U.S. Justice Scalia

Conservative Icon, Dead at 79
WASHINGTON | By Joan Biskupic and Lawrence Hurley - Feb 13, 2016


Conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died, setting up a major political showdown between President Barack Obama and the Republican-controlled Senate over who will replace him just months before a presidential election.

"On behalf of the court and retired justices, I am saddened to report that our colleague Justice Antonin Scalia has passed away," Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement on Saturday, calling Scalia, 79, an "extraordinary individual and jurist."

Scalia's death was first reported by the San Antonio News-Express, who said he had apparently died of natural causes while visiting a luxury resort in West Texas.


Conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died, setting up a major political showdown between President Barack Obama and the Republican-controlled Senate over who will replace him just months before a presidential election.

"On behalf of the court and retired justices, I am saddened to report that our colleague Justice Antonin Scalia has passed away," Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement on Saturday, calling Scalia, 79, an "extraordinary individual and jurist."

Scalia's death was first reported by the San Antonio News-Express, who said he had apparently died of natural causes while visiting a luxury resort in West Texas.

Obama, who is traveling in California, extended his condolences, and the White House said he would have more to say about Scalia's death later on Saturday. The Supreme Court lowered its U.S. flag in honor of the dead jurist.

CNN, citing sources, said Obama intended to nominate Scalia's successor, a move opposed by a number of leading Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley.

The looming political battle is almost certain to come up when six of the Republican presidential candidates participate in a televised debate Saturday evening in South Carolina, which holds its Republican nominating contest on Feb. 20.

"Justice Scalia was an American hero. We owe it to him, and the nation, for the Senate to ensure that the next president names his replacement," Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican White House hopeful, said on Twitter.

Signaling that Obama would face a stiff battle to win confirmation of a nominee before he leaves the White House next January, McConnell said in a statement that the vacancy on the high court "should not be filled until we have a new president."

Grassley, who heads the committee that will decide whether to send a nominee to the full Senate for a vote, said it was standard practice over the past 80 years to not confirm nominees during a presidential election year.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...ource=Facebook

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the intellectual cornerstone of the court’s modern conservative wing, whose elegant and acidic opinions inspired a movement of legal thinkers and ignited liberal critics, died Feb. 13 on a ranch near Marfa, Tex. He was 79.

The cause of death was not immediately known.

In a statement Saturday, Chief Justice John G. Roberts said: “On behalf of the Court and retired Justices, I am saddened to report that our colleague Justice Antonin Scalia has passed away. He was an extraordinary individual and jurist, admired and treasured by his colleagues. His passing is a great loss to the Court and the country he so loyally served. We extend our deepest condolences to his wife Maureen and his family.”

Justice Scalia, the first Italian American to serve on the court, was nominated by President Ronald Reagan. He took his seat Sept. 26, 1986, and quickly became the kind of champion to the conservative legal world that his benefactor was in the political realm.

Justice Scalia was an outspoken opponent of abortion, affirmative action and what he termed the “so-called homosexual agenda,” and his intellectual rigor, flamboyant style and eagerness to debate his detractors energized conservative law students, professors and intellectuals who felt outnumbered by liberals in their chosen professions.

“He has by the force and clarity of his opinions become a defining figure in American constitutional law,” Northwestern University law professor Steven Calabresi said at a Federalist Society dinner honoring Justice Scalia at the 20-year mark of his service on the Supreme Court.

Justice Scalia was the most prominent advocate of a manner of constitutional interpretation called “originalism,” the idea that judges should look to the meaning of the words of the Constitution at the time they were written.

He mocked the notion of a “living” Constitution, one that evolved with changing times, as simply an excuse for judges to impose their ideological views.

Critics countered that the same could be said for originalism — and that the legal conclusions Justice Scalia said were dictated by that approach meshed neatly with the justice’s views on the death penalty, gay rights and abortion.

It is hard to overstate Justice Scalia’s effect on the modern court. Upon his arrival, staid oral arguments before the justices became jousting matches, with Justice Scalia aggressively questioning counsel with whom he disagreed, challenging his colleagues and often dominating the sessions.

He asked so many questions in his first sitting as a justice that Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. whispered to Justice Thurgood Marshall: “Do you think he knows the rest of us are here?”

Justice Scalia was just as ready for combat outside the court. He relished debating his critics at law schools and in public appearances, although he sometimes displayed a thin skin.

He tired of questions about his prominent role in the court’s 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore, which ended a recount of the presidential vote in Florida and effectively decided the presidency for Republican George W. Bush. His response to those who raised questions years later: “Get over it.”

Despite his influence on the legal world, Justice Scalia’s views were too far to the right for him to play the pivotal roles on the court that his fellow Reagan nominees — Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy — eventually assumed.

Justice Scalia was far better known for fiery dissents than for landmark majority opinions. One exception was the court’s groundbreaking 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller.

An avid hunter and a member of his high school rifle team, Justice Scalia wrote the court’s 5-to-4 ruling that held for the first time that the Second Amendment afforded a right to gun ownership unrelated to military service.

“His views on textualism and originalism, his views on the role of judges in our society, on the practice of judging, have really transformed the terms of legal debate in this country,” Elena Kagan said about Justice Scalia when she was dean of Harvard Law School, alma mater to both. “He is the justice who has had the most important impact over the years on how we think and talk about law.”

After Kagan was nominated to the court by President Obama, she and Justice Scalia became friends and hunting buddies — despite their distinct ideological differences and the fact that Kagan had never fired a gun. They went to Wyoming together in 2012 in the hope of Kagan bagging a big-game trophy like the elk, nicknamed Leroy, whose mounted head dominated Justice Scalia’s Supreme Court chambers.

But she shot only a white-tailed deer, which Justice Scalia later laughingly said that “she could have done in my driveway” in suburban Virginia.

‘You’re not everybody else’
Antonin Gregory Scalia — “Nino” to family, friends and colleagues — was born in Trenton, N.J., on March 11, 1936, and grew up in the New York City borough of Queens. His father, Salvatore, came through Ellis Island at 17; he learned English and became a professor of Romance languages at Brooklyn College.

Justice Scalia’s mother, the former Catherine Panaro, was a second-generation Italian American and an elementary school teacher. Not only was Nino their only child, he was the only child of his generation on either side of the family.

The whole extended clan doted on him, biographer Joan Biskupic reported in her biography “American Original,” and expected achievement. “You’re not everybody else,” Catherine Scalia would say, according to Biskupic. “Your family has standards, and it doesn’t matter what the standards of [others] are.”

In 1953, he graduated first in his class at St. Francis Xavier, a military prep school in Manhattan, and won a naval ROTC scholarship but was turned down by his first choice of college, Princeton.

A devout Catholic, he attended his second choice, Georgetown University, where he was the valedictorian of the Class of 1957. In his graduation speech, he exhorted his fellow students: “If we will not be leaders of a real, a true, a Catholic intellectual life, no one will.”

Justice Scalia then entered Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude in 1960. That same year, he married Maureen McCarthy, a Radcliffe student he had met on a blind date.

She, too, came from a small family, but they made up for it, with five sons, four daughters and dozens of grandchildren.

“We didn’t set out to have nine children,” Justice Scalia told Lesley Stahl on the CBS show “60 Minutes.” “We’re just old-fashioned Catholics, playing what used to be known as ‘Vatican Roulette.’ ”

He added that when their brother Paul decided to “take one for the team” and become a priest. his four other sons were relieved.

The Scalias moved around. After traveling across Europe for a year while Justice Scalia was a Harvard Sheldon Fellow, the newlyweds moved to Cleveland, where Justice Scalia joined the Jones Day firm in 1961.

On the cusp of becoming partner, he left private practice in 1967 to become a law professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

In 1971, he became general counsel to the new Office of Telecommunications Policy in the Nixon administration; the agency spurred development of the nascent cable industry. From 1972 to 1974, he was chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States, followed by three years as assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.

After Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, won election to the White House, Justice Scalia returned to academia as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School.

Then Reagan came into office in 1981 and the next year nominated Justice Scalia to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. His name quickly appeared on shortlists of potential Supreme Court nominees.

In 1981, Reagan made good on a campaign promise to appoint the court’s first woman with his choice of O’Connor, then an Arizona state judge and former legislator. His next chance to leave an imprint came five years later, when Chief Justice Warren E. Burger announced that he was stepping down.

The president decided to elevate Justice William H. Rehnquist to the chief’s job, and Justice Scalia and fellow D.C. Circuit Judge Robert H. Bork became the finalists for the opening. Bork was the more experienced jurist and a conservative icon, but the 50-year-old Scalia was almost a decade younger and brought the added political benefit of being Italian American.

Justice Scalia got the nomination. After a testy Senate battle over Rehnquist’s elevation, Justice Scalia sailed through his confirmation hearings and was approved 98 to 0.

Future vice president Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a Democratic senator from Delaware and a stalwart of the Judiciary Committee, later said that his vote for Justice Scalia was the one he most regretted — “because he was so effective.”

Textualism and originalism

Justice Scalia set out immediately to make his views known — and became exactly the justice conservatives had hoped for.

He had been an influential early supporter of the Federalist Society, a group that political scientist Steven Teles called “the most vigorous, durable and well-ordered organization to emerge from [the] rethinking of modern conservatism’s political strategy.”

Reliance on legislative history as a key element of interpreting statutes was once common. But Justice Scalia railed against the practice, saying that only the words of the statutes matter — a view known as textualism. He likened judges’ use of secondary sources such as committee reports or statements made by members of Congress during floor debates to “looking over the faces of the crowd at a large cocktail party and picking out your friends.”

Even though most justices continued to think legislative history was valuable in interpreting statutes, lawyers arguing before the court learned that they would be upbraided by Justice Scalia for mentioning it. He refused to join opinions that cited legislative history, even in a footnote.

Similarly, Justice Scalia redefined and popularized originalism. His approach to understanding the Constitution focused not on the framers’ intent but on the meaning of the words to ordinary citizens in 1787. He rejected the notion that the framers wanted the Constitution to be a “living” document designed to accommodate changing circumstances and social values.

“The starting point, in any case, is the text of the document and what it meant to the society that adopted it,” Scalia said at his confirmation hearing. He added that this approach guarded “against the passions of the moment that may cause individual liberties to be disregarded.”

Liberals, he said, should like such an approach, because it constrained conservatives such as him from turning their personal opinions into public policy. To illustrate, he often said that the Constitution doesn’t provide a right for a woman to have an abortion, but it also does not forbid states from making the procedure legal and accessible.

He cited his vote on flag-burning — he agreed with the court’s majority that the guarantee of free speech allows the practice — as one instance when his allegiance to the Constitution outweighed his personal views. “If it was up to me, if I were king,” he said, “I would take scruffy, bearded, sandal-wearing idiots who burn the flag and I would put them in jail.”

But he did not note many other examples of originalism dictating views that contradicted his personal beliefs.

Even when he wasn’t writing for the majority, his opinions provided an influential template for conservative lawyers and politicians. His writing style was certain and clever:

“Frequently an issue of this sort will come before the Court clad, so to speak, in sheep’s clothing,” Justice Scalia wrote in his lone dissent in Morrison v. Olson. “. . . But this wolf comes as a wolf.”

But he also could be acerbic and dismissive of his opponents.

“No justice in Supreme Court history has consistently written with the sarcasm of Justice Scalia,” Erwin Chemerinsky, now dean of the University of California at Irvine Law School, wrote in a widely noted law review article.

“No doubt, this makes his opinions among the most entertaining to read. . . . But I think that this sends exactly the wrong message to law students and attorneys about what type of discourse is appropriate in a formal legal setting and how it is acceptable to speak to one another.”

New Yorker writer Margaret Talbot thought that Justice Scalia’s writing made him a rock star, especially among young conservatives. Of all the justices, she wrote, “Scalia is most likely to offer the jurisprudential equivalent of smashing a guitar onstage.”

Justice Scalia’s blunt critiques may have cost him in finding common ground with some of his colleagues. Students of the court think that his sharp-tongued put-downs of O’Connor — he once said her reasoning in a case could “not be taken seriously” — affected their relationship.

He also couldd be a provocateur outside the courtroom. A reporter once asked him as he was leaving church if he caught flak for his Roman Catholic beliefs, and Justice Scalia responded by flicking his fingers under his chin, a Sicilian insult.

Unlike his colleagues, Justice Scalia eagerly discussed constitutional issues and his personal opinions in public. On several occasions, his out-of-court activities prompted critics to question his impartiality.

He once went duck hunting with Vice President Richard B. Cheney, who at the time was the subject of a lawsuit by the Sierra Club seeking the names of people who participated in the vice president’s energy task force. Scalia refused to recuse himself from the case, which the Supreme Court had agreed to hear.

In 2006, he spoke against giving alleged terrorists jury trials — right before the court was set to hear a case on detainee rights, prompting a group of retired generals and admirals to file a friend-of-the-court brief asking him to recuse himself from hearing the appeal filed by Osama bin Laden’s alleged driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan.

Justice Scalia participated in that case but had to sit out one that challenged the use of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. In remarks to a Knights of Columbus rally before the case arrived at the Supreme Court, he suggested that an appeals court had erred in agreeing with the challenger.

That said, Justice Scalia often played the role of charming rogue.

In less-partisan times, he was a fixture at Georgetown parties; he loved opera and led carol-singing at the court’s annual Christmas parties. Every year when Boston University law professor Jay Wexler compiled the number of times the notation “laughter” appeared in transcripts of the court’s oral arguments, Justice Scalia was the leading instigator.

Nothing illustrated the dynamic so well as his close friendship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with whom he was in frequent disagreement. The two served together on the D.C. Circuit and respected each other’s intellect. Scalia and his wife, and Ginsburg and her husband, Martin, celebrated most New Year’s Eves together.

Ginsburg said no one made her laugh as much as Justice Scalia did. “I love him. But sometimes I’d like to strangle him,” she once said.

Outspoken about faith

Justice Scalia once wrote in a law review article that legal views are “inevitably affected by moral and theological perceptions.”

After donning his black robe, he would insist that his religious faith and personal views did not determine the outcome of cases because his textualist, originalist approach insulated him from bias. He thought that judges should defer to elected officials on matters of social policy.

But Justice Scalia’s faith was integral to his identity. He objected to Vatican II and drove out of his way to find churches that celebrated Mass in Latin.

He was the court’s most outspoken member on the subject of religion. He urged fellow intellectuals to proudly be “fools for Christ” and used an interview in 2013 to underscore his belief in the existence of the devil, whose latest maneuver, he said, was “getting people not to believe in him or in God.”

Justice Scalia wanted to lower the wall of separation between church and state, endorsing school prayer, nativity displays on public property and public money for religious schools.

But he insisted that there was no such thing as a “Catholic justice” and said his views were shaped by an understanding of the Constitution and a belief that a judge’s role is limited.

“Don’t paint me as anti-gay or antiabortion or anything else,” Justice Scalia said at an appearance in 2015. “All I’m doing on the Supreme Court is opining about who should decide: Is it a matter left to the people, or is it a matter of my responsibility as a justice of the Supreme Court?”

Justice Scalia narrowly read individual rights and disdained policies designed to remedy discrimination against women and minorities. He was the lone dissent in a case challenging the state-run Virginia Military Institute’s right to exclude female applicants.

Justice Scalia believed that discrimination should be judged on an individual basis rather than by treating minorities as an aggrieved group; in his view, policies meant to address discrimination against a group in effect discriminated against individuals. “I owe no man anything, nor he me, because of the blood that flows through our veins,” he wrote in a 1979 essay.

He was part of majorities that made it harder for workers to bring discrimination claims.

He and O’Connor clashed when the court said the University of Michigan Law School could consider race as part of a comprehensive review of an applicant because of the benefits a racially diverse class would bring.

In dissent, he wrote: “This is not, of course, an ‘educational benefit’ on which students will be graded on their Law School transcripts (Works and Plays Well with Others: B+) or tested by the bar examiners (Q: Describe in 500 words or less your cross-racial understanding.)”

Notable wins, losing battles

For much of the public, the perception of Justice Scalia was formed by the polarized court’s ruling in Bush v. Gore. Justice Scalia wrote for himself when the court issued an emergency stay to stop the vote-counting in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. “The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to [Bush], and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election,” the justice wrote.

To Gore supporters, that sounded like an attempt not to find out which candidate got the most votes but to protect the integrity of Bush’s win. Moreover, the five-member majority based its ultimate ruling on an expansive reading of the Equal Protection Clause, which in previous cases involving gays, blacks and women Justice Scalia had preferred to read narrowly. The case was also a departure from his reluctance to endorse federal intrusion in state and local affairs.

On gay rights, Justice Scalia fought a losing battle. He warned in his 2003 dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down a state sodomy law, that the court was paving the way for same-sex marriage. He was not any happier to see his prediction come true.

When the court ruled 5 to 4 in 2015 that the Constitution forbade state laws that prohibited same-sex marriage, Justice Scalia said the court had taken its most drastic step in overruling decisions made by the public.

“A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy,” he wrote in dissent.

His great triumph on the court came in writing the majority decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Second Amendment case.

Most lower courts had long interpreted a 1939 Supreme Court case, United States v. Miller, to mean that the Second Amendment guaranteed the right to bear arms only to members of state militias, like the National Guard.

Justice Scalia’s opinion made it unmistakable that the Constitution requires more than that. The Second Amendment, he said, “surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.”

More than just a victory for gun rights, the case was significant for being fought on the originalist grounds that Justice Scalia had long championed. He wrote 64 pages on why the authors of the Second Amendment meant to imply an individual right; Justice John Paul Stevens countered with 46 pages of history arguing only for the militia right.

Another victory for Justice Scalia on the court might seem surprising for a conservative who was such a full-throated defender of the death penalty.

Crawford v. Washington marked a revolutionary change in criminal law. Writing for the majority in 2004, Justice Scalia spelled out a bright-line rule that said “testimonial” statements by unavailable witnesses couldn’t be used as evidence in court unless the defendant had a prior opportunity for cross-examination. Previously, such statements were admissible if deemed sufficiently reliable by a judge.

The decision was a great win for criminal defense lawyers and one in which the Supreme Court majority blurred its usual conservative-liberal dividing lines.

Near the end of his tenure on the court, as Justice Scalia was on the losing side in landmark decisions on issues such as gay rights, he condemned what he called “the practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine.”

In his dissent to the court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges recognizing a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry, Justice Scalia summed up his objections.

“Hubris is sometimes defined as o’erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before a fall,” he wrote. “. . . With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them — with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the ‘reasoned judgment’ of a bare majority of this Court — we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/sup...d=ansmsnnews11

Within hours of Scalia’s passing, a battle broke out regarding his replacement. Republican leaders are calling against a nomination until the next administration (though if Obama were to nominate anyone, Republicans in the Senate would block it anyway).






Harry Reid is urging Obama to make a nomination “right away,” stating “With so many important issues pending before the Supreme Court, the Senate has a responsibility to fill vacancies as soon as possible.”

So are Republicans being unreasonable here? Only once in the past 100 years did a President attempt to nominate a Supreme Court justice in an election year (which the senate rejected).

Maybe Reid wasn’t paying attention during the last administration, but there was an empty seat at the Supreme Court during the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency. As video obtained from the Gateway Pundit shows, Democrats then were arguing against a nomination in an election year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=3w7OsfpSU10

Chuck Schumer stated then:

Quote:

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“We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court except in extraordinary circumstances. They must prove by actions not words that they are in the mainstream rather than we have to prove that they are not. I will do everything in my power to prevent one more ideological ally from joining (Justices John) Roberts and (Samuel) Alito.”

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Meanwhile, Schumer appeared on ABC’s “This Week” yesterday to blast Mitch McConnell for encouraging the Senate to not move forward with any nominees, stating that “kind of strategy isn’t going to last,” adding that “the American people don’t like obstruction.”


Look who’s talking.


http://www.allenbwest.com/2016/02/lo...was-president/

I am just going to leave this here .... http://www.bigbigforums.com/news-and...tta-lynch.html



SCOTUS Analyst: Loretta Lynch 'Most Likely Candidate' to Replace Scalia

by Corky Siemaszko - 2/17/2016

A leading Supreme Court analyst thinks Attorney General Loretta Lynch is the "most likely candidate" to replace the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

Tom Goldstein, who runs the influential SCOTUSblog, had earlier predicted Ninth Circuit Judge Paul Watford would make the top of President Obama's shortlist. But in a revised blog post, Goldstein said he now believes Lynch is the leading contender.

Lynch is a "very serious possibility," Goldstein wrote. "The fact that Lynch was vetted so recently for attorney general also makes it practical for the president to nominate her in relatively short order."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, fearing that whoever Obama picks will tip the ideological balance of the nation's highest court to the left, has already made it clear that he believes next president should be responsible for appointing a justice. GOP presidential candidates, including Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio, have made similar statements.

But tapping Lynch to fill the seat of Scalia, who died suddenly Saturday, poses a perception problem for Republicans because her "history as a career prosecutor makes it very difficult to paint her as excessively liberal," Goldstein wrote.

Lynch would be the first black woman ever nominated to the nation's highest court — and the GOP would have a political problem during an election year if the Republicans refused to even consider her nomination, Goldstein wrote.

"I think the administration would relish the prospect of Republicans either refusing to give Lynch a vote or seeming to treat her unfairly in the confirmation process," Goldstein wrote. "Either eventuality would motivate both black and women voters."

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...eplace-n518916

Whatever his obvious partisan sympathies, Barack Hussein Obama is President of the United States and there is protocol and (one would hope) a dignity we expect our President to maintain.

But Obama is a whole other animal. That someone of such low character, limited experience and hatred for America could be elected President of these United States is a testament to the power the left wields in the media, culture, and academia. Obama is a lowlife.

Quote:

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“Obama to skip Scalia funeral,”
By Eliza Collins, Politico, February 17, 2016:

President Barack Obama will not attend Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s funeral on Saturday, the White House said Wednesday. Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden will attend.

Obama and first lady Michelle Obama instead will go to the Supreme Court on Friday “to pay their respects to Justice Scalia” while the justice lies in repose in the Great Hall, press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Wednesday. The most recent member of the Supreme Court to die was Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 2005. In that instance, President George W. Bush not only attended the funeral, he also eulogized Rehnquist.

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Scalia’s death ripped open a political seam when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell almost immediately issued a statement calling for Scalia’s replacement to be delayed until the next president is in office. The White House has promised to nominate someone before the election.

http://pamelageller.com/2016/02/obam...-funeral.html/

The Straw That Broke the Camels Back!

Tonight I was not going to write an article. However, I made the mistake of watching the news and finding that Obama was not going to go to the Funeral of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Saturday. Instead, the Press Secretary said Obama and his wife… "Would pay their respects on Friday at the Capital, where He will lie in repose."

You know, I cannot help but remember the other day, when Obama was talking about rising above politics in approving his nominee. Well, he just slammed the door on any chance of that happening.

Obama's pettiness and insolent actions prove the very little man that he truly is. For someone who craves adoration in his narcissism, he only shows what pathetic public figure he has become.

This should go down in the annals of history as the most contemptible, despicable act of disrespect, ever given to a Supreme Court Justice, by a sitting President of the United States. It only goes to magnify the smallness of Obama. His Press Secretary could not even say why the Obama's could not make it on Saturday. It will probably come out that he has a golf game scheduled.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave 30 years of his life, trying to defend the Constitution against attacks from the likes of Obama and his ILK.

It makes me think of how SCJ Ruth Ginsburg is going to feel. While she was on the "LEFT," side of the court, she was best friends with Antonin Scalia and referred to him as her Buddy. They did everything together and is heartbroken by his passing.

Well, if it is of any consequence, your Honor, your ceremony automatically has more reverence now, with Obama's absence. He will be spit-on in the minds who attend and in the absurdity of his absence, by those who know the total disrespect Obama has for our Country and for which it stands. "…One Nation under God, with Liberty and justice for all!"

Rest In Peace, Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia… your nation loves you!!

By Wyatt Goodwin

http://scontent-mia1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/...fd&oe=57578128

Among the list of funerals Obama has attended (or sent representatives to attend) include Michael Brown, Robert Byrd, and Ted Kennedy. Not exactly the most respectable group of people.... a criminal, former KKK member, and drunk driver were worthy enough to attend, it’s whose funerals Obama hasn’t attended that’s even more telling.

Chris Kyle’s funeral procession stretched over 200 miles – so long that it extended out of the State of Texas. Obama was nowhere to be found.

With the passing of Scalia, we learned his funeral could be added to the list that Obama would not be attending. However, Obama did decide he could find it in his heart to attend Scalia’s wake, but wait till you see how that went.

via the Daily Caller

Quote:

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President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama paid less than two minutes of respect to the late Antonin Scalia while the Justice lies in repose at the Supreme Court.

Friday, the Obamas spent approximately 35 seconds in front of the casket and then approximately 67 seconds in front of the portrait of Scalia.

According to the White House pool report, Obama spent approximately 15 minutes in another room “meeting with others.”

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Obama never seems to stop complaining about the partisan divide we see today – but he doesn’t seem to realize that his actions are causing it.

http://www.allenbwest.com/2016/02/ob...l-outrage-you/

Not to mention the WH issuing NO STATEMENTS over the law enforcements deaths - 10 in 8 days. Not a word.

I do not know whether to give this an credence or not.....


US Supreme Court Justice Scalia Had Secret Texas Meeting With Obama Just Hours Before His Death

Posted by EU Times on Feb 16th, 2016

A stunning report prepared for the Office of the President (OP) by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) examining the letter sent to President Putin by American billionaire Donald Trump last week that appeared to predict the murder of US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia suggests that just hours before this esteemed jurists death he had held a secret meeting with President Barack Obama aboard a US Air Force plane heading to a secluded Texas ranch owned by a close personal friend and top campaign donor of America’s leader.

According to this report, SVR “assests” reported that on 11 February both President Obama and Justice Scalia were at Joint Base Andrews (JBA) scheduled for two separate US Air Force flights from Andrews Field—the first taking President Obama to Los Angeles, and the second taking Justice Scalia to Marfa Municipal Airport (KMRF) located in the southwestern region of Texas near the Mexican border.

While President Obama was scheduled to depart on one of the US Air Force’s two Boeing VC-25 aircraft (commonly referred to as Air Force One), this report continues, Justice Scalia’s flight was scheduled aboard a Gulfstream C-37A—which is the US Air Force’s designation for their fleet of the popular Gulfstream V private jet aircraft.

Just prior to these two US Air Force aircraft departing from Andrews Field, this report notes, SVR “assests” assigned to monitoring top American political and military figures noted a “discrepancy from normal protocol” when Justice Scalia’s three US Marshal Services Judicial Security Division (JSD) “protectors/defenders” left the airbase with the “personal protection” of this noted jurist being transferred to the US Secret Service (SS).

Upon both President Obama and Justice Scalia’s different flights departing from Andrews Field, this report continues detailing; an even greater “discrepancy from normal protocol” was noted by the SVR when they were informed by Aerospace Forces (AF) satellite monitoring personal that US Air Force F-16 fighter aircraft from three different bases (Shaw Air Force Base, Montgomery Field and Luke Air Force Base) accompanied the entire flights of both the Boeing VC-25 and the Gulfstream C-37A—a level of protection normally only afforded to the US President exclusively.

As to why the US Air Force provided F-16 fighter aircraft protection to Justice Scalia’s flight, this report continues, became even more concerning to the SVR when after the flight landed in Marfa, Texas, this “extreme protective air cover” was maintained until the Gulfstream C-37A departed three hours later and flew to Los Angeles Air Force Base (LAAFB) accompanied by its fighter plane escort—and where at the exact same time the American press covering President Obama began questioning where he was, only to be told that President Obama had been missing due to a late-night, off-the-books dinner with three of Hollywood’s elite the White House wouldn’t further comment on.

This SVR report, though, “strongly suggests” that President Obama had, in fact, been aboard the Gulfstream C-37A with Justice Scalia from Andrews Field to Marfa and then further traveled from Texas to Los Angeles on it—which they say is the only conclusion to be reached due to the US Air Force’s continuous protection of it.

In support of this conclusion, this report continues, AF radar and electronic spectrum satellite analysis of Marfa, where the Gulfstream C-37A landed with Justice Scalia and (maybe) President Obama, shows a four vehicle convoy leaving the KMRF airport and traveling to a 12,140 hectar (30,000 acre) estate called the Cibolo Creek Ranch.

Critical to note about this Cibolo Creek Ranch, this report says, is that is owned by Texas multi-millionaire John Poindexter—who aside from being the owner of the vast conglomerate J.B. Poindexter&Co., Inc., is a longtime personal friend of President Obama who in one of his first duties upon elected bestowed a war medal upon Poindexter for his service during the Vietnam War.



Of even greater concern about President Obama’s personal friend John Poindexter, SVR analysts in this report state, is that within 36 hours of Justice Scalia arriving at his Cibolo Creek Ranch estate he, Poindexter, reported to the media that the jurist had died—and who then coordinated with local Texas officials to have Justice Scalia declared dead via a phone conversation with the area medical examiner without an actual medical examination of the body in clear violation of Texas law which states an autopsy is to be preformed when “the body or a body part of a person is found and the cause or circumstances of death are unknown”.

With Justice Scalia being reported found dead while in John Poindexter’s estate, this report continues, this esteemed jurist was further said to have been found with a pillow over his head while laying dead in his bed in un-wrinkled bed clothes—which just by these reports alone, under Texas law, demanded that an autopsy be preformed to identify the cause of death.

As the Obama regime continues with its cover-up of Justice Scalia’s death, this report concludes, President Obama’s pre-knowledge by hours of Justice Scalia’s death, along with former US Army intelligence officer Ray Starmann stating his concerns that “foul play” was involved, the shocked American people in a new poll shows that fully 79% of them suspect this jurist was murdered—but which the SVR, though continuing their investigation, may never know the entire details about.

http://www.eutimes.net/2016/02/us-su...ore-his-death/

Comments

With so much at stake, foul play certainly had motivation and means. Actions immediately after Scalia's demise indicate sloppiness to say the least and hopefully a full followup will result.

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So we have to accept the people that control our US.government are part of a very secret group of powerful individuals that will kill people if they do not obey ? Correct ? Then if we accept this type of rule then it is quite the fact that we "Americans " are living under "Fascism". We are not living under the rule of law or the definition of a Republic. We are living under the control of the "Murderous Fascists".
This is what we support when we pay our taxes and go along with murder and fear. The Mainstream Media calls it "Fighting For Our Freedom" when in reality it is support the "Empire" or die

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wouldn't surprise me one bit "we must punish our enemies" is a common theme of our current administration ... and they define "enemy" as anyone who doesn't agree with them much less those who dare to oppose him.

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If Obama wants to appoint a recess Justice replacement, he should handover genuine documents delivering proof a.) he attended the Scalia funeral , and b.) the unadulterated genuine autopsy report of Antonin Scalia as conducted by the Presidio County, Texas Coroner.

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Scalia was Found Dead with a Pillow on his Face http://www.eutimes.net/2016/02/scali...w-on-his-face/