Our judicial branch is very, very broken:
Recently Slate ran a commentary on Connick v. Thompson, declaring, “Clarence Thomas writes one of the meanest Supreme Court decisions ever.” They detail at length the penchant of the Scalia-Thomas dyad for being cruel simply because they can be – or more accurately, because they feel justified that their “originalist” interpretation makes them unbiased arbiters of the law. Slate notes that Thomas and Scalia bend over backwards to excuse the actions of the state even though lower courts and the prosecutors themselves have admitted that egregious errors were made. While it is understandable to focus on the human costs of this decision, Slate overlooks a much more important fact: they’re wrong. In writing this decision they completely ignored 30 years of precedent in favor of “legislating from the bench” and “judicial activism” and all the other buzzwords that, curiously enough, I did not hear any conservative Champions of the Individual Against Encroaching Powers of the State apply to the justices’ actions in this case.
First, some background.
It’s complicated, I won’t try to break it out. But please, go read the whole thing.
I too often forget to read Dahlia Lithwick. She’s great. But yeah. What do you do with callous individuals who actually hold power like Scalia and Thomas. Geez. What sorry excuses for human beings.
Not that complicated really. Scalia and Thomas are only two of the fascists on the court. To conservatives, precedent means shit, even if it’s their own decisions. To Rethug ideologues the law is what they want it to be today. Scalia’s a crook and Thomas is psychotic.