http://reachmorenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Special-Report-thumb-1-1024x573.jpg
Why America Will Grieve The Loss of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, written and narrated by Ray Mossholder
From the news desk of Reach More Now in Fort Worth, Texas, this is Ray Mossholder with a special report: Why America Will Grieve At The Loss of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia.
A huge void much deeper than the Grand Canyon exists in Washington DC tonight. United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is no longer a part of the nine Supreme Court justices that decide so much of America’s fate. Most Americans know very little about Judge Scalia, so if you’re one of those who doesn’t, let me help you fill in the blanks.
To say that Scalia was a family man is an understatement. Meeting his wife, Maureen, fifty-six years ago on a blind date, the couple married the same year they met and were always together until Saturday morning.
He and Maureen were staying at a luxury resort located on the 30,000 acre Cibilo Creek Ranch in West Texas. They had arrived there Friday and attended a private party with about forty people. Those that the party said that he was his merry natural self. He did leave the party and retired earlier than the others. When he didn’t appear for breakfast, a ranch employee went to his room and discovered his dead body. A priest was immediately called to administer last rites.
The US Marshall Service, the Presidio County Sheriff and the FBI were all involved in the investigation to determine just what happened. They concluded that Justice Scalia died of natural causes. Texas Governor Greg Abbott released a statement Saturday afternoon, calling Scalia a man of God, a patriot, and an unwavering defender of the written Constitution.”
The very first question asked at the GOP debate on Saturday night after a minute of silence to honor Justice Scalia, was how each candidate viewed the situation now with the vacancy at the Supreme Court. Five of the six candidates urged the Republicans in Congress to stop any attempt by President Obama to get his third nominee on the court. Just one of the candidates said Barack Obama has “every right” to nominate a Justice during his final year in office. That candidate was Jeb Bush. President Obama, agreeing with Jeb Bush, said he does plan to fulfill his constitutional responsibility and nominate an outstanding replacement.
During the fifty-six years of the Scalia’s marriage they produced an ever-increasing family that ended up with nine children – five sons and four daughters. Among them when they grew up was a poet, a priest, an Army major, and two lawyers.
Justice Scalia told 60 Minutes in 2008, “We didn’t set out to have nine children. We’re just old-fashioned Catholics, you know? We kept playing what used to be known as ‘Vatican roulette"”. Then Maureen chimed in saying “Well, as someone said, we’re both overachievers, I guess”. The Scalia’s also have thirty-five grandchildren.
Maureen has been a pro-life counselor and an anti-abortion advocate. She has also been a board member of the Nurturing Network, a crisis pregnancy organization. She’s also been a “sidewalk counselor” standing outside abortion clinics while trying to help pregnant women going inside to change their minds. What his wife was doing got Antonin very much in trouble with pro-choicers who told him he should recuse himself from all abortion related cases. He paid no attention at all to their requests.
So what kind of a Supreme Court Justice was Antonin Scalia? He was pro-conservative, pro-constitutional, and pro-Christian. For nearly 30 years, his decisions on the Court forever reflected those facts. He was absolutely the opposite of the person President Obama will try to appoint to the Supreme Court now. Because of his death at this precise moment it is very possible we will see a dramatic and long-lasting new ideology of liberalism forcefully replacing his conservative ideology on the highest Court in America. But Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday that he will lead the fight with the Republican majority in Congress to block any nominee throughout the year that Obama nominates. This undoubtedly will mean war during 2016 on Capitol Hill.
I won’t bore you or try to go into great lengths on what the words “originalist” or “textualist” mean. But his peers will remember Antonin Scalia as “the intellectual anchor for his originalist and textualist positions in the Court’s conservative wing.” Suffice it to say that an originalist believes that the United States Constitution should be interpreted solely based on the intent of its authors, and that that should be determined by examining the evidence of the author’s understanding of the meaning of his words in there historical context. For just one example, the Founding Fathers strongly endorsed the Second Amendment. Scalia traced the word “militia” and understood at the time of its ratification by the Founding Fathers that the word “militia” meant “the body of all citizens” and that it wasn’t at all intended to be in an exclusively military context.
The word “textualist” means a person who believes the Scriptures mean what they say and that they are never to be manipulated. Justice Scalia knew that God had placed him on the Court, and he believed the Bible and the Constitution were together like a totally trustworthy compass that always points the right way. How did others respond to Scalia’s beliefs? Barney Frank called Scalia “a homophobe”. Maureen Dowd described the Justice as “Archie Bunker in a high backed chair”!
Antonin Gregory Scalia was born on March 11, 1936, in Trenton, New Jersey. He grew up loving spaghetti. His father was an Italian immigrant and his mother’s parents were Italian immigrants too. His father later became a professor of Romance languages at Brooklyn College and his mother was an elementary school teacher. With two teachers as his parents, Scalia loved to learn. He graduated valedictorian of his class and in his own words said “I buried myself in my school work and was never cool.” William Stern was a classmate of his who later became a New York official. He said that Scalia was “an archconservative. He was brilliant, way above everybody else.”
Antonin attended Georgetown University and graduated from there valedictorian and summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. He spent his junior year of college at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and then obtained a law degree from Harvard Law school, graduating from there magna cum laude. One reason Maureen said she quickly married Antonin was because he was a “Sheldon Fellow”, which meant he was being sent by Harvard, all-expenses-paid, to travel through Europe during 1960 and 1961 with no assignments except to discover what all of Europe was doing at that time.
With all his knowledge of law, it may seem ironic to you that it was Richard Nixon who recognized Scalia’s brilliance as a University of Virginia law school professor. In 1971, President Nixon appointed him as General Counsel for the Office of Telecommunications where he formulated policy for the growth of cable television. Nixon then moved him into the chairmanship of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a select group that was organized to improve the functioning of the federal government. Finally, Nixon moved him yet again, nominating him as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. When President Nixon resigned because of the Watergate scandal, Scalia was asked by President Ford to continue his nomination and he was unanimously moved into that position.
When Jimmy Carter replaced Gerald Ford as president, Scalia left the White House and worked for several months with the American Enterprise Institute. He then went back to teaching law, this time at the University of Chicago. But a man named Ronald Reagan had his eye on him. As soon as President Reagan took office in 1981, he appointed Antonin Scalia a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Columbia Circuit. Reagan, like Nixon and Ford before him, was extremely impressed with the decisions made by this outstanding judge. Another thing that pleased Reagan was that Antonin Scalia would be the first Italian-American on the United States Supreme Court.
During his next almost 30 years on the bench, Scalia wrote more concurring opinions that agreed with the majority, and only two justices wrote more dissents than he did. His nickname by other Court Justices was “Nino”. When the Court is in session the justices all of the justices meet together after the cases are briefed and argued, and then they vote on the result. Scalia often attempted to influence his colleagues by sending them what they called “Ninograms” – a short note attempting to persuade them to include his views in their opinions.
Dahlia Lithwick of Slate described Scalia’s technique: “Scalia doesn’t come into oral argument all secretive and syphinxlike, feigning indecision on the nuances of the case before him. He comes in like a medieval knight, girded for battle. He knows what the law is. He knows what the opinion should say. And he uses the hour allocated for argument to bludgeon his brethren into an agreement.”
Anytime the majority on the bench voted against what he thought was right on any subject before the Court, he berated the contrary judges and wrote his minority opinions with blistering words. So blistering, in fact, that after one case he wrote a thirty page draft dissent that shocked Justice Harry Blackmun by its emotional content. Blackmun said that Scalia’s dissent “could be cut down to ten pages if Scalia omitted the screaming”.
Always important to Justice Scalia was the separation of powers and states rights over federal rights. He strongly argued that there is no constitutional right to abortion and repeatedly asked his colleagues to strike down Roe versus Wade. He was forever unable to find four other judges to join him in doing that.
He did believe the President of the United States rightfully has presidential power and he was not opposed to executive action. But he was opposed to affirmative action and despised policies that divide groups into various sets of minorities. About this Scalia wrote “to pursue the concept of racial entitlement – even for the most admirable and benign of purposes – is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of the government, we are just one race here. It is American.”
Now that his voice will never be able to speak out for liberty, America is at yet another crossroad. Every Supreme Court nominee should be a person with outstanding character, deep concern for our country, and who will never attempt to rewrite the Constitution to fit their own desires. Yet this is the most surprising thing of all. There are definite requirements to be president of the United States or a member of Congress. But there is absolutely no constitutional requirement for a Supreme Court justice. They don’t even have to have ever dealt with law before. Literally anyone could legally be appointed to the highest law of the land!
If the people of America did what it should, citizens would be in touch with their president, representatives and their senators at least weekly. To get your opinion to the president either call his comment line at 202–456-1111 or send him an email at whitehous.gov. And to contact your individual Congresspeople dial 202–224-3121. The American who sits back and does nothing about what they know is corruption is a sheep being led to the slaughter.
If you haven’t done so so far, get the phone numbers of your representatives and senators, and of the presidential opinion line. Then mark one day each week on your calendar to call them and let them know what you believe they should do about issue after issue. Then watch to see that they carry through on what you’ve said. If they continue to ignore your desires, you will know who to vote out of office when their name appears on the ballot in the future. And as for getting in touch with the United States Supreme Court – here is the number of their Public Information Office there: 202-479-3000.
If Americans roll over and play dead this year, we will be.
Why America Will Grieve The Loss of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
Why America Will Grieve The Loss of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
No comments:
Post a Comment