TakeYourMedicine

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia startled reporters in Boston just minutes after attending a mass, by flipping a middle finger to his critics.

A Boston Herald reporter asked the 70-year-old conservative Roman Catholic if he faces much questioning over impartiality when it comes to issues separating church and state.

You know what I say to those people? Scalia replied, making the obscene gesture and explaining That's Sicilian.

The 20-year veteran of the high court was caught making the gesture by a photographer with The Pilot, the Archdiocese of Boston's newspaper . Don't publish that, Scalia told the photographer, the Herald said.

Hmph... are we being a little overly sensitive here? Ever since my special fella The Dick told my senator Patrick Leahy to fuck off, we've been agog at the Republican propensity for naughty words. My own very good friend Karen Zipdrive lashed out at Dubya for flipping a perfectly good birdie, the object of which escapes me now.

I say that this is the opportunity of a lifetime: pottymouth politicians, letting it all rip. Let those pious souls who think that they are represented by their faith-based fellows get a good look and listen to these sanctimonious saps. Rick Santorum admitting that he doesn't give a flying fuck about the just-born, only the unborn! Bill Frist admitting that he doesn't know shit about medicine or politics, he just wants to be the biggest dong on the block! Bush and Cheney talking about living simply to suck the corporate big one! Yow!

How refreshing it would be.

Of course, the Dems would have to do something besides pretend to be shocked. They'd just have to mutter, "Oh, you know how Dubya gets," or some other disclaimer, refusing to getting sucked into the dialogue. Nobody really likes sanctimony on the subject of obscenity, except for those who really don't use such language. The rest of us should just shrug and stay silent.

Think of political discourse as just one more form of navigating the rocky highways of statehood. Could you ever drive if you didn't have a near-universal gesture for when some asshole cuts you off?

Let's let the Republicans be Republicans, for all the world to see and hear.