Scalia Calls The Right To Vote An "Entitlement". Should He Be Impeached?

One of the most cherished rights every American enjoys is the Right to Vote. In a representative democracy like the United States, voting is the means by which The People have an input into how their nation is run. For decades conservatives have understood that the best way for them to win elections is to prevent as many people as they can from voting. First there were poll taxes, intended to keep the poor from having a voice. When they were abolished by Constitutional Amendment, the conservatives moved on to other tactics. William Rehnquist, the late Chief Justice of the United States, "made his bones" with the Republican Party by intimidating Arizona voters and threatening them with jail or deportation to dissuade them from voting. More recently, we have seen a wave of ALEC-inspired voter suppression laws passed across this country, using the argument that nonexistent voter fraud is a justification for disenfranchising up to five million legal American voters.

The last bastion of justice in this country is supposed to be the Supreme Court. One of its most vital functions is to protect the rights of the little people against the onslaught of the big people. Nowhere is this more important than in the area of voting rights. After a history of voter intimidation based mainly on race, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. It was most recently extended by the Senate in a 98-0 vote. But with the growing evidence of the Republican Party's complete disconnect with the will of the American people, the conservatives have grown more desperate. The 2012 election saw over 2 million Americans denied their constitutional rights, millions of others forced to wait on all-day lines to cast their vote because of cuts in early voting hours and polling places by Republican governors, and a general assault on the simple act of choosing one's own representatives.

Yesterday Antonin Scalia made clear that he has abandoned his role as an impartial arbiter of the law. His views in Bush v. Gore, when he discarded a national election to help appoint a man the People did not choose, was the first major sign. His leadership in endowing corporations with rights they are not entitled to in order to allow them to literally buy elections in Citizens United was another indication. And now, in oral arguments over the legality of the Voting Rights Act, Antonin Scalia dropped the last pretense of jurisprudence, when he declared that the right to vote is NOT a right at all, but is merely an "entitlement". A right cannot be taken from someone. An entitlement can. If Scalia manages to convince four of his colleagues to go along with him (not a heavy lift in the most activist conservative court in American history), this country may have seen its last free election.

This can be prevented. The Constitution provides that a Justice shall serve "upon good behavior." Antonin Scalia no longer has the capacity for good behavior. He has abandoned his obligation to apply the Constitution fairly and impartially, and has become just another arm of the Right Wing drive to transform this country into a theological oligarchy. It is time for him to go. NOW.

(And as an added bonus for the hypocrites on the right - in the photo above Antonin Scalia is shown NOT PUTTING HIS HAND ON HIS HEART DURING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM!! Please keep this in mind the next time you are tempted to attack the President for allegedly doing the same thing once, a long time ago.)

Article excerpt follows:

Scalia: Voting Rights Act Is ‘Perpetuation Of Racial Entitlement'
By Nicole Flatow and Ian Millhiser
Feb 27, 2013

WASHINGTON, DC — There were audible gasps in the Supreme Court's lawyers' lounge, where audio of the oral argument is pumped in for members of the Supreme Court bar, when Justice Antonin Scalia offered his assessment of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. He called it a "perpetuation of racial entitlement."

The comment came as part of a larger riff on a comment Scalia made the last time the landmark voting law was before the justices. Noting the fact that the Voting Rights Act reauthorization passed 98-0 when it was before the Senate in 2006, Scalia claimed four years ago that this unopposed vote actually undermines the law: "The Israeli supreme court, the Sanhedrin, used to have a rule that if the death penalty was pronounced unanimously, it was invalid, because there must be something wrong there."

That was an unusual comment when it was made, but Scalia's expansion on it today raises concerns that his suspicion of the Act is rooted much more in racial resentment than in a general distrust of unanimous votes. Scalia noted when the Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965, it passed over 19 dissenters. In subsequent reauthorizations, the number of dissenters diminished, until it passed the Senate without dissent seven years ago. Scalia's comments suggested that this occurred, not because of a growing national consensus that racial disenfranchisement is unacceptable, but because lawmakers are too afraid to be tarred as racists. His inflammatory claim that the Voting Rights Act is a "perpetuation of racial entitlement" came close to the end of a long statement on why he found a landmark law preventing race discrimination in voting to be suspicious.

It should be noted that even one of Scalia's fellow justices felt the need to call out his remark. Justice Sotomayor asked the attorney challenging the Voting Right Act whether he thought voting rights are a racial entitlement as soon as he took the podium for rebuttal.

The transcript of the oral argument is now available.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Well, maybe it was making that judgment, Mr. Verrilli. But that's — that's a problem that I have. This Court doesn't like to get involved in — in racial questions such as this one. It's something that can be left — left to Congress.

The problem here, however, is suggested by the comment I made earlier, that the initial enactment of this legislation in a — in a time when the need for it was so much more abundantly clear was — in the Senate, there — it was double-digits against it. And that was only a 5-year term.

Then, it is reenacted 5 years later, again for a 5-year term. Double-digits against it in the Senate. Then it was reenacted for 7 years. Single digits against it. Then enacted for 25 years, 8 Senate votes against it. And this last enactment, not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same. Now, I don't think that's attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It's been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.

I don't think there is anything to be gained by any Senator to vote against continuation of this act. And I am fairly confident it will be reenacted in perpetuity unless — unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution. You have to show, when you are treating different States differently, that there's a good reason for it.

That's the — that's the concern that those of us who — who have some questions about this statute have. It's — it's a concern that this is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress. There are certain districts in the House that are black districts by law just about now. And even the Virginia Senators, they have no interest in voting against this. The State government is not their government, and they are going to lose — they are going to lose votes if they do not reenact the Voting Rights Act.

Even the name of it is wonderful: The Voting Rights Act. Who is going to vote against that in the future?