it's interesting that people characterize Scalia as conservative on bill of rights issues. He actually is pretty damn absolutist on the scope of most of the rights in the first ten amendments, including some rights that a lot of people don't consider sexy, like sixth amendment confrontation rights, right to trial by jury, and things like that. He said people are allowed to burn a flag under the first amendment and there's not a damn thing the govt can do about it.
Yet another reason why conventional political bean counting as applied to the Supreme Court makes very little sense.
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