By Brad Friedman on 2/13/2016, 10:00pm PT  

I suspect many of you have thoughts on the jaw-dropping news of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia today. Feel free to share those thoughts, as you see appropriate, in Comments below. For my part, for now, just a few very quick observations...

I do not relish the death of anyone, even Scalia, no matter how much very real and irreparable harm he has helped bring to this nation and its citizens over the past several decades --- nor how much positive may finally come from a rebalancing and restoration of the U.S. Supreme Court in his absence.

At the same time, I've been cringing throughout much of the day while on the road and listening to CNN anchors describe Scalia variously as "brilliant" and "conservative" and a "Constitutional originalist", etc.

He may have been "brilliant", but his brilliance may be best reflected in his ability to have hoaxed much of the country (and certainly its corporate mainstream media) into believing that he was a "conservative" and "originalist" who believed in a literal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. That was a lie. He was an unapologetic partisan Rightwing ideologue and activist jurist.

His record of hypocrisy, in both words and actions, is plain and should speak for itself. Unfortunately, we have a mainstream media which does not tend to tell the truth about such things. So, while I suspect there will be much more to say about him in the future here --- and about the ridiculous mess his death is already placing on full public display this year --- for now, allow me to point to a few articles of ours from over the years that help clarify who Scalia actually was as a Supreme Court Justice.

The first one below from 2013, in particular, rather perfectly illustrates the point I noted above concerning Scalia's willingness to pretend to be one thing, while, in truth, being something completely different. This is how I will remember him...

Beyond that, along with many other pieces here over the years, there are these of note...

Hopefully those links offer a modicum of balance tonight to some of the nonsense and hagiography I've been hearing throughout the day today. More on all of it on this week's BradCast, no doubt, but allow me to finish with just two more quick observations:

Scalia was appointed by Ronald Reagan thirty years ago, in 1986. Taken together with perhaps the greatest con ever perpetrated on this country (Reagan's "government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem"), which still infects the American body politic today like a cancer, Scalia's death reminded me, once again, that anybody who wishes to argue "voting doesn't matter" is a lazy, fucking idiot.

Finally, I'll just note, after watching the extraordinary public feces tossing that became tonight's GOP Debate from South Carolina on CBS, that spectacle may well prove to have been the very best real tribute to Scalia's legacy that the Republican Party will ever be able to muster.

RIP.

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