I’m going to disagree with Jeff Toobin on this one. The comment on the protester seems pretty innocuous to me. I take it that Scalia was joking that it was “refreshing” to have a right wing person disrupting the Court rather than the left-wing campaign finance protestors who have repeatedly been in Court recently.
I have no doubt where Justice Scalia will fall in the same sex marriage cases, and it is a place with which I will strongly disagree. But I would not see a broader cultural or political statement in Justice Scalia’s refreshing comment. He’s the Supreme Court’s class clown who just can’t help himself with the wise crack at oral argument.