In an excellent piece from the New York Times, Sean Wilentz looks at recent Scalia writings and pulls together some of Scalia's worldview that should chill anyone who actually loves the USA and reveres its Constitution.

Mr. Scalia sees submission [to religion] as desirable -- and possibly the very definition of faith. He quotes St. Paul, "For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God."

"The Lord," Mr. Scalia explained in Chicago, "repaid -- did justice -- through His minister, the state."

This view, according to Mr. Scalia, once represented the consensus "not just of Christian or religious thought, but of secular thought regarding the powers of the state." He said, "That consensus has been upset, I think, by the emergence of democracy." And now, alarmingly, Mr. Scalia wishes to rally the devout against democracy's errors. "The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible," he said in Chicago.

So let me get this straight -- we need to amend the Constitution to put "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, but the idea that people of faith should work to undo democracy is "strict constructionism?"

The prayer they should be teaching in school is "God save us from these people."

Sunday night through all day Monday, though I seem to be coming out of it now. Every few months I get run down and have to take a day or two slowly to recuperate, and that's just an occupational hazard. This time, though, I had a fever. I haven't had a fever in seven years.

Mom, always helpful, concluded it was either tonsilitis or strep throat. It now seems to be neither. The fever has broken, and eating soup and drinking tea and cocoa are helping the throat. I couldn't sit in the office most of Monday, but now it's not much of a problem.

It's very weird. I'm not used to being sick.