Antonin Scalia: Conservative Jurist Par-Excellence

Can you believe that this clown is even sitting on our nation’s highest court? That gesture, that gesture is not a simple waving of the hand to say hello. No, that’s Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, as he left mass on Sunday, responding to a journalist that asked him if he would recuse himself from an upcoming case before the Supreme Court. The judge made it plainly clear that he couldn’t care less about his critics; moreover, judge Scalia,
more or less, told the journalists to go blow herself.

Since judge Scalia so ably communicated his displeasure of his critics, the Boston Herald went to press with the story and subsequently published the image that you see on this page — by the way, Peter Smith, a freelance photographer and an assistant professor of photojournalism at Boston University, whom captured judge Scalia blowing off critics, was fired by the church for releasing the image. Here’s how Peter Smith describes what he saw:

Smith was working as a freelance photographer for the Boston archdiocese’s weekly newspaper at a special Mass for lawyers Sunday when a Herald reporter asked the justice how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality as a judge given his public worship.

“The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, ‘To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’ ” punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said.

The Italian phrase means “(expletive) you.” [ Boston Herald, March 30, 2006 ]

That’s right, one of the nine judges of the Supreme Court, the conservative bulwark, in fact, is telling his critics to go screw themselves. All right, all right, granted, so it’s hard to get all worked up about a hand gesture, even when accompanied with a well delivered vaffanculo by judge Scalia; after all, our vice-president “I-shot-a-man-in-the-face”-“go-fuck-yourself”-Cheney has set the bar kinda low.

Does any body still remember Bush’s campaign pledge back in 2000:

The ability to restore honor and integrity to the White House – The moment that usually draws the greatest applause in Mr Bush’s campaign speeches comes when the Republican nominee talks about bringing dignity and character back to the White House.

What a joke the Bush Administration and the entire culture it ushered in has turned out to be.

Photo Gallery: Rachel Papo – Serial No. 3817131

Check out this beautiful photo gallery of Israeli girls serving their compulsory military service:

Rachel Papo’s images achieve everything that she set out to do:

I decided to portray female soldiers in Israel during their mandatory military service as a way for me to revisit my own experience. I served as a photographer in the Israeli Air Force between 1988-1990. It was a period marked by continuous depression and extreme loneliness, and at the time I was too young to understand these emotions. Through a series of images showing female soldiers in army bases and outside, individually or in groups, I attempt to reveal a facet of this experience that is generally overlooked by the global community.

Rather than portraying the soldier as heroic, confident, or proud, my images disclose a complexity of emotions. The soldier is often caught in a transient moment of self-reflection, uncertainty, a break from her daily reality, as if questioning her own identity and state of contradiction. She is a soldier in uniform but at the same time she is a teenage girl who is trying to negotiate between these two extreme dimensions. She is in an army base surrounded by hundreds like her, but underneath the uniform there is an individual that wishes to be noticed.

Jill Carroll is Released

82 days after being kidnapped in Iraq, journalists Jill Carroll has been released! All the best to her and her family.

American journalist Jill Carroll, abducted in early January by gunmen in Baghdad, was released to a Sunni Arab political party in the capital Thursday morning after 82 days in captivity.

“I was treated very well. That’s important people know that,” she said in an interview broadcast by the Iraqi Islamic Party. “They never said they would hit me, never threatened me in any way. I was just happy to be free, and I want to be with my family.” [Washington Post, March 30, 2006]