Justice Scalia-A Giant Has Fallen...other news

A.S. Haley: Antonin Scalia, RIP
In today's highly polarized political atmosphere, the death of a sitting Supreme Court Justice is a guaranteed flash point. To have a sitting conservative Justice like Antonin Scalia die in an election year, however, in which different parties control the White House and Congress, is a true test of our political system.

Justice Scalia's was one of the most articulate and penetrating intellects ever to grace the Court. His colleagues could disagree with him, but that was because he always made it perfectly clear where he stood. He never knuckled under to public pressure or opinion polls, and for nearly 30 years he applied his originalist jurisprudence consistently to the cases that came before him....

The Economist:A judge’s death starts a political battle IT HAS been 11 years since an American Supreme Court justice has died while on the bench. And the death of that judge, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, had much narrower political and legal repercussions than the surprise demise of Antonin Scalia, the court’s longest-serving justice and most acerbic conservative, who has died in his sleep, promises to.

In 2005, George W. Bush was simply able to nominate John Roberts, another conservative, to succeed Mr Rehnquist. Barack Obama, now in the last year of his presidency, would love to nominate a justice in the mould of Mr Scalia’s fellow opera-lover, liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Such an appointment could tip the balance on the court decidedly toward the left for a generation or more. But any nominee must be confirmed by the Senate, and with an intransigent Republican majority there, there is no chance Mr Obama would try to do that...

A Giant has Fallen—The Death of Justice Antonin Scalia and the Future of Constitutional Government  Justice Scalia firmly believed in the right of the people to establish a constitutional government that would recognize the ultimate authority of the people, not an elite of unelected judges, to establish laws. ...Albert Mohler

How Scalia Inspired a Generation to Defend the Constitution ...Perhaps Justice Scalia’s most important contribution to a generation of lawyers, and to our legal system, was his articulation and defense of a theory of constitutional interpretation called originalism. Originalism says that judges should interpret the Constitution according to its “original meaning,” which is the public meaning of the text when it was ratified. For instance, to ascertain the meaning of “religion” in the First Amendment, an originalist will identify the public meaning of the word religion in 1791 by looking at historical evidence...

A play that portrays Jesus as a transgender woman who refers to God as 'Mum' is to be performed in a Church of England church today.

To the fury of critics who say the play is deeply offensive, the Bishop of Manchester, David Walker, will not block the staging of The Gospel According To Jesus, Queen Of Heaven.

The one-woman play by Jo Clifford, an award-winning Scottish playwright who has herself changed gender, imagines Jesus returning to earth as a 'trans woman' and retelling the parables with a transsexual slant...

Drugs Bust: Australia Seizes Meth-Filled Bra Inserts-$1 Billion Narcotics Haul Australian police have seized more than Aus$1 billion (US$712 million) in crystal methamphetamine, or ice, some concealed in gel bra inserts in one of the country’s biggest drug busts, authorities said on Monday.

Three Hong Kongers and a Chinese national were arrested during the operation which Justice Minister Michael Keenan described as the largest seizure of liquid methamphetamine in Australian history.

“This has resulted in 3.6 million individual hits of ice being taken off our streets with a street value of Aus$1.26 billion,” he said...