Scalito's Freudian Slip

Huffington Post blogger Steve Cobble posts on the irony of nominating a 'strict constructionist' like Samuel Alito on the same day that we are honoring civil rights hero Rosa Parks.

Scalito's Freudian Slip

Frist & Alito made a Freudian slip today. They went by to view Rosa Parks' body as it lay in state at the Capitol, a day after Bush did the same...

...Bush, Rove, Frist, DeLay, the Rehnquist/Roberts Court -- none of them would be where they are except for the switch of White Southerners to the Republican Party, in the wake of civil rights.

But for today, focus on the Freudian slip. By recognizing the power and dignity of Rosa Parks and her movement, Bush & Frist & Alito put the lie to their whole "strict constructionist" rap. Why?...

...The U.S. Constitution and the strict constructionists gave us Plessy v. Ferguson, and "separate but equal." It was the Warren Court, those justices who believed in justice over ideology, who believed in a living Constitution rather than a false "strict construction" -- these so-called "activist judges" broke the back of segregation with Brown v. Board of Education. Dr. King, Rosa Parks, SCLC & SNCC built from there, and changed the world...

And if anyone doubts that cases like Brown v. Board of Education are looked back on as out-of-control activism, well you should talk to Lou Dobbs on CNN. Last month, after Rehnquist died, Dobbs and a legal expert discussed how before Rehnquist came and cleaned up the Court, it was a "tool" of "liberal activism". The two pre-Rehnquist cases the CNN analyst used as examples of out-of-control liberal activism were: 1) Miranda v. Arizona and 2) Brown v. Board of Education.

Yes, this is where our country is now. And you thought Halloween was yesterday.