Every so often you read something in a U.S. Supreme Court opinion that makes you want to burst out laughing at the cloistered justices’ naivet�.

Just this week we learned in Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC , 00 C.D.O.S. 548, that Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia consider mammoth political campaign contributions “integral to the functioning of our republic” and a “quintessentially democratic activity.”