[yet more reasons to hate antonin scalia]

two nice rulings from the supreme court today, one of them important. the opinion in lawrence v. texas (6-3) holds texas's sodomy law, and apparently most others, unconstitutional on privacy grounds. wiggins v. smith (7-2) found unconstitutional the incompetent defense received by a near-retarded man in his capital murder trial. predictably, the dynamic duo of scalia and thomas dissented in both cases, with rehnquist joining them on the sodomy case. as in bowers v. hardwick, scalia (who according to the times read his dissent from the bench to register his disapproval) agreed with the state that the state has a strong enough interest in protecting marriage and childrearing (as "sacred") to ban other consensual relationships. he followed this performance by telling the times he doesn't "have anything against homosexuals." except, you know, the part where he finds their relationships inherently unworthy of the same level of respect as traditional heterosexual relationships. props to sandra day o'connor, however, for reversing herself on this one -- she was in the majority on bowers, but not today.

in the second case, wherein scalia calls the reasoning of the majority "incredible" and "feeble," said majority merely spared the life of a man who barely understood his crime and who was victim of truly horrible child abuse in the past, including sexual assaults, starvation and burning. i suppose this is all of a piece with (1) thomas's truly remarkable inability to understand the sufferings of people to whom he doesn't directly relate (see virginia v. black, then look at every other hate speech or affirmative action decision he's been a part of) and (2) scalia's gotta-break-a-few-eggs approach to the death penalty. (scalia has repeatedly said that he is comfortable with the fact that states may execute even actually innocent people in the pursuit of lower rates of violent crime.)