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From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
July
8, 2003
Linda
S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice
Saul Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
July
7, 2003
William
Blum
The Anti-Empire Report
Harvey
Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head
Ramzy
Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons
Simon
Jones
What Progressives Should Think About
Iran
Lesley
McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh
Uri
Avnery
The Draw
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July
4 / 6, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
July
3, 2003
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Meaning of Gettysburg
Thomas
W. Croft
There Was a Reason They Called It the Casino Economy
David
Lindorff
Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong
and the US
John
Chuckman
Lessons from the American Revolution
Jackson
Thoreau
New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former
Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis
to Attack US Troops
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July 2, 2003
Diane
Christian
Good Killing and Bad Killing
Richard
Falk
After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future?
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress
Justin
Podur
Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and
Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia
and the Sodomy Cops
Susan
Block
A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong
to Ourselves
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: No, No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in Search of a Name
Gary
Leupp
Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
June
30, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
The Do-Nothings: an Exposé
of Progressive Politics in America
Col. Dan
Smith
The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire
Tim
Wise
Race and Destruction in Black and White
Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Kentucky Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
Website
of the Day
Bush El Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Vest
Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
Website
of the Day
John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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for More Stories.
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July
8, 2003
The Bully on the Bench
The
Pathological Dissents of Antonin Scalia
By ELAINE CASSEL
In an article in the July 6, 2003 Washington Post,
Lincoln Caplan, editor of Legal Affairs Magazine, wrote an apology
for Antonin Scalia's dissents from the court's majority opinions.
As my readers know, I take issue with virtually all of Scalia's
positions, but I respect his right to differ with the majority
of the Court. What I do not respect is Scalia's mean-spirited
insults of his colleagues and litigants, his dire predictions
that the world will implode as a result of whatever majority
decision he disagrees with, and his obvious hatred of civil liberties.
While Caplan does mention Scalia's "derisive"
tone, he missed the mark by comparing Scalia's dissents to the
great dissents of the past.
David Broder, the Washington Post columnist
that gets my vote for integrity, reason, and fairness, criticized
Scalia in an article published June 29, 2003. Broder decries
Scalia's harsh and angry tone in the Lawrence v. Texas and University
of Michigan cases, recounting Scalia's comment in oral argument
in the Michigan cases that if Michigan wanted diversity in the
law school it should "lower its standards" so "anyone"
could get in. Broder's was the only media comment that I heard
about this unforgivable insult directed at the law school and
its would-be minority applicants.
Broder compares Scalia's scaremongering
to the racist Jesse Helms, a response to Scalia's comment in
the Michigan dissent that the majority opinion leads the way
to "racial discrimination" in public and private employment,
adding sarcastically that he was sure that "the nonminority
individuals who are deprived of a legal education, a civil service
job or any job at all by reason of their skin color will surely
understand." Says Broder, "Scalia's scare-tactic scenario
constitutes almost as naked an appeal to racial antagonism. It's
not what you expect to hear from a justice of the Supreme Court."
Recalling that Bush said that Scalia
is his model for Supreme Court nominees, Broder calls for Bush
to get a new model. Scalia has let it be known that he wants
to be Chief Justice when Rehnquist retires. Caplan admits that
Scalia's harshness may render him less likely to rise to Chief
Justice status; Broder goes even further and says he is unfit
for the job. As an attorney, I find Scalia's tone and language
to be inappropriate for an attorney or judge. He resorts to personal
attack, hyperbole, and insults directed at his colleagues and
the litigants.
Caplan describes Scalia as an "intellectual
leader" on the court. It is more accurate, in my opinion,
to see him as intellectually dishonest, something I wrote about
in discussing his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas. He made it sound
as if there are still laws against masturbation, and I will be
darned if I know a state where that is true. He predicted that
the decision would lead to sanctioning of incest and pedophilia,
and that is downright disturbing.
Caplan refers to Scalia's dissents as
part of the "grand tradition" of dissents penned in
Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, and Olmstead
v. United States. But there is a flaw in that analogy: those
dissents called for adherence to the 14th and 4th amendments.
They were a call to the future, not a rant to return to the past.
Scalia's dissents are filled with hateful
invective. But then, so is much of what is written by the extreme
right-wing ideologues like Ann Coulter. Indeed, Scalia's opinions
share more with Coulter and the late Barbara Olson's mindless
attacks and fact-devoid opinions than legitimate dissent. Why
engage in reasoned debate when dishonest diatribe will sell more
books, garner more readers, and, in Scalia's case, endear him
to Bush, Santorum, Ashcroft, and Frist?
Scalia insists that the societal mores
that lead to decisions like Lawrence (and also, Bowers, for the
law is, as Lawrence Friedman says, a social history) are invalid
unless they are his values. That is what makes him a frightening
justice. His public speeches (when he lets the press in, as he
is loathe to do) and his writings in Catholic publications indicate
that none but himself and the likes of him are fit to sit in
judgment of the rest of the country. That his ideology should
rule the country is a horrifyingly narcissistic and unacceptable
in a democracy.
The depth of Scalia's anger at the courts
decision in Lawrence is seen in his attack on law professors,
whom he accuses of "buying into" the homosexual-rights
agenda. As reported by Law.com, Scalia expresses outrage that
the American Association of Law Schools denies membership to
law schools who refuse to take an anti-anti-gay discriminatory
stance, a position Scalia finds repulsive. Scalia dropped his
membership in the American Bar Association back in the 1980s
when it took a position against gay discrimination.
Caplan seems to think that Scalia's invective
is born of intellectual differences with how his "brethren"
interpret the law. Broder suggests that Scalia comes close to
inviting racism and homophobia as national policies.
Scalia was clearly infuriated by the
majority opinions in the Michigan and sodomy cases. His angry
outbursts indicate a deep-seated pathology that makes him unfit
to ever be Chief Justice. It is a pity that he is on the bench
at all.
Elaine Cassel
practices law in Virginia and the District of Columbia and teaches
law and psychology. She is writing a book on civil liberties
post 9/11, and keeps an eye on Bush and Ashcroft's trampling
on the Bill of Rights at her Civil
Liberties Watch. She would love to write a book about Scalia's
jurisprudence, but finds it too depressing. She can be reached
at: ecassel1@cox.net
Weekend
Edition Features
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
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