Trump’s electoral fiction floats free of verifiable reality. It is defended not so much by facts as by claims that someone else has made some claims. The sensibility is that something must be wrong because I feel it to be wrong, and I know others feel the same way. When political leaders such as Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan spoke like this, what they meant was: You believe my lies, which compels me to repeat them. Social media provides an infinity of apparent evidence for any conviction, especially one seemingly held by a president.
[Justice] Scalia tends to lampoon his enemies. A “ ‘living-Constitution’ judge,” he explained, is a “happy fellow who comes home at night to his wife and says, ‘The Constitution means exactly what I think it ought to mean!’ ” By contrast, Scalia said, he was sometimes forced by the rigors of originalist methodology to make decisions that lead to consequences he finds repugnant.
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