I adore Dahlia Lithwick, Slate.com’s Supreme Court writer, and therefore, I’m enjoying her annual back-and-forth with Walter Dellinger over the Supreme Court’s big end-of-term decisions this week.
Roberts goes to great lengths to insert meaning into the silliness of the words on the student banner. He insists the phrase “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” can be read as “celebrating drug use”; indeed to get there he needed only insert the imaginary words, “bong hits [are a good thing].” When did we enter into the era of constitutional interpretation through inserting pretend words? The sign could have as easily been read to say “bong hits [will kill you].”
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[A]fter today, a majority of the court believes students can hold up banners that say “legalize drugs,” but not banners with strings of random drug words unconnected by a verb. Attention students: You can still be political at school. But the Constitution stops protecting you the moment you cross the line into merely weird.
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Bong hits 4 Jesus? Bong hits for me!!
Interpreting the Constitution to produce a result that fits officially-prescribed ideology necessarily involves post-hoc reasoning that is convoluted or even risible. But that’s only a problem for those who disagree with the official ideology– people who, by definition, are Unpatriotic.
Karl Rove chose Supreme Court nominees carefully, to ensure that the official ideology remains in place even if– God forbid– the liberals temporarily cheat their way into the White House and/or the subservient Legislative Branch. So far, Roberts and Scalito/Thomas are serving their masters most admirably, remaining steadfastly loyal to the Majority Party’s ideology and (most importantly) their Major Donors.
Let the liberals whine and moan about what their little minds perceive as “absurdity.” The
Supreme Court majority are doing exactly what their masters put them there to do. The courts exist to serve the Unitary Executive and the Majority Party by giving them additional legitimacy and gravitas and defending them against attacks from disloyal enemies who hate America. And with God’s blessing they will continue to do so for many years to come. God bless America, and Viva Bush!
I commented on this below…but it doesn’t seem to have posted…? *unhappy*
I always agree with Dahlia Lithwick, but this time I’m going to read my dissent from the bench. I think my liberal, progressive, non-paranoid credentials are sufficiently established for me to claim that I am not Antonin Scalia, yet I do not find it remotely a stretch — indeed, I find it probable — that the phrase “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” can easily be construed as promoting illegal activity, regardless of whether the student’s intent was merely to get on television. You know, excuse me, but where’s the liberal outrage when a judge allows a California principal to ban t-shirts with anti-gay messages on them? It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me to say school officials have authority to restrict or prohibit promotion of illegal or disruptive behaviors. The fact that I find the phrase “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” hilarious does not mitigate that I find it wholly inappropriate for what was obviously an event where the student in question was representing the school, regardless of location. The school was not unreasonably restricting the student’s right to proclaim “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS.” He could have started a webpage or hung it from his home or placed himself strategically for some other event. Would you say a company has no right to discipline or terminate an employee who uses controversial or potentially offensive language in a company email? Furthermore, it is not as if the school attempted to squelch a student’s honest effort at expressing a controversial opinion or stimulating a debate. It was a tacky, thoughtless stunt. Forgive me, but count me with the majority on this one.