Sonia Sotomayor Wanted To Smack Scalia With Baseball Bat, But Only When He Was Talking

And none of that 'calling balls and strikes' nonsense from you, Mr. Chief Justice...

Oh, come and see the violence inherent in the system! In a Q & A session at the University of Minnesota Monday, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor admitted that every now and then, Antonin Scalia would say something on the bench that left her wanting to take a baseball bat to him, just like about half the people who knew anything about him. Happily, sporting equipment, like TV cameras, is barred from the Court to prevent this very thing.

When the conversation turned to Scalia, she said his death was like losing a member of the family, although she offered no insights as to how exactly Obama did it. She also admitted that, as at any family holiday dinner, she occasionally wanted to brain Scalia when he got mouthy:

“There are things he’s said on the bench where if I had a baseball bat, I might have used it,” she said.

Nonetheless, Sotomayor emphasized the need for civility, and said sometimes blistering dissents offered the losing side a chance to vent:

“If we’ve lost anything, it’s remembering that differences don’t stand, necessarily, on ill will,” she said. “If you keep that in mind, you can resolve almost any issue, because you can find that common ground to interact with each other.”

So you should almost never have to resort to the baseball bat, for reals. At Slate, Mark Joseph Stern is pretty sure he knows at least one Scalia comment that may have had Sotomayor reaching for her metaphorical Louisville Slugger:

I’d bet good money that Sotomayor was thinking specifically about Scalia’s comments during arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas, an affirmative action case. Scalia declared that many black students might not belong at a great school like the University of Texas, because they “come from lesser schools” and may get “pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.” The justice advised that black students might be better off at “a less advanced school, a slower-track school.”

Ultimately, there was no need to hit Scalia with either a bat or a dissent, since his death in February left the court with a majority in favor of upholding Texas's affirmative action law that discriminates against mediocre white kids.

The takeaway here is that liberals are by nature prone to violence, so Donald Trump must be allowed to appoint more even-tempered people to the Supreme Court than this violent, temperamental Sotomayor lady. Good thing Sotomayor didn't try to float her little violent fantasy at Wonkette -- we've got rules, after all.

[ Slate / Pioneer Press ]