Alan Vanneman, percipience personified, when not entirely out to lunch

Or asleep at the wheel. You’d think that a dude who has been monitoring the mouth and brain of Supreme Court Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia as assiduously as I have might have noticed that El Nino published a book last month. But I didn’t. The New York Times, which I also monitor rather assiduously, was all over it—like a businessman’s special from JCP*—and I didn’t notice.

The topper—the topper di tutti toppers, in fact—is that in the book, Scalia announces that, well, he was wrong in following the famous/infamous precedent established in Wickard v. Filburn (1942) that gave the federal government virtually unlimited scope to regulate interstate commerce. Scalia rather coyly acknowledges that he “knows that there are some, and fears that there may be many, opinions that he has joined or written over the past 30 years that contradict what is written here” [declaring that Wickard v. Filburn was “bad law” and should be overturned].

Well, that’s putting it mildly, Nino. Would it have killed you to have put one of your (many) researchers to work to run a count for you? Or do you prefer not to know how often you, um, fucked up, piling new precedents for expansive readings of the Commerce Clause on top of old ones?

One of the most notorious Commerce Clause cases in recent times was Gonzales v. Raich, which allowed the U.S. government to arrest a woman for growing and smoking dope on her own land. In his concurring opinion, Scalia did not “mechanically” extend the Commerce Clause to validate this disgusting power grab initiated by the Bush Administration and aggressively pursued by the Obama Administration. No, Scalia mechanically extended the “Necessary and Proper Clause” to allow the power grab, because busting a woman for smoking pot in her own home is necessary and proper to the government’s “regulation” of interstate commerce in Mary Jane. Completely different principle, dude!

Afterwords
The kicker—the kicker di tutti kickers, in fact—is Scalia’s big fat Italian ass-covering disclaimer in his new tome,“Nothing in this book prejudges any case that might come before the United States Supreme Court.” Which is to say, “I won’t use the Commerce Clause unless I totally have to.”