The Buffalo Beast’s 50 Most Loathesome People of 2008 is out. Some highlights:
Antonin Scalia:
it was Scalia’s asinine, compartmentalized semantic parsing on torture that we hoped would give pause to his lionizers. Arguing that torture isn’t “cruel and unusual punishment” because the subject hasn’t been convicted of a crime, so he can’t be “punished,” the so-called Constitutional Originalist puts the framers in the awkward position of saying that it’s wrong to beat up a convicted criminal, but it’s just dandy to kick the shit out of him before he is even charged.
Exhibit A: “Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.”
On Frank “worst impressionist ever” Caliendo:
The retarded man’s Rich Little … His TBS vehicle, “Frank TV,” is the least amusing thing to appear on television since the morning of September 11, 2001.
Sarah Palin:
In the end, Palin had the beneficial effect of splitting her party between her admirers and people who can read.
Rush Limbaugh:
The father of modern stupidity, Limbaugh spins reflexively, never struggling with issues, because he knows his conclusion must favor Republicans, and his only task is finding a way to get there.
Joe Lieberman:
After promising that he was “not going to go to the Republican convention, and spend my time attacking Barack Obama,” Lieberman went to the Republican convention and attacked Barack Obama. But that was just the beginning of his descent into a self-dug hole of betrayal that should have proved inescapable. Lieberman thought it was a good question to ask if Obama was a Marxist. He campaigned not just with McCain, but with Palin and down-ticket Republicans, another thing he said he wouldn’t do. But the most loathsome trait Lieberman exhibits is that most loathsome of all: Smearing dissent as treasonous. The kind of suppressive asshole who would accuse you of helping terrorists by beating him at checkers should not be Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, and is not someone worth rewarding for his own dissent.
Rick Warren:
Dubbed “America’s Pastor” by The Nation, he’s duped people from both sides of the political spectrum into thinking he’s the kinder, fatter version of James Dobson. […] Exhibit A: “God tells us that he created all the land animals on the sixth day of creation, the same day that he created mankind. Man and dinosaurs lived at the same time.” Can you feel the wisdom?
Peggy Noonan:
A Catholic hysteric who should be submitting poems about her kitty cats to online poetry-contest scams, Noonan’s call for “Patriotic Grace,” which is nothing more than a call for liberals to stop picking on Republicans for being wrong all the time, comes a little late, after actively helping the most despicable, character assassination-driven campaigns of her lifetime.
The site’s hammered; you may want to wait a day or so before trying to load it. But don’t miss it; they suggest Cheney be eaten alive by baboons, which is really hard to argue with on any level.
While Scalia is a worm, the quote attributed to him has never appeared in any decision of the SCOTUS, including the Herrera v. Collins decision to which it is often attributed. Whether he said it elsewhere, I do not know, but most sites just attribute it to him or to him citing Herrera.
Actually, Renquist drafted the opinion in that case and he quoted long-standing jurisprudence from Justice Warren to support his holding: “the existence merely of newly discovered evidence relevant to the guilt of a state prisoner is not a ground for relief on federal habeas corpus.” And that is true, always has been, at least for the last 200 or so years. Anyway, Scalia, in a concurring opinion, quoted similar language. They both point to the fact that the remedy for such a situation is not a Constitutional one for the courts, but rather, a matter of clemency in the form of executive pardon.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t particularly care for either justice. I’m just saying, most people quote Scalia as scribbling that language in the Herrera decision and that is not accurate.
(Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390 (1993). I quoted Renquist’s language referring to Justice Warren that appears at 506 U.S. at 400. The Scalia reference to the same case quoted by Renquist appears at 506 U.S. at 429.)