Scalia is a fucking troll in so many ways.

Was Scalia hoping he'd say "It's always been unconstitutional" or something, and he had a witty rejoinder for it, or was he just expressing that there's nothing in the Constitution that specifically says MARRIAGE CANNOT BE WITHHELD? It seems like he was waiting to be like OH HEY ACTUALLY THERE'S NOTHING IN THERE THAT SAYS THAT CASE CLOSED SPRING BREAK EVERYONE.

As if anyone needs to waste their time attempting to convince Scalia of anything.

@2 Scalia was clearly trolling and baiting Olson to say the Constitution is a living document or something like that. At that point Scalia would have taken off his shoe and banged it on the bench shouting "It's dead, dead, dead".

Maddow is right, Scalia is an internet troll.

I totally read that entire Scalia/Olsen exchange in Nina Totenberg's voice without even realizing it until I was well past halfway through.

@2/3-- Totally. Olsen doesn't answer the question very well (or, really, at all), and he sort of fumbles, but it seems like he is very aware that he's being baited and won't give Scalia what he wants.

@5 - that's exactly how it read to me too.

@5 I thought the question came as a total surprise to Olsen, because it hadn't been raised by the California Supremes or by the 9th Circuit. I can't think of a case where the moment that an act "became unconstitutional" mattered. Certainly there was plenty of race-based discrimination upheld by the federal courts after the Equal Protection Clause/14th Amendment was ratified. Have you heard of Plessy v. Ferguson, Scalia? What a troll.

@5/7 Scalia is well know to be a believer in the Constitution being a dead document (thus the bait being laid and then avoided by the attorney). Which means he thinks we should read it exactly as these long dead white guys (some of whom owned other human beings) meant it at the time. He conveniently ignores the fact that the writers/signers themselves disagreed about what they wrote right to their death beds.

At last, someone does "but think of the children!" right.

Scalia's opinions belie that he's an intelligent, thoughtful human being. Kinda like my dad and the 2nd Amendment....sigh.

The pretty obvious answer to "when did the prohibition on gay marriage become unconstitutional?" is July, 1868, when the 14th amendment was ratified.

Scalia tortures logic to support his own biases. Of course the country has evolved on issues of slavery, women's rights, minority rights, etc. There is no such thing as a strict constructionist. The world is too different today from when the Constitution was authored. The question before the court is whether our current interpretation of our nation's principals leads us to finally recognize this fundamental human right for all citizens.

It became unconstitutional when the Bill of Rights was adopted. We just didn't know it until recently.

When I was reading that transcript, I couldn't help but notice that Scalia was wasting Olsen's time by harping on his trollery. I wondered if it would be possible to get permission from the other justices to just ignore Scalia and talk over him.

"You're saying that birds evolved from dinosaurs, right? Well, when did that happen? If you can't give me a precise date when some animal stopped being a dinosaur and started being a bird, then it can't have happened." Fallacious logic, thy name is Scalia. It's a bird now, fucktard. Deal with it. Who cares about the precise moment that happened?