Sunday, February 28, 2016

Obama Evades Scalia Funeral

When Jesus said to love your enemy, did that include a requirement to attend your enemy's funeral?

No--and thus President Obama did not attend the funeral of Antonin Scalia.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/antonin-scalia-looking-backward

The President and Michelle Obama did pay their respects at the casket on display in the Supreme Court building, but they did not attend the funeral.

Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker's Talk of the Town outlines some wrong and backward-looking statements by Scalia:

  • Homosexual "life style" is "immoral and destructive."
  • Individuals have the right to own handguns... not just "well-regulated" state militias.
  • He helped gut the Voting Rights Act.
  • He helped to overturn McCain-Feingold and other campaign finance rules.
  • He helped to block climate-change regulations.
  • Not listed, but just one vote kept Al Gore from becoming president in the 2000 election year decided by the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore. Scalia was among those denying a recount.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore

Toobin writes:
"He and his allies succeeded in transforming American politics into a cash bazaar, with seats all but put up for bidding."

He concludes:
 "The public wants diversity, not intolerance; more marriages and fewer executions; less money in politics, not more. Justice Scalia's views... now seem like so many boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Would you want to sit through a service eulogizing a man who blocked justice in these ways?

Thank you, President Obama. for not attending.







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