies as a serious thing. But I guess Inside the Beltway, it's just some candy-ass New York la-di-da magazine.


SPEAKING OF THE HIGH COURT, ARE YOU NOTICING
THIS NONSENSE ABOUT "BLURRING" OF POSITIONS?

For example, WaPo's Robert Barnes's "After Supreme Court term, line between 'liberal' and 'conservative' is blurrier." No, Robert, not really. The nine justices are all exactly who we've always known they were -- which, by the way, includes not a single "liberal." But even if you reframe that to "the line between 'moderate' and 'conservative,'" no, it's just that some of the fights are now taking less obviously expectable turns.

With regard to Chief Justice Roberts's supposed unpredictability, for example, Robert might -- as I suggested in the caption up top of this post -- want to check out a couple of his own paper's "right-leaning" (leaning?) columnists.

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