same thing as happened in Sackett last term: Alito decided on a (scientifically wrong) definition of "wetlands" that *he* thought made sense and added it into the law because he thinks government has too much power to keep water from getting contaminated
(i will never not be mad about Sackett)
it's hard to see how "arguing the definition of a machinegun" fits into the idea of judging the constitutionality of laws, even if that were a power they have (they shouldn't). this is just them acting as a political body and passing a law based on their own political beliefs.
I'm just now listening to an analysis of Castle Rock vs Gonzales, where Scalia said that a law stating that police are legally required to enforce restraining orders didn't count because "there is a tradition of police getting to decide which laws to enforce" and did not cite anything for that.
just "I personally think police shouldn't have any legal responsibilities" [citation needed] and changed state and federal law as a result. And this is the guy that even mainstream media would straightfaced say believed in following the original letter of the law
Tangential but Castle Rock made me so incandescently angry to read about- what an absolute nightmare of a case, and to bend over backwards to help those officers escape any responsibility for their inaction- I’m getting mad again right now.
And this was moving through the courts contemporaneously to the Flint Water Crisis. Conservatives were trying to deflect blame from MI’s GOP governor who orchestrated it and towards Obama’s FDA at the same time as conservative courts were ruling the FDA had no authority over the Flint River!
I’m not a law nerd, but stuff I read about the late Scalia and his conveniently selective “originality” pissed me off plenty of times.
Seems like Alito and Thomas are the same type of corrupt assholes.
