It's Business Time

Sammy,

I agree that Scalia is clearly writing to the Sean Hannity crowd when he writes that the ruling "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed" -- especially when DC v. Heller almost certainly will cause more Americans to be killed, and Scalia is completely and utterly untroubled by it.

Here's a more important question that I've had rattling around in my brain: why are we still pretending that this system is anything other than rigged? Justice Scalia thinks that habeas corpus is not only dispensable but actively malign? Conservative legal types -- totally silent during the Clinton presidency -- are now convinced that the President has "near dictatorial" powers? There are a thousand other examples (torture, wiretapping, etc.) of Republican lawyers making patently absurd legal arguments to justify their party's horrifying behavior.

Why do we pretend that these people are supposed to be serious legal scholars, and why do we act shocked when they act otherwise? I'm coming around to the Seidman school of thought, that the system we've built -- the rule of law, and all that entails -- is only ever as good as those who are in power to implement it. This is not a new opinion. And I'm not alone in thinking this.

One of the major political parties in this country exploits fear of gays, blacks, and non-Christians to advance its agenda of tax cuts and gutting of the regulatory system. It has a very well-funded PR arm, which employs (among other people) a number of lawyers. Let's stop pretending that any kind of professional/institutional/patriotic obligation will keep these lawyers from doing the things that they are paid to do.

- A