It never entered my mind to suspect foul play. It's Monday morning as I'm writing this, so I suspect that there will be more developments in the story between now and Tuesday when this gets posted. We may never know what the truth of the matter is. The media committed to a natural causes narrative from the start. This seems normal, after all the man was 79 years old.
Nobody is surprised when a guy that old dies in his sleep, because, its normal. Then the story comes out that he was found with a pillow over his head. Was he suffocated or does he sometimes cover his head when he sleeps? We don't know. So then the questions start: What about a toxicology report? Was there bruising on the face and head? Why isn't an autopsy scheduled?
I'm going to take a crack at the last question first. It's 9:00 am EST on Monday morning when that question first gets consideration in the media. That means its still 8:00 am in Texas and the coroner hasn't had his second cup of coffee yet. Over the weekend Scalia's remains were found, the authorities notified, the body picked up and sent to the funeral home. With me so far? That's what normally happens when a 79 year old man is found dead in his bed with no apparent evidence of foul play.
That's it. This isn't NCIS or some crime drama on TV. You don't have all the reports and investigation done in 20 minutes or less. Since Scalia was a major public figure you can bet the sheriff, the police chief, etc. all got the call that he died. They all asked the same question of the first responders and morgue monkey that picked up the body. That question was, "what do you think?". Which was answered, "79 year old male, dead in bed, a brief clinical description of the state of the corpse" and that was that. Business as usual till Monday morning when they open the office at 9:00.
It's now Monday morning and the chief job of the media is to sell attention. The biggest story of the weekend is the death of a Supreme Court Justice. "Was he wacked?" is a great question. It impels foul play without slandering anyone. It generates attention by titillating our fears and suspicions.
Just last week the president received a defeat on his climate change agenda in the Supreme Court. He told the public not to worry about the court. He was going to do what he wanted anyway. If you are on the Right, this looks like a smoking gun.
If you are on the left you down play the situation and stick to the narrative. That's what the play book says. That is SOP.
Is there a conspiracy? The right is afraid there is. They also know that this is the most unlawful administration in American history with no regards for any law or due process. So a handful on the fringes will pipe in with this or that bit of evidence. Nothing will be conclusive.
Is there a conspiracy? The left knows it's entirely possible and their side is the beneficiary, so they will serve their interest by covering up and sticking to the narrative. Nothing will be conclusive.
Some try to tell me
Thoughts they cannot defend,
Just what you want to be
You will be in the end,
Thoughts they cannot defend,
Just what you want to be
You will be in the end,
Beauty I'd always missed
With these eyes before,
Just what the truth is
I can't say anymore.
If Scalia was a regular guy with no ties to politics or national policy, no one would question how his death and remains were handled in Texas. But he isn't a regular guy and it was amateur hour over the weekend. The questions have been asked. We won't have entirely satisfactory answers. Now whatever is done will be too little and too late.
The story for public consumption was originally he was there to quail hunt. Turns out now that he had a fairly serious shoulder issue which would have prevented him from shooting any kind of shotgun, due to the kickback from the shotgun.
ReplyDeleteThen there are the significant issues that the court was dealing with this session, AA for one, IIRC Obamacare or something similar for another.
Then there was the judge who did not look at any evidence, yet she decided that he died of natural causes. The man was a Supreme Court justice who died during one of the more important sessions of the past decade and it is being brushed off as a heart attack.
When we have been dealing with all of the feculent manure of the past 8 years, on a daily basis, we have a right to start wondering what the heck exactly is going on with the Obama administration.
That's the problem with running the most corrupt administration in history. Folks will have every reason to think that something fishy is going on. The fact is, there is plenty of probably cause to fuel the fire.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing, Obama might not have ordered a hit, or he might have, we will never know. Even if he didn't, and there was foul play, it could have been an independent action done for the benefit of the team. The rest of the lefty team can be counted on to play ball and spin the situation for the best. They have no interest in discovering the truth.
That would be where Valerie Jarrett would come into play. She has been his behind the scenes Svenghali since he was elected.
DeleteNothing gets past her to him without approval. NOTHING.
Was Scalia "whacked"?
ReplyDeleteI honestly doubt it; there were far more important issues in the recent past (gay marriage, carbon emissions) over which to kill him than what is currently on the slate. The problem here is that there is always going to be something important to somebody, such that the death of any Justice at any time from any cause is going to be reason for speculation of a conspiracy. The only time I could see when a simple death of an active Justice would be considered just a death (and not a murder) is if the guy had his heart attack outside in broad daylight in front of a hundred witnesses with cell phone videos. And even then the conspiracy theorists would start speculating on whether or not TPTB slipped him something to trigger it.
The 'death by pillow' idea doesn't hold because he apparently didn't suffer any of the typical signs of suffocation (congestion and cyanosis of the skin and lips, petechiae in the eyes and gums, etc). If these signs had been there, there would have been more cause to perform an autopsy than otherwise*. And what kind of shitty assassin would leave the pillow covering the victim's face, anyway?
I remain skeptical of the skeptics.
* Of course, the lack of publically-released photos of the body will lead many to speculate that these symptoms were present but are also being covered up. And if photos are then released, it will be alleged that they were photoshopped, and so on, and so on, with each subsequent cycle of evidence. Such is the nature of conspiracy apologists.
A low level judge made her decisions about cause of death without even reviewing the evidence or ordering an autopsy. Some signs of suffocation are not visible to the naked eye without an autopsy.
DeleteWho does that for a super high profile death unless there are dodgy circs involved somehow? Like supposedly he was there to quail hunt yet his shoulder prevented him actually shooting. I don't own a tin foil hat, but this was mismanaged worse than the JonBenet Ramsey case in Denver.
I don't know if you're a bird hunter but not all shot guns have a lot of recoil.
DeleteQuail are little tiny birds that are often hunted with smaller guns that have very little recoil. A man with a bum shoulder that might not be able to handle a 12 gauge, would be perfectly comfortable hunting quail with a 16 gauge (my favorite) a 20 or a 410. In bird hunting circles there are men who won't hunt quail with anything larger than a 28 gauge, which recoils slightly harder than a 22.
So even though he might not have been able to handle a heavy 12, he may very well have been out hunting. As an avid bird hunter myself, if I was pushing 80 and had a chance to walk behind my dogs, I'd do it, even if I wasn't up to filling my limit.
They probably were on a family hinting trip, just like they said they were. That part of the story make perfect sense.
Susan: "A low level judge made her decisions about cause of death without even reviewing the evidence..."
DeleteThat isn't actually true. She reviewed what evidence she had that was provided by the onsite law enforcement team, and she had spoken to Scalia's physician over the phone about his other health issues. If the state of Texas determines that this is sufficient to adjudicate the outcome, I can't say they're wrong.
(Which, I might point out, is more than the coroner did in the case of my wife's grandmother who died of natural causes in our home -- and who also did not perform an autopsy. Except the guy that determined her cause of death from our testimony alone didn't even have the benefit of talking to a doctor because she never went to one. I think the only time a doctor probably ever got anywhere near her was when he/she was delivering my mother-in-law, an only child.
And again when my father-in-law died, in our home. The fact that he was under hospice care was sufficient for the coroner to skip the autopsy -- even though we had plenty of prescribed morphine with which to kill him.)
It would seem that only Scalia's active standing as a SCOTUS judge is the sole criteria for demanding an autopsy -- something which his own family even declined.
I know, I know, they're in on it too... or they're being pressured somehow... or bribed...or blind...or whatever. Absent any evidence in support of any of these, I think I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. ;)
"Some signs of suffocation are not visible to the naked eye without an autopsy."
But the ones I mentioned are, and they are almost always present...and there apparently weren't any of those outward indications or the LE people would have seen them, as I noted previously. They aren't stupid.
Put it another way...if there's no outward sign of brain hemorrhage, should they also do an autopsy to see if he was poisoned?
And all of this is only because of the pillow? Then I have to ask, why is a political assassin who is so adept at getting around security (the absence of SS agents doesn't mean there was no security) and pulling off this difficult killing with no other criminal sign whatsoever, who would then smooth out the bedding to remove any possible trace of struggle, end up being stupid enough to leave the pillow over the guy's face?
It defies reason.
"Like supposedly he was there to quail hunt yet his shoulder prevented him actually shooting."
More than once I have gone hunting and fishing with family or friends, and never touched a gun or rod. It's called "male bonding".
Another possibility (and quite plausible) is that he had planned the vacation far in advance, and the injury happened in between the planning and the going. If I had planned such a trip, a mere shoulder injury wouldn't prevent me from going even if I wouldn't actually be doing any shooting (and such things have happened to me on camping trips in the past).
TL;DR: Even if an autopsy had been performed, a negative outcome toward murder would not be sufficient to satisfy the diehard conspiracy theorists as the coroner would then be in on it, too.
Res Ipsa: "A man with a bum shoulder that might not be able to handle a 12 gauge, would be perfectly comfortable hunting quail with a 16 gauge (my favorite) a 20 or a 410."
DeleteTrue, but then it would depend on the nature of the exact injury. If it's the type where you can't actually lift either the stock or the barrel high enough to use, it could still prevent shooting anything beyond a Harry Whittington.
True the injury might have kept him from any shooting. As a bird hunter, I've gone "hunting" many times where I wasn't concerned about filling my bag limit. I've gone just to work the dogs and guide others etc. Hunting isn't always about killing something or shooting a gun.
DeleteI hear ya on the endless rounds of "evidence". The biggest problem was that the "B" Team was handling things in Texas last weekend. An autopsy would have put it all to rest before it got started.
ReplyDeleteAs noted elsewhere, the family didn't want an autopsy performed. I think they probably knew if he would have been prone to a heart attack or not and were satisfied with the official explanation.
DeleteFollow-up from the family:
Delete"Our family just has no doubt he died of natural causes. And we accept that. We’re praying for him. We ask others to accept that and pray for him."
So it turns out that when it was reported his body was found with a pillow 'over his head', they didn't mean 'covering his face'; they meant it was physically located between his head and the headboard ('over' in the vertical dimension since he was laying down), as clarified by the man who actually said it:
ReplyDelete"We discovered the judge in bed, a pillow over his head. His bedclothes were unwrinkled,” he told the San Antonio Express-News.
Poindexter later told CNN the pillow was over his head, "not over his face as some have been saying."
"The pillow was against the headboard and over his head when he was discovered," he added. "He looked like someone who had had a restful night's sleep. There was no evidence of anything else."
So the single physical reason for possibly suspecting foul play didn't actually exist, after all.