Recused

Or

Dissenting In Pine Bin

(Deserved decoration for Don)

Or

Argle Bargled

(Meritorious mention for Mike B)

Antonin Scalia’s lifelong quest to keep the United States bound to the whims of slave-owning men in powdered wigs and breeches who sought to cure disease with bleeding and conflicts with guns that could fire 3 shots a minute (including ample reloading time in between), has ended with his death from “natural causes” while “alone” at a West Texas resort at the age of 79. Scalia was lauded for his entertainingly written opinions, if you consider unfettered access to guns and extremely fettered access to your own body entertaining. After DOMA was overturned, he suggested that the Supreme Court had no more right to determine gays were a minority deserving protection than it would for pederasts. He called the Voting Rights Act the "perpetuation of racial entitlement.” He was a darling among conservatives, who claim to abhor activist judges, yet celebrated his attempts to overturn Miranda v. Arizona and Roe v. Wade. Scalia’s originalist leanings also led him to argue against Gideon v. Wainwright, which established the government’s responsibility to provide indigent defendants with lawyers, and Brown v. Board of Education, as there was no intent in the 14th Amendment to desegregate schools. Ironically for this man of Constitutional purity, the battle over who will name his successor has already started in purely political terms, as Republicans have apparently found a hidden clause in Article 2 "[the president] shall nominate ... Judges of the supreme Court…” unless in an election year with an opposition Congress, ignoring the 17 judges previously nominated in election years, most recently President Reagan’s appointment of Anthony Kennedy.