During Supreme Court Hearings on the Voting Rights Act, Justice Scalia Signals Alliance with Neo-Confederate Movement

Scalia at the inauguration wearing his wife’s hat
During a hearing on the Voting Rights Act at the Supreme Court yesterday, Justice Antonin Scalia, who was last seen in public at Pres. Obama’s inauguration wearing one of his wife’s hats, unmasked himself as a reliable ally to the neo-Confederate movement sweeping the nation.

When confronted with the fact that the Senate had reauthorized the Act unanimously in 2006, at a time when Republicans controlled the White House and the Congress, Scalia opined that members of Congress — presumably including neo-Confederates in the Senate — voted for the reauthorization because they were intimidated by political correctness. Therefore, Scalia suggested, it was proper and fitting for right wingers on the Court to over-rule them:

“I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement,” Scalia said. “Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes … This is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress. There are certain districts in the House that are black districts by law just about now.”

The conservative justices seemed to have the votes to strike the provision down.

There were audible gasps in the court when Scalia made this clearly racist statement from the bench. It is breathtaking that Scalia would suggest that voting is an entitlement, not a right, and that a unanimous vote in the Senate — which happen about as frequently as men wear women’s hat at official functions — is a dangerous thing that requires Supreme Court action.

Reacting to Scalia’s ugly comment, Michael Moore spoke for millions when he tweeted, “Memo to Tarantino prop dept: Please send one of those poorly sewn hoods from Django to Justice Scalia. Make sure it matches his robes.”

Just make sure the hood fits over Scalia’s wife’s hat.

Pro-Equality Protesters in Santa Monica Roust the Westboro Haters: ‘Go Back to Kansas’

Gay Star News:

When members of the Westboro Baptist Church showed up at Santa Monica High School today to conduct an anti-gay protest, they were in for a huge surprise.

That surprise was a huge crowd that was on hand to counter-protest the group known to protest at military funerals carrying signs that say such things as ‘God Hates Fags.’

…The church members stayed only a brief time as they found themselves faced with scores of students who were well-prepared for their arrival.

Students and others were holding rainbow flags large and small and waving signs with such messages as ‘God Cares for All Creation,’ ‘Ain’t Nobody Got Time for Hate’ and ‘God Hates People Who Say They Know Who God Hates.’

The video … shows the spirited crowd of students and a dispirited small group from Westboro walking away from the scene as someone in the crowd yells: ‘Go back to Kansas!’

Weak, Whiny Republicans Have Plenty to Whine About

Big, bad President Obama, creepy Harry Reid, that B-word Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the gang of toughs called the Democratic Party are picking on the poor defenseless GOP. As a campaigning theme, it seems insane. The GOP has long prospered by portraying Democrats as the wimps, dangerously weak and unfit for command. Does the name Michael Dukakis ring a bell? And in really heady moments, like 1984, when Reagan earned his second term, or 1994 and 2010, when sweeping victories in off-year elections seemed to foretell an imminent landslide, Republican fantasies of one-party rule involved the triumph of their party, not humiliation by the other side. … In fact, moaning about how weak you are compared with the opposition seems so obviously a political mistake that we can only reach one conclusion: This must be sincere.

— Michael Kinsley, in the New Republic, chronicles how Republicans, and their affiliated media, are complaining “loudly about feeling bullied by their opponents.”

Poll: 90% of Americans Mistakenly Believe the Deficit Is Rising Or Flat – Just 6% Know It Is Actually Shrinking

A Bloomberg poll released last week found that 90 percent of Americans hold the mistaken view that the U.S. deficit is rising or staying the same, when in fact it has been shrinking at a rapid pace since Pres. Obama took office.

Misunderstood Deficit: [The] size and trajectory of the U.S. deficit is poorly understood by most Americans, with 62 percent saying it’s getting bigger, 28 percent saying it’s staying about the same this year, and just 6 percent saying it’s shrinking. The Congressional Budget Office reported Feb. 6 that the federal budget deficit is getting smaller, falling to $845 billion this year — the first time in five years that the gap between taxes and spending will be less than $1 trillion.

Americans also have a skewed picture of what drives federal spending.

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