Newsday.com: Scalia says religion infuses U.S. government and history

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Monday that a religion-neutral government does not fit with an America that reflects belief in God in everything from its money to its military.

"I suggest that our jurisprudence should comport with our actions," Scalia told an audience attending an interfaith conference on religious freedom at Manhattan's Shearith Israel synagogue.
...An "originalist," Scalia believes in following the Constitution as written by the Founding Fathers, rather than interpreting it to reflect the changing times.

"Our Constitution does not morph," he said Monday, deadpanning, "As I've often said, I am an originalist, I am a textualist, but I am not a nut."

Earlier this year, Scalia cast one of two dissenting votes in a 7-2 Supreme Court ruling that states may deny taxpayer-funded scholarships to divinity students.

At the time, Scalia wrote: "Let there be no doubt: This case is about discrimination against a religious minority."


I saw Scalia speak several years before he became a Supreme. His views on the way our government is supposed to work scared the bejeezus out of me. He was a hard-core majoritarian -- in other words, whatever the majority wants, it should get. The whole concept of the Constitution as a bulwark against the power of government was utterly foreign to him. And that was definitely NOT the intent of the framers.

And yeah, he is a nut.