The death of Antonin Scalia keeps paying dividends. It’s day 131 of the Court playing shorthanded, and yet palpably smarter and more, how shall I say it? Human!

Btw, did anyone think the GOP wouldn’t be able to string out the Garland nomination until after the election? How many times can we assert that they have to shame? Their conservatism is the most important thing in their lives, and like religious faith, it needs no positive reinforcement to remain unchallenged, it survives all evidence to the contrary. It rises above the business of the country under all circumstances. There’s no compromise. Like zombies, you just have to destroy (unelect) them.

The Supreme Court, with a 4-3 majority including Kennedy (excluding Kagan who recused herself because she had defended racial quotas for the Obama administration) upheld the affirmative action program at the University of Texas at Austin.

Kagan almost certainly would have voted with the majority, had she not recused, but she has ethical chops, unlike some of her brethren.

The story here being Kennedy, the increasingly rare “swing man” rejecting the Roberts/Alito/Thomas wing’s knee jerk conservatism that simplistically says, “the way to stop racism is to stop racism,” so you can’t have racial, gender or economic quotas or set asides.  Just accept people on the basis of their qualifications, period. And if that means going back to campuses that are overwhelmingly, homogeneously white, Christian and privileged in a country that decidedly isn’t, that’s just justice.

This is the case that during oral argument a still living Scalia questioned whether affirmative action was even good for minorities.

“There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas, where they do not do well,” Scalia said, “as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school … a slower-track school where they do well.” His comment drew audible gasps inside the courtroom.