BIG TONY ELECTS SELF TOP CAPO
Antonin "Big Tony" Scalia is fixing to become the top legal
enforcer for the Family Busheone. Big Tony - concurring with
Kenneth Starr that "conflict of interest" is just a bad thing that
happens to other people - is taking it upon himself to cast the
deciding vote in this presidential election, with "the will of the
people" being yet another concept he's "strictly constructed"
right out of the Constitution.
So just what interests are in conflict here? According to
Jim Dwyer:
Earlier this year, Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court
justice who now is all but serving as the attorney
for George W. Bush, let it be known that if
Democrats won the presidency, he'd quit the court.
He would leave because under a Democratic
administration, he would have no shot at being named
chief justice by Al Gore, according to the March issue of
the Washingtonian magazine.
Now, Scalia has taken charge of the election case for George W. Bush and will
try to herd the conservatives this morning for the result he apparently wants: a
Bush presidency, and, perhaps, the job of chief justice when William Rehnquist
retires in a few years as is expected.
Normally, judges disqualify themselves from cases in
which they have a personal interest; if the naked
ambition to be the court's chief was accurately
attributed to him, then he has no business deciding this
fight.
Claiming that this isn't a conflict of interest bigger than Scalia's
appetite would be like saying that a Mike Tyson right hook isn't
in conflict with the face it's about to contact.
Big Tony started rewriting history a few weeks when dissenting
from the Florida Supreme Court's assertion that the most
fundamental right in a democracy is the vote.
Capo-in-Waiting Tony - carefully adjusting his pinstripe robes - sneered at
this, saying that, "There is no right to suffrage under Article II."
Or, as Dwyer puts it:
In plain English, he said that the citizens have no constitutional right to vote for
President. His reason is that the Constitution places that power in the hands of
the state legislatures, although he did not mention that all 50 state legislatures
submit the question to a popular vote.
Big Tony's latest trip to Legal La-La Land - in the matter of
writing the majority opinion stopping the Florida recount last
Saturday - produced the astounding:
"Count first and rule upon legality
afterward is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public
acceptance democratic stability requires.
The counting of
votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to [Texas
Gov. George W. Bush], and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the
legitimacy of his election."
The inimitable Mr. Dwyer begs to disagree:
We've gotten by for two centuries on precisely that recipe. That is what is
done on every Election Day in this country.
First we vote. Then come the challenges, if any, which end up in court, and are
decided there. This is not new. To have disputed ballots decided by courts
doesn't "change the rules of the game." Those are the rules of the game. To do
otherwise changes the law, the customs and the practice in every single state.
Eric Zorn offers another translation of and
view about Big Tony's self-serving pseudo-legal babbling:
Allow me to paraphrase: "Most people are too stupid to understand or accept a ruling we might
make voiding the recount if it were to be completed. So we must stop it this instant, lest the
unruly, unsophisticated masses ever get the idea that Vice President Al Gore actually won the
election because he got more votes than Bush in Florida--as well as the rest of the country. It
would perturb them to see Bush inaugurated, and this might make it difficult for Bush to be an
effective and respected president."
I've come up empty scouring the Constitution for my right not to be perturbed. In vain, I went
back over Article II, which deals with the presidency, looking for a "sunshine clause" saying,
"No clouds shall be cast upon the claim of legitimacy of a president."
Nanny Scalia and four fellow baby-sitters of the right freelanced a temporary suspension of
our common-law right to know. If their reasoning holds, Republicans will be allowed to
impound the ballots in Florida for at least four years so that Freedom of Information Act
busybodies can't conduct their planned unofficial recounts of machine-rejected ballots several
weeks or months from now.
So Big Tony not only wants to in effect name himself Chief Justice,
but also bury the bodies, er, ballots until after the NEXT election.
Zorn then offers how, in the 5-4 decision last Saturday ...
... the five conservatives justices hit the trifecta of ignominy with their stay order:
- They cast a cloud upon the court's moral authority with a partisan 5-4 ruling. If they're just
a fractious clutch of ideologues like so many guests on "Hardball," why should we pay
deference to their rulings?
- They all but killed Gore's chances to prevail in a recount or swing public sentiment his way
by helping Republicans run out the clock on the Dec. 12 deadline for appointing electors.
- They all but killed Bush's chance to have the legitimacy of his election recognized by most
Democrats.
Yep, Big Tony's going to give this election to the Family
Busheone with all the subtlety of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
posted by Steven Baum
12/12/2000 03:34:46 PM |
link
