Another One Down...

William Rehnquist is dead. Some highlights of his career:

"Rehnquist was the force behind the court's push for greater states' rights. The chief justice has been the leader of five conservatives, sometimes called "the Rehnquist five," who generally advocate limited federal government interference.

Those five — Rehnquist and O'Connor, Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Thomas — have voted together to strike down federal laws intended to protect female victims of violent crime and keep guns away from schools, on grounds that those issues were better dealt with at the local level. They split, however, in a recent decision upholding the federal government's right to ban sick people from smoking marijuana even in states that have laws allowing the treatment.

The Rehnquist five were together in the Bush v. Gore decision, which critics predicted would tarnish the court's hard-won luster. The closing paragraph of a book Rehnquist wrote on the court's history may stand as his answer to criticism....

He had deflected criticism about his views on race during his 1971 confirmation, and the one 15 years later when he became chief justice. As a law clerk to Justice Robert Jackson, Rehnquist wrote memos in 1952 that appeared to suggest Jackson should oppose Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark ruling that declared public school segregation unconstitutional.

As chief justice, Rehnquist drew complaints when he led a group of lawyers and judges in a rendition of "Dixie" at a conference in Virginia in 1999. He did not respond to a black lawyers' organization that called the song an offensive "symbol of slavery and oppression."

Burn in Hell, you fucking disgrace.