Scream Racism If #Obama Doesn’t Get to Name #Liberal Replacement @Law

“In a nation built on slavery, white men propose denying the first black president his Constitutional right to name Supreme Court nominee.”
— New York Times editorial writer and essayist Brent Staples in a February 14 tweet, since deleted.

“After years of watching political opponents question the President’s birthplace and his faith, and hearing a member of Congress shout ‘You lie!’ at him from the House floor, some African-Americans saw the move by Senate Republicans as another attempt to deny the legitimacy of the country’s first black President....
“‘I guess many of them are using this in the strictest construction that Barack Obama’s serving three-fifths of a term or he’s three-fifths of a human being, so he doesn’t get to make this choice,” Mr. [Bakari] Sellers [a former state representative in South Carolina] said. ‘It’s infuriating.’”
— Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin in a February 18 front-page New York Timesstory.

“The conservative base has never accepted that a black Democrat could be a legitimately elected President, and after 7 years of having to live with a President the majority of white voters voted against, Republicans are going to use this [Scalia’s replacement] as a chance to throw a nationwide temper tantrum.”
— Salon.com’s Amanda Marcotte in a February 15 post.

“Anything he does, they go up against. They oppose the man, no matter what he does....It’s almost like they’re not being patriotic, it seems to me....And I have to say it — I know it’s not popular to say it — but his color has something to do with it.”
— Co-host Joy Behar on ABC’s The View, February 16.

Scoffing at Scalia’s Judicial Approach

“The problem with originalism is that it, the document, the Constitution did not anticipate abortion, it did not anticipate the arrival of the iPhone, it did not anticipate the arrival of jet travel and many, many other topics, including police rights and pulling over a motorized vehicle, that we could not have anticipated.”
— Breaking news anchor Brian Williams via phone on MSNBC on February 13 an hour after Scalia’s death was announced.

Watch: Reverend Paul Scalia Delivers Touching Homily at Father’s Funeral @Breitbart

Watch: Reverend Paul Scalia Delivers Touching Homily at Father’s Funeral

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by TRENT BAKER20 Feb 201651

At his father’s funeral Mass, Reverend Paul Scalia delivered a homily for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last week at the age of 79.

Rev. Scalia spoke on his father’s “deep Catholic faith.”

“In the past week, many have recounted what dad did for them. But here, today, we recount what God did for dad; how He blessed him,” Rev. Scalia said.

He added, “God blessed dad with a deep Catholic faith: The conviction that Christ’s presence and power continue in the world today through His body, the Church. He loved the clarity and coherence of the church’s teachings. He treasured the church’s ceremonies, especially the beauty of her ancient worship; the power of her sacraments as the means of salvation.”

Rev. Scalia also talked about Justice Scalia’s personal life, including his family.

“We give thanks that Jesus bestowed upon him 55 years of marriage to the woman he loved, a woman who could match him at every step and even hold him accountable,” he explained.

According to Scalia, his father mixed up the names of his nine children.

“Sure, he forgot our names at times,” Rev. Scalia joked. “There are nine of us.”

Scalia also recalled when his father once realized that he was in his own son’s confession line, and quickly got out. “As he put it later, ‘like heck if I’m confessing to you.’ The feeling was mutual.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent

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Scalia’s Last Words on Judicial Activism: Same-Sex Marriage Ruling Lacked ‘Even Thin Veneer of #Law’ @Breitbart

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REUTERS/JOSHUA ROBERTS

by THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D.20 Feb 201631

Amidst the rich legacy that Justice Antonin Scalia left to the American people after more than 30 years serving on the Supreme Court, his last and one of his greatest statements against judicial activism came after the notorious 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that trampled the democratic process, legislating same-sex marriage for all 50 states.

Justice Scalia’s major contention with the court’s decision had little to do with same-sex marriage at all and everything to do with democracy and the rule of law. It is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage, he writes, but it is of overwhelming importance “who it is that rules me.”

“Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court,” he said.

In his nine-page dissent, Scalia ripped into the majority opinion, calling it a “judicial Putsch” that poses a “threat to American democracy.” He added that a “system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.”

The Court’s “naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power” bulldozed the right of the People to self-government, said Scalia, which represents the greatest threat to the American experiment in self-government.

In his scathing rebuke of the ruling, Scalia said that the majority had reached “an opinion lacking even a thin veneer of law.”

He noted that at the time the Constitution’s 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, “every State limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so,” which makes it extraordinarily suspicious that the 2015 court could suddenly find differently.

In what amounted to a brief history lesson, Scalia underscored the gravity of the Court’s action by comparing it to England’s treatment of the American colonies that ignited the movement for American independence. The justice said that in its hubris, the majority decision had carried out a more serious offense than the one that sparked the Boston Tea Party and later the American Revolution itself.

Indeed, wrote Scalia, “to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.”

When the Supreme Court no longer acts like a judicial body and instead usurps the power to enact legislation, as it did in its infamous June 26 ruling, it radically oversteps its mandate and is worthy of nothing but scorn.

As millions of Americans pause to bid farewell to this brilliant and outspoken legal scholar and judge, his warnings of the dangers of judicial activism must not fall on deaf ears. In an election year, the direction of the Supreme Court hangs in the balance.

Antonin Scalia, RIP.

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter   

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In the Cold for Hours, Thousands Pay Final Respects to Justice Antonin #Scalia @Breitbart #LAW

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Drew Angerer/Getty Images

by AUSTIN RUSE19 Feb 2016Washington D.C.319

A special episode of Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125, hosted by Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon and Editor in Chief Alex Marlow, will broadcast coverage of the funeral mass of Justice Antonin Scalia at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

Joining them on the broadcast will be Ken Klukowski live from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Dr. Thomas Williams live from Rome to discuss the Catholic rite of the burial of the dead, Father Frank Pavone on the legacy of Justice Scalia and the Requiem Mass, and Dr. Jennifer Pascual, music director of the Archdioces of New York, on the music and rituals of the Requiem Mass.

Breitbart News Saturday broadcasts on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 and will begin at 10 AM Eastern and will continue live coverage until the conclusion of the mass today.

***

Thousands of people took upwards of three hours and more on the chilly streets of Washington D.C. Friday to pay their final respects, even if only for a moment, to Justice Antonin Scalia, whose body lay in repose in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court.

Bridgett Wagner of the Heritage Foundation snapped a picture at the end of the line this evening at 7 pm, and that line stretched, according to Wagner, “half way down the 300 block of East Capital Street.” As people got off work this evening, the line continues to grow.

Guards at the Supreme Court told Wagner that the public viewing will likely be extended to 9 pm and even later if need be. Viewing started this morning at 10:30, so it is entirely possible that public viewing for Justice Scalia will have gone nearly nonstop for 12 hours. There was a break in the middle of the day for President Obama to pay his respects.

The morning began with the site of more than 90+ former law clerks standing in two rows from the portico of the Supreme Court almost all the way to the street. On the top step stood Justice Scalia’s large family, his wife and his nine children and their children. A black hearse delivered the Justice’s body, and pallbearers walked him up the steep steps and into the Supreme Court where his son, Father Paul Scalia, read prayers for his soul. Lined up nearby were the remaining Justices of the Supreme Court, many of whom he did intellectual battle with on the major issues of the day.

The funeral Mass takes place Saturday at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, said to be the largest Catholic Church in the United States. It was built to hold 10,000 worshipers. If Friday’s response to the public viewing of Justice Scalia is any measure, tomorrow the Shrine very well could be full.

Justice Scalia’s son will celebrate the Solemn Requiem Mass that may be in the Tridentine form, the Latin Mass that was common in the Church before the Second Vatican Council and that Justice Scalia attended weekly in Virginia or Washington D.C.

Photos below:

The casket of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia arrives at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on February 19, 2016, where it will lie in repose until his funeral at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on February 20. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

Pallbearers carry the flag-draped casket containing the body of Justice Antonin Scalia into the Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

The casket of Justice Scalia arrives at the Supreme Court. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

The body of Justice Scalia arrives at the Supreme Court. Thousands of mourners will pay their respects Friday for Justice Scalia as his casket rests in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court, where he spent nearly three decades as one of its most influential members. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Father Paul Scalia leads a prayer during a private ceremony for his father Justice Antonin Scalia in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court in Washington, Friday, Feb. 19, 2016, where late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia lies in repose. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)

Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan, left, Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr., Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Anthony M. Kennedy react during prayers at a private ceremony in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court where late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia lies in repose on February 19, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin/Getty Images)

Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr., left, and from second from left, Ginny Thomas, next to her husband, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, attend a private ceremony in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court in Washington, Friday, Feb. 19, 2016, where late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia lies in repose. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)

U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama pay their respects to Justice Scalia, in front of his casket, in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court on February 19, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Aude Guerrucci/Getty Images)

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama look at a portrait of Justice Scalia after paying their respects in front of his casket in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court. (Photo by Aude Guerrucci/Getty Images)

Thousands of mourners stand in line waiting to pay their respects on Friday for Justice Scalia as his casket rests in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Fans of Justice Scalia created a small memorial at the bottom of the Supreme Court steps, leaving two jars of applesauce, a package of paper bags and a pile of fortune cookies, a nod to his biting dissents last year in the court’s gay marriage case and its ruling rejecting a challenge to President Barack Obama’s health care law. (AP Photo/Jessica Gresko)

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Thousands Pay Respects to Antonin #SCALIA @Breitbart

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AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool

by BREITBART NEWS19 Feb 201685

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bidding farewell to their longtime colleague, the eight remaining Supreme Court justices joined family members, former law clerks and members of the public Friday in paying their respects to Antonin Scalia in a tradition-laden, solemn day at the marble courthouse atop Capitol Hill.

The Rev. Paul Scalia, the justice’s son and a Catholic priest, said traditional prayers at a private ceremony before thousands of people filed through the court’s Great Hall, where Scalia’s casket lay on a funeral bier first used after President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. “You have called your servant Antonin out of this world. Release him from the bonds of sin and welcome him into your presence,” the sixth of the justice’s nine children said.

Outside the court, meanwhile, a makeshift memorial was set up featuring jars of applesauce, a pile of fortune cookies and paper bags, items that figured in the outspoken conservative Scalia’s sharp dissents in recent cases.

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama planned to pay respects later Friday, while Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden were to attend Saturday’s funeral Mass.

On Friday, 98 former law clerks to Scalia lined the Supreme Court’s steps as a police honor guard carried the casket into the building beneath the iconic words “Equal Justice Under Law” just after 9:30 a.m. on a cool, overcast morning.

The justices stood near the casket in the same order they will sit on a reconfigured bench following Scalia’s death last week in Texas. Chief Justice John Roberts was between Justices Anthony Kennedy, the longest-serving member of the current court, and Clarence Thomas.

A 2007 portrait of Scalia by artist Nelson Shanks was displayed nearby. In it, the justice is shown surrounded by images representing important moments and influences in his life, including a framed wedding photograph of his wife, Maureen. The extended Scalia family gathered around the widow inside the court.

Scalia’s clerks also took 30-minute turns standing near the casket in groups of four, and planned to do so through the night until his body is taken from the court for his funeral on Saturday.

The court building was to be open for 9 ½ hours to allow visitors to file through. At one point, the line of people waiting to pay respects stretched more than a block and the wait to get in was 90 minutes.

Rhaleta Bernard from the New York City borough of Queens, where Scalia grew up, had been visiting Washington with her husband, Kelvin. They changed their bus tickets in order to pay their respects.

Bernard said Scalia “believes in interpreting the law, not making the law.”

“I want another Scalia,” said Bernard, a reading specialist. “I don’t think there’s another one, though.”

Visitors passed near the collection of flowers and goods people left to remember Scalia and some of his sharply worded comments. Scalia had called Roberts’ opinion for the court in last year’s health care case “pure applesauce.” He compared Kennedy’s majority opinion declaring the right of same-sex couples to marry to the “mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie” and said he would hide his head in a paper bag if he ever joined such an opinion.

The Mass, open to family and friends, will take place Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. Burial plans have not been released.

Scalia’s sudden death complicated an already tumultuous election year. His death gives Obama a chance to replace the conservative stalwart with a more liberal successor who could tilt the ideological balance of the court for decades to come.

Senate Majority Leader 

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

44%

 and other GOP leaders have said a replacement should not be named until the next president takes office. Obama has pledged to pick a replacement “in due time” and challenged Republicans to hold a vote on his nominee.

Scalia was found dead on Saturday in his room at a remote Texas hunting resort. The 79-year-old jurist was appointed to the court in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan.

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