The Willful Distortions of Justice Scalia

A friend believes that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is certifiably crazy. I believe that he is crazy like a fox. And once having staked out a position on a particular case, then backfills by willfully distorting the record to suit that position just as his presidential patron does.

A pungent example in that regard is Scalia's claim in his minority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush that:

"At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo Bay have returned to the battlefield."

This assertion was central to Scalia's appalling argument that even innocent people taken into custody in the Global War on Terror should be held indefinitely because of what they might do if they were allowed to return to their old neighborhoods.

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings reviews the record and concludes that Scalia not only was playing way loose and fast with the facts.