If you weren't in a coma on February 13th, 2016, and you occasionally leave the TV news playing in the background, you were probably surprised to hear about the death of Supreme Court judge and political dinosaur Antonin Scalia.
Goodnight, sweet prince.
Justice Scalia's sudden death is obviously a huge tragedy for his family and friends, but it's also a pretty huge deal for the rest of the USA. The Supreme Court doesn't just exist to keep DC's robe dry cleaners in business; at any time, the Supreme Court has the power to strike down, uphold, or change the application of laws based on how they interpret the constitution. We're talking about a document that was drafted at a time when people set whale flesh on fire to read at night and treated public executions as fun family outings, but 200 years from now, when America is trying to decide how to legislate people uploading their brains onto computers and transcending the physical world, they'll deal with it by asking nine random lawyers what a bunch of dead 18th century politicians would have wanted. And that's why it's crucial that Scalia gets replaced with someone the USA can count on.
