Scalito, eh?

It turns out that all Italian Catholic Supreme Court justices do not think alike. From Justice Scalia's majority opinion in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (striking down the California violent video game law):

Justice Alito has done considerable independent research to identify games in which "the violence is astounding." "Victims are dismembered, decapitated, disemboweled, set on fire, and chopped into little pieces. . . . Blood gushes, splatters, and pools." Justice Alito recounts all these disgusting video games in order to disgust us--but disgust is not a valid basis for restricting expression. And the same is true of Justice Alito's description of those video games he has discovered that have a racial or ethnic motive for their violence--" 'ethnic cleansing' [of] . . . African Americans, Latinos, or Jews."

To what end does he relate this? Does it somehow increase the "aggressiveness" that California wishes to suppress? Who knows? But it does arouse the reader's ire, and the reader's desire to put an end to this horrible message. Thus, ironically, Justice Alito's argument highlights the precise danger posed by the California Act: that the ideas expressed by speech--whether it be violence, or gore, or racism--and not its objective effects, may be the real reason for governmental proscription.

Unusually spunky for a majority opinion smacking down a concurrence. Back in the old neighborhood, this would end with someone being kneecapped. Applause for Scalia. He's hopelessly backward about gays and weed, but no one is all of a piece.