The Intellectual Collapse of the Roberts Court

Nino Scalia: "Let's let Sammy write the opinion. He'll be fucked for life!"

I got from news analysis making the rounds that the Hobby Lobby opinion was bound to be written by Justice Samuel Alito because it was his turn. He rose to the occasion with one of the most indefensibly idiotic assertions in the history of Supreme Court jurisprudence -- not that I'm an expert. I doubt, however, that it takes an expert to parse Alito's nonsense. Here, then, is Alito concerning the rationale for allowing a religious belief to trump third-party rights:

It is not for us to say that their religious beliefs are mistaken or insubstantial.

Let me translate as best I can:

There is no rational test for religious beliefs, therefore, we, the Catholic male majority of the Supreme Court, cannot require even vague plausibility for religious beliefs to be acceptable enough to deem a federal law as unenforceable.

I could have been more concise:

My Hobby Lobby opinion is irrational, but so is religion! Our forefathers should have thought of that!

A rational takeaway? What else but that five Catholic conservative Republican men, also known as the ruling majority on the Court, are intellectually bankrupt?

Parsing yet again: Alito asserts that, because this is about religious faith, "But it ain't rational!" is a meaningless objection.

History will not be kind. But for now, we are so fucked.

"Fine, so I used to be witty and acerbic. Now, I'm irrational and increasingly
baffling in my legal analysis. So Sam Alito is an intellectual monster, huh??"