JUSTICE SCALIA RIPS LAWMAKERS AS BEING SLEEPY AND LAZY

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is not the sort who leaves readers wondering what he really thinks, especially when it comes to members of Congress. In two opinions Thursday, Scalia disparaged lawmakers, not for the first time, as sleepy and lazy.

To be sure, the 75-year-old justice will just as eagerly take a shot — or two or three — at colleagues on the court who come out on the other side of cases.

Scalia has laid out an approach to the law over his quarter-century on the court that rests on the meaning of the Constitution as it was understood by the people who wrote it and on the plain language of laws, not the legislative record that accompanies many bills. He also embraces the view that people should turn to their elected officials, not the courts, to solve many problems.

Commenting in a case involving cocaine sentences, Scalia wrote briefly to criticize one part of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s majority opinion that delved into legislative history. In particular, Scalia did not like that Sotomayor made reference to congressional testimony by a Yale medical school professor.

Scalia said the outcome of the case would be the same even if the professor “had not lectured an undetermined number of likely somnolent congressmen on the ‘damaging effects of cocaine smoking on people in Peru.’”

Read More at the Blaze By scott Baker, the Blaze