Scalia Says Religion Infuses U.S. Government and History. Wingnuts are rejoicing everywhere. Run for the hills. He is a nut.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Monday that a religion-neutral government does not fit with an America that reflects belief in God in everything from its money to its military.

“I suggest that our jurisprudence should comport with our actions,” Scalia told an audience attending an interfaith conference on religious freedom at Manhattan’s Shearith Israel synagogue.

…Scalia told them that while the church-and-state battle rages, the official examples of the presence of faith go back to America’s Founding Fathers: the word “God” on U.S. currency; chaplains of various faiths in the military and the legislature; real estate tax-exemption for houses of worship _ and the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Last year, Scalia removed himself from the Supreme Court’s review of whether “under God” should be in the Pledge of Allegiance, after mentioning the case in a speech and complaining that courts are stripping God from public life.

“None of this is compatible with what we say when we express the so-called principle of neutrality,” Scalia said.

He could be tapped as a possible nominee for chief justice should Chief Justice William Rehnquist step down because of his thyroid cancer.

…”Our Constitution does not morph,” he said Monday, deadpanning, “As I’ve often said, I am an originalist, I am a textualist, but I am not a nut.”

Earlier this year, Scalia cast one of two dissenting votes in a 7-2 Supreme Court ruling that states may deny taxpayer-funded scholarships to divinity students.

At the time, Scalia wrote: “Let there be no doubt: This case is about discrimination against a religious minority.”