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Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Once Again, the "Conservatives" of the Supreme Court Go Wild

Samuel Alito likes to call himself a conservative, as does Antonin Scalia. Once again, however, both these men jumped the rails in the majority opinion in Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius. Essentially, they announced that Congress should have chosen a different way to accomplish their goals. The corporation of Hobby Lobby, they said, had First Amendment rights to exercise religious beliefs (a novel interpretation that no true judicial conservative would endorse, even if social conservatives love it), and Congress chose a method of regulating health care that interfered too much with those rights. They did not assert that Congress had no power to legislate as they did, but they did propose an alternative way of going about it they liked better.

I don't like the decision for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I find the claim that birth control is tantamount to abortion to be absurd. I'm especially annoyed, however, with the hypocrisy of Alito, Scalia and Thomas and the damage it is doing to our system.

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