You may be aware that the most rabid activist Republican ideologue on the US Supreme Court will be goose stepping with the Tea Party at their Conservative Constitutional Seminar in January. The following editorial does not go far enough in condemning this display of judicial activism and prejudice.

When the Tea Party holds its first Conservative Constitutional Seminar next month, Justice Antonin Scalia is set to be the speaker. It was a bad idea for him to accept this invitation. He should send his regrets. The Tea Party epitomizes the kind of organization no justice should speak to — left, right or center — in the kind of seminar that has been described in the press. It has a well-known and extreme point of view about the Constitution and about cases and issues that will be decided by the Supreme Court. By meeting behind closed doors , as is planned, and by presiding over a seminar, implying give and take, the justice would give the impression that he was joining the throng — confirming his new moniker as the “Justice from the Tea Party.” The ideological nature of the group and the seminar would eclipse the justice’s independence and leave him looking rash and biased. There is nothing like the Tea Party on the left, but if there were and one of the more liberal justices accepted a similar invitation from it, that would be just as bad. This is not about who appointed the justice or which way the justice votes. Independence and the perception of being independent are essential for every justice… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

There the editors here make their mistake is by saying that Scalia’s participation might hurt his perception of independence. His voting record already makes it certain that his own extreme ideology takes precedence over decency, let alone Constitutionality. The danger is not that he might be perceived as a Teabagger. The danger is that he IS a Teabagger, one who will commit Teabuggery against our Constitution and our people at every opportunity. And he does not even care that we know it.