The day before the Supreme Court announced the Obamacare decision, liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne demanded the resignation of Justice Antonin Scalia. "Justice Antonin Scalia needs to resign from the Supreme Court," Dionne wrote.
But when asked about the demand for his resignation by the liberal columnist on C-SPAN, Scalia asked, "Who?"
"Oh," Scalia said when the C-SPAN told him. "I don't know that."
C-SPAN: "Were you surprised at the reaction after you mentioned President Obama in your remarks at the -- on the day -- the last decision on the Arizona decision when E. J. Dionne said you ought to resign."
SCALIA: "Who?"
C-SPAN: "A columnist for the Washington Post."
SCALIA: "Oh. I don't know that. I was surprised that anyone would have thought that the purpose for which I used the president's statement -- and did not criticize the president's statement, in fact I said it might be right. "
Chief Justice John Roberts held in his majority opinion today that Obamacare's individual mandate may be considered a constitutional tax rather than an unconstitutional mandate.
On Monday, in the case of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Supreme Court struck down a California law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to children. In a 7-2 holding authored by Justice Antonin Scalia (with Justices Alito and Roberts concurring and Justices Thomas and Breyer dissenting), the Court ruled that video games enjoy essentially the same constitutional protection as books, with violent video games being, in Scalia’s estimation, much like modern day Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
When the Court hears 80 or so cases in a year, not all of them will be interesting. In fact, some of them will be dreadfully boring. Those tend to be known as "telecommunications cases." (The occasional "fleeting expletive" or "wardrobe malfunction" case notwithstanding.)
The New York Times runs a story today based on what appears to be an obviously frivolous petition filed at the Justice Department by the partisan left-wing activist group Common Cause. The group alleges that Justices Scalia and Thomas, by virtue of their appearance at a seminar held in Palm Springs by the libertarian Koch brothers, created a conflict of interest for themselves that should disqualify their votes in the Citizens United case.