Justice Antonin Scalia

The Washington Post's Robert Barnes writes about the glee that has resulted from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's mistake in his dissent in a case about the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate pollution.

Scalia said the EPA had advocated a cost-conscious approach to setting air quality standards in a 2001 case, but it was the industry that asked the court to consider costs. Scalia's opinion later was updated.

"One of the things that made the overheated takedowns so gleeful was Scalia’s reputation as the court’s most acidic — and funny — writer," Barnes writes.

Concern over the lack of civics education and civic engagement is a common issue for bar associations, but U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has a twist on that concern, the Chicago Tribune reports: "Civics education in the United States faces a crisis because of a drift away from the ideals held by the nation's founders, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Friday in Chicago. Scalia said that among his concerns is the removal of religious ideals from public education. 'Let me make clear that I am not saying that every good American must believe in God,' Scalia said in a speech at the Union League Club. 'What I am saying, however, is that it is contrary to our founding principles to insist that government be hostile to religion. Or even to insist, as my court, alas, has done, that government cannot favor religion over nonreligion.'"

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was in Hawaii this week, the Associated Press reports. When asked about Korematsu v. United States,  in which the Supreme Court upheld the convictions of two Japanese Americans for not reporting to an internment camp, Scalia said that it was wrongly decided. "But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again," Scalia said, according to the AP. Scalia cited a Latin expression meaning, "In times of war, the laws fall silent," the AP further reported.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said in remarks today that the judiciary will ultimately decide the legality of wiretapping by the National Security Agency, but that is not necessarily a good thing, the Associated Press reported. Further, Scalia said that the Supreme Court held in the 1920s that there was no constitutioanl bar to wiretaps "because conversations were not explicitly granted privacy protection under the Fourth Amendment, but then the Warren court recognized '“there’s a generalized right of privacy that comes from penumbras and emanations, blah blah blah, garbage,”' the AP reported. So, instead of the more democratic branches of government directly elected by the people deciding the issue, Scalia said that leaves the judiciary with that ultimatey responsibility, the AP reported.