Tag Archives: Justice Antonin Scalia

President to Appoint first Muslim to Supreme Court

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[An exclusive cutting edge “edgy” report on a wacky world from Views from the Edge]

Washington, D.C., Feb. 16, 2016

On the heels of The Onion’s announcement that President Obama is preparing “a short list of gay, transsexual abortion doctors” to fill the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy created by the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia (The Onion, Feb. 15), an anonymous source from the Office of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) notified Views from the Edge of President Obama’s secret plan to appoint Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) to become the first Muslim to sit on the nation’s highest court.

Mr. Ellison, an African American civil rights leader and criminal defense attorney, is the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress. Mr. Ellison quickly rose to leadership positions in the Congressional Black Caucus. He is one of only two members of Congress to support Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders’ bid for the Presidency. President Obama, according to the source, will make the appointment during the Congressional recess at a Black Lives Matter event at a time and location yet to be determined.

When Views from the Edge asked Senator Cruz’s Office to confirm the story, Senator Cruz, a Republic candidate for President, took the call himself, calling Obama a liar who has done great harm to this country and re-affirming his position that the Senate will block any nomination made by America’s secret Muslim President. “Congress will never recess before a new president is inaugurated in 2017,” said the Senator. “I look forward to making that appointment. I have a short-list ready to go.”

Asked whether the alleged nomination of Mr. Ellison would be worse than the appointment of someone from the President’s shortlist of gay, transsexual abortion doctors revealed by The Onion, Senator Cruz took the opportunity to denounce Donald Trump as a non-Republican, closeted liberal suspected of a longtime friendship with a New York liberal Presbyterian obstetrician with well-known tendencies, and declared that Trump’s nominee to replace Justice Scalia on the Court would be no better, and perhaps worse, than Mr. Obama’s.

When pressed for the names on his list of potential nominees, Mr. Cruz said it would be inappropriate at this time except to say it includes a committed Christian university president serving in Lynchburg, VA and a radio talk-show host he was in no rush to name.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Feb. 16, 2016.

The Voting Rights Act and the Scowl

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Justices Sotomayor and Scalia

Justices Sotomayor and Scalia

The Voting Rights Act for which so many of us fought is at risk in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Yesterday Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the Justices who will decide on the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, called it a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” His statement shocked the court and those in the courtroom.

Justice Scalia showed visible contempt for President Obama sitting behind the President at the Second Inauguration. He never looked up. He sat there like the Man…in his Doctor of Jurisprudence graduation hat…with a scowl on his face. His Jesuit professors are pulling their hair out.

My Grandmother’s Rifle

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My 90 year-old Grandmother kept a revolutionary war rifle under her bed in Rockport, Massachusetts. She wanted to be safe. When she showed it to me, I could barely drag it out from under the bed.  How she would have gotten it out and lifted it to point at an intruder was a puzzle, but my Grandmother, like many of us, thought a gun would make her safe.

My Grandmother's revolutionary war rifle.

My Grandmother’s revolutionary war rifle.

Security, weapons, and freedom make strange bed-fellows. Guns will not produce security, and the freedom to buy and use the weapons of war equates pulling a trigger with free speech.

In America the mixing of the right to bear arms, the search for security, and the sanctity of personal freedom without limits are the ingredients of a national security state…and a state of permanent anxiety.

We are not safe in America. The six-year-olds and seven-year-olds of Sandy Hook were not safe. Their teachers were not safe. Their town was not safe. The five-year-old and the two-year-old in Minneapolis who found a pistol under the pillow in their parents’ bedroom were not safe. The two-year old is dead. The five-year-old and his parents will never be the same. Nor will the people of Baghdad, the U.S. Army base at Fort Hood or the folks killed at McDonald’s. We are not safe either at home under Homeland Security or in the places around the world where un-manned drones kill and maim not only those who threaten our safety but innocent children, under that banner of freedom, democracy, and national security.

The U.S. Constitution is a work of genius and wisdom depending on how well it is interpreted by the Courts. The First Amendment the right to free speech. The Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms, a right originally intended to maintain the power of the people, collectively, to overthrow another King George or a government that did not serve the well-being of the American people.

Among the “arms” protected by the Second Amendment there was no assault weapon able to shoot 100 times in 60 seconds and then reload or a pistol capable of 30 shots before reloading. What the framers of the Second Amendment had in mind was muskets.

“Load… aim… fire…..  Load… aim… fire.”

The Second Amendment never imagined the likes of the M-16 or its knock-offs or a semi-automatic pistol concealed in one’s purse or trousers. The weapons used against a mother and elementary school children in Newtown and against customers having a cup of coffee at a McDonald’s were the furthest thing from their time-bound imagination.

There were no McDonald’s when the Second Amendment was adopted and there were no semi-automatic weapons sold at gun shows. Today, ABC News reports that, according to the 2011 statistics of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, there were 4.17 times as many federally-licensed retail gun dealers and pawn shops(58,794) than McDonald’s (14, 098) in the U.S – more death shops than places to eat a Big Mac.

ABC News also reported that “2012 has been a record-setting year for gun sales. As of November, the FBI recorded 16,808,538 instant background checks for gun purchases for 2012. Even without counting December, which has historically been the busiest month, this beats last year’s record by more than 350,000.”

Argument for strict Constitutional interpretation by Justice Scalia

Argument for strict Constitutional interpretation by Justice Scalia

Strict Constitutionalists like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia know full well that my grandmothers revolutionary war rifle was the “arms” the Second Amendment had in mind. Every citizen in America has the right to have a revolutionary war rifle –  a single shot “load…; aim…; fire… re-load…; aim…; fire…” under the bed… or under the pillow in the parents’ bedroom.

Freedom was never intended to produce a domestic or international killing field. If we Americans have learned anything from 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Columbine, Red Lake, and Sandy Hook, it is that our security is not found in a gun or a drone in every home. Neither was the nation’s security license to monitor the phone calls, emails, texts, bank records, and personal movements of citizens.

I exercise my right to free speech by writing and publishing words as the weapons of persuasion in hopes that they might contribute in some way to a national introspection and action that minimizes the human impulse toward violence and destruction. I have to believe that words are more powerful in the end than the Bushmaster .223 assault rifles and drones that kill at home and abroad – all in the name of keeping us alive and “safe”.

According to strict judicial interpretation of the Second Amendment, everyone in America has a right to own a musket or, perhaps, pull a revolutionary war rifle from under the bed.