Issue #301
Scalia’s major screwup: How SCOTUS just gave liberals a huge gift
With an otherwise awful Hobby Lobby ruling, right-wing judges just said I don’t have to pay for warfare! My husband, Tom, and I have been dancing gleefully with our Corgi Bessie in our modest home every evening since the Hobby Lobby ruling, because it’s clear that the conservative majority of justices has written itself into a corner in which it cannot refuse religious exemptions from selected tax obligations. The same preponderance of Supremes will have no way out of ruling, for example, that I and fellow Quakers (plus the Amish, Mennonites and others) do not have to pay the roughly 20 percent of our taxes that goes toward supporting the U.S. military. I’m firing up little Bessie with talk of her own backyard goat herd, and my husband (not a Quaker) with the promise of a 1992 Jaguar and a weekend at the Saratoga racetrack once my tax savings come through. Sarah Ruden, Salon, 7-14-14.