The lame post-Scalia hacks.

Did you ever think there were so many hacks and quacks among us from still-breathing Republican politicians to, say, Plain Dealer columnist Kevin O'Brien, who want to prevent President Obama from replacing the late Justice Antonin Scalia?

Claiming constitutional insights that escape many of us, they insist that a lame-duck president should not do what the U.S. Constitution requires him to do.  It's their tiresome assault on Obama from the first day he stepped into office 7.5 years ago.

Never mind.  It's a big leap  from  lame-duck Obama to the lame-brains on the right.  But a democracy guarantees rightists safe, if silly,  passage for it.

Robertson or Scalia? A tough call

I haven't decided whether to recognize the Rev. Pat Robertson  or Justice Antonin Scalia as this week's winner of the coveted Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award. Neither is a rising star in his class anymore but both are known to draw extensive  media attention when they speak.  It's sort of like the NFL referee announcing the crucial decision by the deciders in the booth on high for a disputed play down on the field.

First, Preacher Robertson told his TV audience that  people should be careful about wearing second-hand clothes without thoroughly laundering them because it was possible that they may possess "demonic spirits". Prayer, too, would help protect the new wearer, he said, to "rebuke any spirits that happened to have attached themselves to objects". (No, he's not talking about ancient tree spirits!)

Not that he's totally sure about this threat, but "it ain't going to hurt" to be careful.

That seemed to qualify as a winner until along came Scalia - a Supreme Court justice, for heaven's sake - who expressed his distaste for the Voting Rights Act in the case being argued before the court by describing it as a "perpetuation of racial entitlement".  The historians are sure to mention this somewhere in their accounts of Scalia, just as they have never let modern readers forget the day in 1857 when Chief Justice  Roger B. Taney ruled in  the  Dred Scott case that slaves should never-never become citizens, even if they were freed.

It had been a close call,  but now that I've revisited the details and the sweeping consequences,  the GALL award goes to Scalia.   (But I did throw some industrial strength cleanser into the washer!)

A penthouse parking spot with view of ocean

IT HAS BEEN A busy week in the higher levels of public life that, among other things, has added broccoli and automobile elevators to the modern narrative of witless political and judicial behavior.

Let's begin with the news from McMitt Romney's camp that the candidate has decided to wait until after the campaign to go forward with his four- story auto elevator that will be added to his

California mansion.

It is one of the few wise decisions to arrive from the Romney people. How do you look into the eyes of the 99 percenters and tell them in your own modest estimation that the car lift won't cost that much? Besides, it is merely part of a $12 million expansion of the seaside hearth that may very well show up on the Wealth Channel on AT&T TV.

Not even the luxurious Hearst mansion up the way offered that kind of parking space. Romney defends his investment as a way of solving a need to find a place for four cars.

Vanity Fair suggested he could easily ease the expense by getting rid of a few cars. In my case, there are days when I wonder if can I ease my 19-year-old station wagon from the garage to the driveway. I know. Envy is a terrible thing.

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OK, surely you have heard about the broccoli thing. That was how Justice

Scalia during the health care reform hearings went about contending that if you can order people to buy health insurance, you can also mandate them to buy broccoli. (Even I would oppose that!) But what else can you expect from the right-wing political majority on the court that has some other weird stories in its resume. Justice Thomas, we are told, was struck dumb when he was appointed to the court and hasn't uttered a word from the bench in several years. Thomas, who once went to a seminary to prepare for a life as a Catholic priest, only needs to lean slightly forward for a signal from Scalia on how to vote. Then there is Justice Alito, who has shown up at several right-wing political fund raisers as one of their stars. When confronted by reporters, he shushed them by saying he didn't think his presence at these fund-raisers was "important". We are left to imagine how it would have gone for a Democratic justice who took a table at an Obama fund-raiser this year.

* * * * *

Finally, the pundits are declaring Romney to be the Republican nominee-designate if he wins the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday. Everyone in the GOP establishment has been rushing to his side to endorse him these days. It's rumored that even Lincoln and

Reagan endorsed him posthumously. Meantime, there was his nemesis Santorum insisting on TV Sunday that he was going all the way to the convention. Hence, today's appropriate painting (above) of Marc Chagall's "Two Clowns on Horseback". Giddyup!

When U.S. Supreme Court justices come to dinner...

AFTER THE SUPREME COURT handed the 2000 election to George Bush, and after its game-changing Citizens United decision that turned over elections to the highest corporate bidders, I had hoped that the conservative-majority guys would finally behave themselves and get back to serving us as apolitical justices. I missed that one by a mile. Indeed, they aren't even bashful these days about their narrow political interests as guests at right-wing fundraisers - places the robed strict constructionists oughtn't to be."

There have been numerous reports of three of the justices making their rounds at these mega-cash registers for sympathetic candidates. Interestingly, the three - Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas - didn't show up at President Obama's State of the Union speech, dismissing these annual rituals as political events. On the other hand, Scalia and Thomas found time to speak at a political fund-raiser organized by Koch Industries - a leading Tea party contributor. Alito made it to an event sponsored by the Manhattan Institute, an honored think tank in the conservative pantheon.

And now, it's discovered that Thomas failed to report his wife's previous job, even though he is required to do so by law. (Until 2007 she had been on the payroll of the conservative Heritage

Foundation, earning $686,589.) Thomas said his failure to list the job - actual earnings not required - was inadvertent for several years because of a misunderstanding and more or less promised he would do better in the future. Maybe he needs better law clerks to explain the complicated forms to him.

Legal experts say, yeah, he broke the law, but nothing would likely come of it, Thomas being a Supreme Court Justice and all that.

Does anybody recall what President Nixon said when David Frost challenged him to explain why he approved of clearly illegal wiretapping? OK, I'll remind you:

"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."

Should we now add Clarence Thomas to the untouchables?

y ougers.