Praise be to Judge Antonin Scalia, for he sees what the rest of us do not. The man for whom nasty, brutish and short is not simply a political formulation, but a mirror image, can look at hundreds of years of slavery, 100 more of legalised segregation and another 50 of daily discrimination and see "racial entitlement" in the basic right to vote in America. I guess it's kind of like the right-wing-clown entitlement enjoyed by our current Supreme Court.

Scalia, of course, was a modern Republican (in a robe) before it was even cool. I mean that in the sense that it's clear to anyone taking so much as a gander at what animates the GOP of 2013 - as well as Scalia's immunity to legal reasoning - that it's not any set of policy ideas, but simple emotion: all-consuming, blood-curdling, vein-bulging-out-of-the-forehead, Mel Gibson-watching-Fiddler-On-The-Roof ANGER.

Policy-wise, the GOP is an entity that literally lacks any new ideas, has no interest in governing and has rejected all of its own policy positions from as recently as early 2008 as "oh-my-God-we're-all-doomed!" creeping Socialism (see: cap and trade, earned-income tax credit, individual healthcare mandate). Rejecting anything right wingers sneeringly see as created by them-there libruls is the secret handshake of modern conservatism.

You believe in global warming? Then they don't, dang it! You accept that human beings didn't ride saddleback on a brachiosaurus into the Battle of Little Bighorn? They have an App for that, the Creation Museum, where you can ride Noah's Ark with your friendly Triassic-period imperial walker. You offer them way-too-friendly a deal on the budget? Then as Cartman from South Park says, "screw you guys... I'm going home".

The most potent example is the rise and fall of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as conservative heartthrob. He was a Republican Superhero just a year ago, when he headlined what Republican consultant Steve Schmidt called "The Star Wars Bar" of conservative gatherings, the CPAC Conference. Yet, he was quite publicly not invited to this year's CPAC.

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Roberts and Kennedy led the questioning challenging the Voting Right Act. Justice Sonia Sotomayor led the questioning defending it.

Justice Antonin Scalia attributed the continued congressional reauthorization to a perpetual “racial entitlement” and suggested that it will be renewed into “perpetuity” because members of Congress would never let it lapse for fear for political repercussions.

“I don’t think there is anything to gain by any senator by voting against this Act,” Scalia said. “This is not the kind of question you can leave to Congress. They’re going to lose votes if they vote against the Voting Rights Act. Even the name is wonderful.”

The purpose of Section 5 was to proactively quash voter discrimination where it’s most likely to emanate, but conservatives argue that it has outlived its purpose and now discriminates against the mostly southern regions covered.

If we learned anything from 2010 and 2012, I'd like to think we learned that not only is Section 5 critical to holding free and fair elections, but that it should be expanded, not tossed out. Justice Scalia's remarks reinforce how important it is that this provision be preserved, since he sees voting rights as some sort of "entitlement" --at least, for some people.

Update: Here is the transcript of his remarks, courtesy of Daily Kos:

JUSTICE SCALIA: ...This Court doesn't like to get involved in -- in racial questions such as this one. It's something that can be left -- left to Congress.
The problem here, however, is suggested by the comment I made earlier, that the initial enactment of this legislation in a -- in a time when the need for it was so much more abundantly clear was -- in the Senate, there -- it was double-digits against it. And that was only a 5-year term.

Then, it is reenacted 5 years later, again for a 5-year term. Double-digits against it in the Senate. Then it was reenacted for 7 years. Single digits against it. Then enacted for 25 years, 8 Senate votes against it.

And this last enactment, not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same. Now, I don't think that's attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It's been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.

I don't think there is anything to be gained by any Senator to vote against continuation of this act. And I am fairly confident it will be reenacted in perpetuity unless -- unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution. You have to show, when you are treating different States differently, that there's a good reason for it.

That's the -- that's the concern that those of us who -- who have some questions about this statute have. It's -- it's a concern that this is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress. There are certain districts in the House that are black districts by law just about now. And even the Virginia Senators, they have no interest in voting against this. The State government is not their government, and they are going to lose -- they are going to lose votes if they do not reenact the Voting Rights Act.

Even the name of it is wonderful: The Voting Rights Act. Who is going to vote against that in the future?

Yeah, the name is wonderful. It's the foundation of that thing we call democracy.

I read in wonderment this morning the absurd comments made by Justice Scalia in which he equated homosexuality to murder. It's all a big joke to get under your skin so he can make a point about his feeling against gays.

Are you laughing yet?

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia compared homosexuality and murder on Monday as he argued at a Princeton seminar that elected bodies should be allowed to regulate actions they see as immoral. "If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?" Scalia said, according to The Associated Press.

The justice's comments are sure to draw attention with the Supreme Court set to enter the debate over gay marriage in its coming term.
Scalia was asked about controversial comments he had made in the past that argued that the constitutionality of subjects like the death penalty, abortion or sodomy laws were all "easy" to decide by considering the Constitution as understood by its writers.

Scalia said that while he did not believe such hyperbole was "necessary," he did think it was "effective" in forwarding his argument that legislatures should be allowed to ban acts they believe to be immoral.

"It's a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the 'reduction to the absurd,' " Scalia said.

Scalia said he did not equate homosexuality morally with murder, but was making a point about the state's ability to regulate them.

"I'm surprised you aren't persuaded," he deadpanned to the audience member who asked him about his views.

With such cruelty on display by a sitting conservative Supreme Court Justice -- especially the man who is considered one of the leading intellectual lights of the conservative bloc of the Court, and the conservative movement generally -- it's no surprise that the same behavior repeatedly shows itself throughout the conservative universe. We know how Scalia will vote regarding the two new cases Chief Roberts has decided to take this year -- one on the Defense of Marriage Act and the other on California's Prop 8.

Society as a whole has long ago given up its persecution of gays for being who they are, but granting certain rights has been an uphill battle and homophobic strands still run deep. You would hope that a Supreme Court Justice might alleviate these tensions instead of exacerbating them. But it's Scalia.

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[H/t Dave]

I got to thinking about Justice Antontin Scalia's train of logic on the Second Amendment, at least as he explained it to the talking heads yesterday:

"We'll see," Scalia replied. "Obviously the amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be carried. It's to 'keep and bear' so it doesn't apply to cannons."

"But I suppose there are handheld rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes that will have to -- it's will have to be decided," he added.

That's it? That's the criteria as to whether or not the right exists to keep and bear a weapon of any kind -- its portability?

Wow. Or as my redneck friends back in Idaho who like to blow shit up would put it: Yeeeeeeeehaw!!!!

Scalia seems to be opening the door not just for legalizing fully automatic guns, but all kinds of weapons. I mean, hell, pipe bombs -- which, let's be honest, really aren't quite up there in the rocket-launcher category in terms of lethality -- are currently illegal as hell and tightly regulated by the ATF and various other federal agencies right now.

So, for that matter, are all various kinds of portable bombs, particularly those made with C-4. They pack quite a kick, too.

And I guess if we continue to follow the impeccable logic of District of Columbia v. Heller, as Scalia is doing here, then we'll soon loose the dogs on a whole range of weapons that are currently regulated -- because they certainly can be carried.

But hell, why stop there? Go all the way: Let's establish the right to keep and bear a suitcase nuke, since obviously, it's a kind of arms and you can bear it, too.

In fact, I think every American ought to have a suitcase nuke for their personal use. That way if some nutcase comes into a theater and tries to blow everyone up with a suitcase nuke, the entire audience can set off their own nukes. God Bless Murka!

Thanks, your honor. We owe you one.

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There's something smarmy about a Supreme Court Justice opining from the television interview pit about decisions the court has made. No, not opining. Selling it. The whole nation loathes Citizens United, and so Scalia has taken to the airwaves with the hard sell. Of course, it doesn't hurt that he's also pimping his latest book for CNN viewers to rush right out and buy either.

No, our esteemed Supreme Court Justice actually did an interview with that respected legal scholar celebrity hack guy, Piers Morgan. Yes, surely Piers was up to that challenge. Or not.

After declaring that if he were King, Justice Scalia would ban flag-burning, he moved on to Citizens United, where Piers showed himself completely out of his league. The questions were almost custom-designed to let Scalia convince the adoring public that the Billion Dollar Presidential Campaign is AOK.

Here's the punch line:

SCALIA: You can't separate speech from -- from -- from the money that -- that facilitates the speech.

MORGAN: Can't you?

SCALIA: It's -- it's -- it's utterly impossible.

Piers Morgan let him get away with that! I cannot believe it.

Opening your mouth and saying something is speech. One does not require one billion dollars to say whatever the hell they want. Hey Piers and Justice Scalia, THE MONEY IS THE MICROPHONE. Nowhere does it say in the Constitution that the microphone is an integral part of speech.

What the heck does he think they did in the 17th century, walk around with a boom box?

Why is this so difficult for people to understand. We open our mouths, move our lips, and words come out. That is speech. We light a match, burn a flag, that is expression. Nowhere in either of those two events is it required that three cameras linked to a worldwide satellite hookup be part of the element of speech. Nowhere. It's simply intellectual dishonesty to say otherwise.

It would appear, however, that the good Justice is on the record with regard to disclosure, which makes the constant Republican blockage of the DISCLOSE Act that much more wanton and cynical:

SCALIA: Oh, I certainly think not. I think, as I think the framers thought, that the more speech, the better. Now, you -- you are entitled to know where the speech is coming from, you know, information as -- as to who contributed what. That's something else.

But whether they -- whether they can speak is, I -- I -- I think, clear in -- in the First Amendment.

Funny how we only get the "Money is Speech" part in this country and not the "You're entitled to know where the speech came from, eh? No, not funny. Pathetic.

And with regard to limits on speech, this little gem:

MORGAN: Is there any limit, in your eyes, to freedom of speech?

SCALIA: Oh, of course.

MORGAN: Is -- is there -- what are the limitations in -- to you?

SCALIA: I'm a textualist. And what the provision reads is, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." So they had in mind a particular freedom. What -- what freedom of speech? The freedom of speech that was the right of Englishmen at that time. And--

So I'm curious as to how Justice Scalia reconciles the English Bill of Rights with his interpretation as stated in that answer. Here's the snippet from the English Bill of Rights:

...the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament...

Further, since he specifically referred to "the Englishman", I can only assume he gives no weight to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen adopted by France, which granted far more expansive rights of speech:

The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.

Whatever Justice Scalia sees as the originalist meaning within our Bill of Rights, I simply fail to see how the amplifier becomes speech. Speech is an individual act of forming words and either saying or writing them. Expression is still an individual act, whether it's speech or a human being doing something which speaks to the crowd. But whether it's verbal, written, drawn, painted, acted, sung or danced, the act is the speech, and costs nothing.

The amplifier, on the other hand, costs plenty. It is that failure on Justice Scalia's part that has possibly cost us our democracy.

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When CNN and Fox both sent out text message alerts and erroneously reported that the Supreme Court had overturned the Affordable Care Act, I had my doubts about whether that news came to them in real time. When Tea Party True Wingnut Richard Mourdock published his "Yay! ObamaCare is unconstitutional!" video prematurely a week before the decision was actually released, my hair stood up on end because it dovetailed with numerous celebratory emails I was receiving from different Tea Party groups.

At the time, I speculated that if there was a leak from the court, it came via Ginni Thomas. I remain somewhat convinced that might be the case, since leaking anything from the US Supreme Court is widely considered to be a career-ending act.

Like everything else, though, this Supreme Court is unlike others, and CBS has two confirmed insider reports that Chief Justice John Roberts "flipped" from the conservative decision to overturn the entire law to the final decision which preserved the mandate, and thus the law, under the taxing power of the constitution.

In her report for "Face the Nation" today, reporter Jan Crawford claims to have two sources inside the Court who confirm that Roberts flipped his vote on the mandate (aka Personal Responsibility Donation), much to the chagrin of the other four justices, Kennedy in particular.

Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court's four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama's health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations.

Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy - believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law - led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold.

"He was relentless," one source said of Kennedy's efforts. "He was very engaged in this."

But this time, Roberts held firm. And so the conservatives handed him their own message which, as one justice put it, essentially translated into, "You're on your own."

The conservatives refused to join any aspect of his opinion, including sections with which they agreed, such as his analysis imposing limits on Congress' power under the Commerce Clause, the sources said.

Instead, the four joined forces and crafted a highly unusual, unsigned joint dissent. They deliberately ignored Roberts' decision, the sources said, as if they were no longer even willing to engage with him in debate.

Leaks or speculation?

I might shrug at this report if it had come from any reporter but Jan Crawford. As ThinkProgress notes, Crawford is a conservative reporter with ties to the Federalist Society.

The Federalist Society is a favorite of Justices Scalia and Thomas, so it's not all that difficult to imagine leaks walking out of the court a little ahead of time, especially if those leaks actually spark some news reports that might find their way back to a "wobbly" Chief Justice.

Crawford notes that around Memorial Day, there were many reports emerging in the media about how damaged the Roberts Court would be if they struck down the entire law along partisan lines. Examples here, here, here, here, here and here.

And then on June 2, 2012, this tweet from Barton Gellman, quoting Ramesh Pannoru of National Review:

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There was a time when there were statesmen among the GOP's elected and appointed officials. Men of academic and intellectual accomplishment, such as Dwight Eisenhower, Earl Warren, Nelson Rockefeller and yes, George H.W. Bush. Men and women who didn't brag about not having a passport (the estimable Dick Armey), misunderstand how birth control works or think French kissing was invented in Gaul.

Those were the days.

For the past generation, Republican leaders, talk-show hosts and elected officials have made it their mission to mock anyone of serious intellectual import (liberal elitist!), attack the professional class and wonder aloud about proven science on about as constant a loop as Sex In The City reruns on E!. They have fed at the trough of what the late historian Richard Hofstadter dubbed Anti-intellectualism In American Life.

These decisions have had their consequences. One of the most loyal groups to emerge among what Ruy Teixeira has called The Emerging Democratic Majority are professionals located among "Ideopolis" clusters around the country, usually major cities or college towns and their suburbs. Those who make their living with creativity that requires advanced education, such as software developers, architects and nurses, have abandoned the Grand Old Party in droves. For some reason, seeing gravity as part of suspiciously Semitic War on Christmas, or the principle of inertia as a left-wing plot to grow welfare rolls, just doesn't hold the same chant-"USA"-three-times-and don-an-American-flag-bikini cache for those post-GED.

So it should be no surprise that if you're conservative and you chew your own food, or are willing to try three syllables on for size, you might just become what Paul Krugman refers to as "a stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like."

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Many of you knew I grew up a Catholic. Being Italian with ancestors from Sicily, I had no choice. I'm not hostile to religion per se, but as I've grown older I'm able to make my own mind up on many issues like choice, poverty and the death penalty. Obviously the rise of the religious right in this country has had a huge negative impact overall in American society. The televangelists made billions of dollars off our teevees and turned con men, liars, hypocrites and circus performers into mega millionaires. PFAW was Norman Lear's response after he saw some of these charlatan's become beltway darlings. Antonin Scalia is one of these religious frauds. He espouses that he is a devout Catholic, but when faced with a true tenet of Church doctrine, which is against the death penalty, he shrivels up into a typical movement conservative player:

That Justice Antonin Scalia believes in execution as a moral form of punishment is a well-known fact. That he is an observant, traditional Roman Catholic is, similarly, well-known. That he appears to believe his church supports the death penalty and that he’s willing to stake his job on that conviction is nothing short of astonishing. But there it is: “If I thought that Catholic doctrine held the death penalty to be immoral, I would resign,” he told an audience at Duquesne University Law School last month. “I could not be part of a system that imposes it.”

Let’s start with Scalia’s implication that the Roman Catholic Church supports the death penalty. The evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. In 2005, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released a statement saying that “ending the death penalty would be one important step away from a culture of death and toward building a culture of life.” In 2007, the Vatican said that capital punishment is “an affront to human dignity.” Both Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor, John Paul II, have consistently voiced their opposition to the death penalty and praised governments and leaders who abolished it.

In 2007, Benedict sent a letter through an emissary pleading for clemency in the Georgia capital case of Troy Davis. On Sept. 21, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Davis’s petition for a stay of execution and Davis was killed by injection. One doesn't know how Scalia voted. But in any case, that justice’s professional and democratic obligations overrode the express wishes of his pope that night.

I don't pretend to speak for Catholicism at all or claim to be an expert on it either. I do know that it did help me in my own way, but I like to keep what religious or spiritual beliefs I have to myself. I know atheists who have more common decency in their pinkie finger than many supposedly devout Christians. When I was fifteen I made a conscious decision that the death penalty was nothing more than revenge. If one person was executed unjustly then the whole ball of wax comes crashing down. When I started really dating I began to think about what would happen if I got a a woman pregnant. I decided that I would be a stand up guy and do the right thing no matter what, but I made a decision that a woman should have the right to choose what happens to her own body. I was still going to church on Sunday's with my first girlfriend at the time. If I were to have become a devout Catholic, there would be no room for my feelings about the death penalty. I don't think an average working class Catholic living in America was trying to find loopholes in how the church felt about the death penalty even back then.

On the question of doctrine, though, Scalia is out on a limb, and like a cartoon bunny, he’s sawing it off behind him. In 1995, Pope John Paul II issued an encyclical — an official document of the utmost importance — called “Evangelium Vitae,” in which he weighed in on the death penalty.

“The nature and extent of the punishment,” he wrote, “ought not to go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible to defend society.” In today’s societies, the pope said, “such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”

Death penalty opponents celebrated, saying that “Evangelium Vitae” voiced the church’s near total opposition to capital punishment. Although important theologians disagreed, saying the encyclical falls short of calling the death penalty immoral, Scalia was not one of them.

In a 2002 speech at the University of Chicago, Scalia said “Evangelium Vitae” reversed centuries of Catholic tradition by making capital punishment — his word — “wrong.”

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Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia threw his hat in with the Tea Party camp when he gave a secret talk to Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus.

When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia accepted an invitation from the Tea Party Caucus to brief its members on the Constitution, controversy threatened to engulf the event. But the caucus then broadened the invitation to include Democratic members of Congress, too, and on Monday night there appeared to be more fizzle than sizzle to the charge of unseemly partisanship by a Supreme Court justice.

The event took place behind closed doors, so the only accounts of what happened came from those members of Congress who attended. Tea Party leader Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) portrayed the event as respectful. "We were delighted with his remarks," said Bachmann, noting that both Democrats and Republicans stood up to ask questions after the justice's formal presentation.

For many Republicans, Scalia is a rock star, and they talked about him afterward a bit like teenagers with a crush. Democrats were more reserved, suggesting that much of what Scalia said was, as Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) put it, "very dry."

Bachmann tried to head off any controversy by inviting all members of Congress to the talk, but that was a shallow gesture. Conservatives have been accusing and threatening judges nationally for being activists, but with the revelations about the wife of Clarence Thomas and Scalia, I have to say a larger and darker cloud has been cast over the Supreme Court and their right-wing agenda. We already know that this Republican led Supreme Court have been overturning decades of settled law since Roberts took over and now they are openly flaunting their conservative agenda.

Scalia is right up their alley too, because he doesn't mind executing kids, corrupting presidential elections, turning corporations into people and allowing guns everywhere.

The NY Times ran an editorial blasting Scalia's participation back on December 18th.

When the Tea Party holds its first Conservative Constitutional Seminar next month, Justice Antonin Scalia is set to be the speaker. It was a bad idea for him to accept this invitation. He should send his regrets.

The Tea Party epitomizes the kind of organization no justice should speak to — left, right or center — in the kind of seminar that has been described in the press. It has a well-known and extreme point of view about the Constitution and about cases and issues that will be decided by the Supreme Court.

By meeting behind closed doors, as is planned, and by presiding over a seminar, implying give and take, the justice would give the impression that he was joining the throng — confirming his new moniker as the “Justice from the Tea Party.” The ideological nature of the group and the seminar would eclipse the justice’s independence and leave him looking rash and biased.

There is nothing like the Tea Party on the left, but if there were and one of the more liberal justices accepted a similar invitation from it, that would be just as bad. This is not about who appointed the justice or which way the justice votes. Independence and the perception of being independent are essential for every justice.

--
By presiding over this seminar, Justice Scalia would provide strong reasons to doubt his impartiality when he ruled later on any topic discussed there. He can best convey his commitment to the importance of his independence, and the court’s, by deciding it would be best not to attend.

Common Cause makes a great argument that there's a conflict of interest between Scalia and Thomas over the Citizens United ruling because of their past participation in Koch Brothers' Bircheresque political retreats:

When the conservative financier Charles Koch sent out invitations for a political retreat in Palm Springs later this month, he highlighted past appearances at the gathering of “notable leaders” like Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court.

A leading liberal group is now trying to use that connection to argue that Mr. Scalia and Mr. Thomas should disqualify themselves from hearing campaign finance cases because they may be biased toward Mr. Koch, a billionaire who has been a major player in financing conservative causes.

The group, Common Cause, filed a petition with the Justice Department on Wednesday asking it to investigate potential conflicts by Justices Scalia and Thomas and move for their disqualification from the landmark Citizens United case, in which the court last year lifted a ban on corporate spending on political campaigns. Common Cause also cited the role of Mr. Thomas’s wife, Virginia Thomas, in forming a conservative political group opposed to the Obama administration as grounds for his disqualification.

The petition is a new tack for opponents of the court’s decision in the Citizens United case. Common Cause, by its own acknowledgment, faces a difficult task in getting the justices’ to remove themselves from the case and seeking to have the Citizens United decision itself vacated.

“We’re treading in new territory here for us,” said Arn H. Pearson, Common Cause’s vice president for programs. “But a situation like this raises fundamental questions about public confidence in the Supreme Court.” Officials at Koch Industries, which Mr. Koch leads, did not respond to e-mails and a phone call Wednesday seeking comment on the petition. A spokeswoman at the Supreme Court declined comment...read on

I'll be going to the Common Cause panel discussion and rally against the Koch Brothers Billionaire Caucus next weekend in Palm Springs to represent. Aren't you getting sick and tired of our Democracy being bought and sold to uber-rich megalomaniacs who only care about their free market profits with no concern for the American worker?

The topic of the participation of Scalia and Thomas has come up before. Susie raised these very questions awhile back. Sam Stein wrote about the judges link to this gathering back in 2010.

In October of 2010, The NY Times wrote this: Secretive Republican Donors Are Planning Ahead

Koch Industries, the longtime underwriter of libertarian causes from the Cato Institute in Washington to the ballot initiative that would suspend California’s landmark law capping greenhouse gases, is planning a confidential meeting at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa to, as an invitation says, “develop strategies to counter the most severe threats facing our free society and outline a vision of how we can foster a renewal of American free enterprise and prosperity.”

The invitation, sent to potential new participants, offers a rare peek at the Koch network of the ultra-wealthy and the politically well-connected, its far-reaching agenda to enlist ordinary Americans to its cause, and its desire for the utmost secrecy.

It's basically a strategy session on how to re-brand their John Birch propaganda to many more millions of Americans that haven't already bought into their fraudulent claims.

The Kochs also seek to cultivate Americans’ growing concern about the growth of government: at the most recent meeting, in Aspen, Colo., in June, some of the wealthiest people in America listened to a presentation on “a vision of how we can retain the moral high ground and make the new case for liberty and smaller government that appeals to all Americans, rich and poor.”

The goals for the twice-yearly meetings, the brochure says, include attracting more investors to the cause, but also building institutions “to identify, educate and mobilize citizens” and “fashioning the message and building the education channels to re-establish widespread belief in the benefits of a free and prosperous society.”

And guess who was a key speaker in their Aspen circle jerk hoedown last year?

The participants in Aspen dined under the stars at the top of the gondola run on Aspen Mountain, and listened to Glenn Beck of Fox News in a session titled, “Is America on the Road to Serfdom?” (The title refers to a classic of Austrian economic thought that informs libertarian ideology, popularized by Mr. Beck on his show.)The participants included some of the nation’s wealthiest families and biggest names in finance: private equity and hedge fund executives like John Childs, Cliff Asness, Steve Schwarzman and Ken Griffin; Phil Anschutz, the entertainment and media mogul ranked by Forbes as the 34th-richest person in the country; Rich DeVos, the co-founder of Amway; Steve Bechtel of the giant construction firm; and Kenneth Langone of Home Depot.

The Super Elites are gathering their forces to buy themselves another election in 2012. If you know of any billionaires that want to play for the good guys please ask them to email me. crooksandliars@gmail.com