Mr. Justice Scalia is the best justice on the Supreme Court. Which tells you what a sorry shape the Court is in.
Mr. Justice Scalia is perfectly willing to ignore the Constitution when it suits him. He is always ready to find a "traditional" deviation from the meaning of the Constitution when he wants to get around the fact that the Constitution does not allow the government to do whatever it is he wants it to do.
The "traditional" exception idea is particulary disgusting. It goes like this. The Constitution says X but for the last 75 years we've done Y. So it would be wrong to change. So two wrongs make a right.
We can apply that sort of dunderheaded logic to just about anything. Slavery is wrong, but we've traditionally had slavery, so it would be wrong to change that. Taxation without representation is wrong, but traditionally, that's the way we've done things, so we can't change it.
This is what passes for logic on the Supreme Court.
But there is one good thing about Mr. Justice Scalia. In just about every one of his opinions, he takes the time to say that Madame Justess O'Conner is an idiot. And there, he's right on the money.
That kind of logic gets particularly galling when you realize that we did just fine doing X for 150 years, until someone (mostly FDR and his New Deal congress and court) decided we should do Y. The didn't have any problem changing after 150 years, what's so hard about doing it after 75?