Originally Posted by Jetblast

Thanks and bless you "Smart". This is exactly what I was getting at in the OP. Scalia is so proud of his urban-Italian-boy-made-it-big background that he's blind to how he's being used. Or even worse sees himself as a good soldier of the forces that are manipulating him. Like I said, the powers that put Scalia where he is don't do things like that without an expected payback. We live under an extremist republican ideology that works on a free market definition for everything. This perversion of our system has equated economic success with a sound system of governance to the point that ANYTHING that perpetuates that success is seen as a valid means. So the corporate facade of multi-culturalism is used to support American plurality as a means of justifying the expected payback those powers demand. If you want a pluralized Supreme Court you are going to pay for it with a corrupted pre-determined politic that Scalia is all too happy to court. The powers get credit for being tolerant while getting their objective and that objective has little to do with tolerance and the other fineries they take credit for. Scalia knows what he's doing and he knows what his job is. That why he's there and it's why he's on '60 Minutes'.

He said that if he had his way he would put the "long haired and sandaled-wearing man" burning the flag in jail. This is supposed to make us believe he is forced not to by his respect for the Constitution - but that is fairly nervy considering the US IS putting people in jails and torture camps lately. So his basic presence on '60 Minutes' was to propagandize to the American public a sense of Constitutional protection that his party has seriously compromised. What Scalia needs to learn is the inherent value of being allowed to burn the flag. I'm afraid to say, like today, sometimes it deserves to be burned. The fact that Scalia doesn't understand that is exactly why he should never be allowed to be on the Supreme Court.

It's clear the right wing seeks out these people for exactly this reason.