Psst...hey DUmmies:
Although Dionne seems unaware of the fact, Scalia’s oral bench statement was drawn directly from his dissent. If Dionne has actually read Scalia’s dissent (available beginning at the 30th page of the Court’s set of opinions), he gives no sign of having done so. (He links to, and quotes from, the bench statement.) Had he done so, he would discover (slip op. at 19-21) that Scalia is responding to the government’s argument that the Obama administration’s enforcement priorities ought to be given weight in the preemption analysis.
Further, far from “questioning President Obama’s decision,†Scalia is expressly agnostic on it, as language that Dionne quotes but doesn’t grasp (“The president has said that the new program is ‘the right thing to do’…. Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think soâ€) shows. Scalia’s point (which, again, Dionne quotes but doesn’t grasp) is that what matters is whether Arizona’s law conflicts with federal immigration law, not whether it conflicts with the Obama administration’s enforcement priorities. There may well be reasonable grounds for contesting this legal proposition, but Dionne’s contention that Scalia was being “blatantly political†in making it is woefully ill-informed.
http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/304185/ej-dionne-s-anti-scalia-tirade-ed-whelan