WP: Scalia Showing His Softer Side

[kskiska]

Justice Moves Into Public Eye With Possible Sights Set on Chief Job

By Dana Milbank

Antonin Scalia was about 12 minutes into the latest phase of his recent charm offensive yesterday when he briefly returned to type.

The famously acerbic Supreme Court justice was making a nuanced point about his disagreement with the notion of "substantive due process" when he paused and frowned at some photographers in the aisle. "Could we stop the cameras?" he directed. "I thought I announced a couple of shots at the beginning is fine, but click, click, click, click, click."

Still, it was a kinder, gentler Scalia who took questions from scholars at the Woodrow Wilson center. The extraordinarily private justice has in the past banned cameras from his speeches and was moved to apologize after reporters' tapes were confiscated at one lecture. He does not even allow his speeches to be posted on the Supreme Court's Web site along with the other justices' addresses.

(snip)

One possibility for Scalia's conversion: a looming vacancy in the office of chief justice. The current officeholder, William H. Rehnquist, is gravely ill, and President Bush is on record praising Scalia as one of his favorite jurists. So it might be shrewd for Scalia to be pursuing a bit of image polishing in advance of a hypothetical confirmation hearing.

Toward that end, Scalia's Wilson talk was part demystification, part stump speech. "I am not a strict constructionist," he began, correcting the introduction by the center's director, Lee H. Hamilton. He also disclosed that the term "judicial activism" -- a favorite epithet of conservatives for liberal judges -- "is overused."

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35096-2005Mar14.html

[aquart]

1. Of course he's not a "strict constructionist."

He's a "complete dismantleist." Scalia won't leave a shred of the US constitution intact, fascist POS that he is.

[Sandpiper]

2. If lamenting the end of Juvenile Executions is showing his softer side

We're all in serious trouble if he becomes Chief Justice.

[Kurovski]

3. Showing off the top of his head, is he? n/t

[Thurston Howell IV]

4. Showing his softer side?

I hope it doesn't involve women's lace underwear.

[daleo]

5. Is he still keen on orgies? Not sure if that qualifies as softer side.

"He raised some eyebrows with a speech last week at Harvard University, however, with a comment about the number of people needed for group sex and the jest that "sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."

He made a similar remark in a speech Sept. 20 in Washington, to chuckles from the crowd at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, while making the point that judges can have personal moral judgments. It is not judges' role to impose them on citizens, he said.

"Let me make it clear that the problem I am addressing is not the social evil of the judicial dispositions I have described. I accept, for the sake of argument, for example, that sexual orgies eliminate social tension and ought to be encouraged," Scalia said with a smile."
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1096473931020

[TankLV]

6. What - he's exposing his viagra-ridden old tiny limp dick AGAIN?!?!

What a perv!