Exclusive — Donald Trump, Ted Cruz Campaigns Bash RNC for Stacking Audience with Pro-Amnesty Donor Class

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by MATTHEW BOYLE 13 Feb 2016GREENVILLE, South Carolina

GREENVILLE, South Carolina — Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager for 2016 GOP frontrunner billionaire Donald Trump, bashed the Republican National Committee (RNC) for stacking the debate audience here with pro-amnesty consultant class party donor figures.

Lewandowski told Breitbart News in the spin room after the debate:

I think the RNC does a terrible job in allocating the tickets, to be honest with you, There’s an opportunity—there’s 2,000 seats out there, there’s six candidates on stage, they should just divide them evenly so everyone has them, but instead they just give them to the donor class, they give them to the lobbyists and to all the special interests. It’s not fair, it’s not equitable. So I think what they should do moving forward is take the total number of seats available, allocate them across the board and let the candidates bring their people in, because that’s who should be here, not the donors.

Repeatedly throughout the debate, the audience cheered as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his protegé Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) consistently and repeatedly made the case to grant amnesty to illegal aliens, while the audience oddly booed both Trump andSen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as they made eloquent cases against amnesty.

“I don’t think it’s representative of the people of South Carolina,” Lewandowski added. “Those who don’t have the resources to give large sums of money to the RNC didn’t get a ticket here tonight and that’s a shame on the RNC.”

Trump’s campaign was hardly the only one upset with how the debate turned out as it relates to how audience tickets are handed out. Both Reps. Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) andRep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) bashed the establishment for stacking the audience with donor class folks not representative of America or of South Carolina’s electorate. Duncan and Meadows have both endorsed Cruz for president and were representing his campaign in the spin room.

“I was a little disappointed in CBS and the moderators in that they kind of let the debate and the crowd get out of control,” Duncan told Breitbart News, adding that the pro-amnesty cheers and boos aren’t representative of his state.

“It doesn’t represent the voters of South Carolina,” Duncan said. “Definitely, the room was stacked for Rubio—there’s no doubt about it, especially from where I was sitting. But look, I thought Ted Cruz had a great night and I thought he made a great point about the economy and about how he’d unleash an unbridled entrepreneurial spirit with less taxes and less regulation.”

When asked if the party was trying to game the system to help the establishment candidates like Rubio and Bush, Duncan said “yeah” but added that it probably won’t work, since most of the audience were donors imported into the state by party bosses.

“It depends on how it came across on TV,” Duncan said. “This is a small smattering of folks, and most of them are not from South Carolina. I don’t think Donald Trump had a great debate—he came across to a South Carolina audience as a little brash.”

Meadows added that he thinks the debate lacked focus on issues that people from Main Street—not from K Street or Wall Street, like the donor class—care about. Meadows said:

Obviously it was a fairly contentious debate as you start to see that, the feathers were flying so to speak. I think what most people want us to focus on are what’s going on on Main Street and what’s the key there. Being able to address those policy concerns, obviously it felt like Sen. Cruz had a very strong night tonight as he was able to articulate not only on national security but the economy as well—two things that affect not only the people of South Carolina but also my state of North Carolina and across the country.

Meadows added that the support for amnesty on display in the donor-packed audience this evening wasn’t just counter to South Carolina or North Carolina values, but run counter to American values.

“I can tell you from an amnesty standpoint, that’s not a South Carolina value, that’s not a North Carolina value—it’s really not a value that most people across the country support,” Meadows said. “I can tell you that no matter where you are on the immigration issue, ‘amnesty’ is that word that quite turns most people the other way. So I was surprised to hear some of the clapping as it related to that, perhaps an uninformed clap.”

Meadows also said that he doesn’t think an audience of ordinary people on Main Street would have applauded amnesty plans from Rubio and Bush while booing Trump and Cruz being against amnesty, as happened in the audience this evening.

“It’s hard to say—I can tell you that when you go on Main Street and you’re not at a debate, the amount of applause you got to hear on different topics doesn’t necessarily correspond to what you heard in the auditorium tonight,” Meadows said.

The RNC’s Sean Spicer, asked to comment on these concerns from the two top-polling presidential campaigns here in South Carolina—the only two campaigns to have actually won a state, Iowa or New Hampshire, that has voted already—said that while party donors did receive tickets this was the best debate yet for candidates.

“Each candidate received the greatest number tickets than any prior debate and overall the candidates received the largest share of tickets,” Spicer said in an email.

Spicer hasn’t answered, however, if future debates will see candidates represented better–and if the party will do as Lewandowski is calling for by eliminating donor tickets and giving them exclusively and evenly to the campaigns.

Earlier in the day, before the debate, Spicer told Breitbart News exclusively that there were 1,600 seats in the audience and only 600 tickets were divided among the campaigns. State party and local officials got 550 tickets, while the RNC got 367 tickets. Another hundred tickets were given to the debate partners, CBS News, the Peace Center, and Google.

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Antonin Scalia’s Death Could Mark End of Constitution

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by Ben Shapiro 13 Feb 2016

The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia doesn’t merely mark a tragedy for Constitutional philosophy – it may mark the death of American Constitutionalism as a whole.

Scalia’s philosophy of jurisprudence is well-known and shaped two generations of conservative thinkers: the Constitution ought to be interpreted according to its original meaning. This shouldn’t have been a groundbreaking notion given that most legislation is interpreted according to those rules, but because leftist jurists have spent a century chiseling away at the meaning of the Constitution based on their personal political beliefs, Scalia’s reinvigoration of traditional interpretive methodologies made him a historic figure. Scalia’s brilliant, passionate writing style made him author of some of the most famous dissents in Supreme Court history, and channeled the modern conservative frustration with the continuing abandonment of the Constitution.

Scalia’s jurisprudence also reminded conservatives that there is no substitute for proven Constitutional originalism. Most conservatives ignored that when they greenlit the appointment of cipher John Roberts for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a point I made when he was appointed. But Scalia provided a consistent reminder that Constitutional philosophy matters. It isn’t just a game of doing whatever you want politically. Constitutional jurisprudence is about recognizing the limits of the federal government – and recognizing the limits of the politicization of the Court itself.

In the end, Scalia’s death could mark the end of the Constitution itself. That’s because the current Supreme Court rested, until Scalia’s death, on the vague, confused, indeterminate philosophy of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who apparently decides cases on the basis of whether he has a solid bowel movement that morning. That means that half the time, the Constitution has a shot, as in Citizens United; the other half of the time, the Constitution drains away into the mists of Kennedy’s magical social justice thinking, as in Obergefell.

Unlike Kennedy, Scalia represented a consistent vote for a Constitution beyond modern progressive power politics. But with his death, President Obama now has the power to appoint a fifth justice to join hard-left social engineers Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If the Republican Senate allows President Obama to select Scalia’s successor, the left will have a complete monopoly on the Supreme Court. Within the next few years, Citizens United will be overturned, restoring limits on free speech; the Supreme Court will render the Second Amendment meaningless by reinterpreting the right to bear arms as a non-personal right; freedom of religion will be made subservient to same-sex marriage and abortion priorities; the death penalty will be ruled unconstitutional; unions will be allowed to continue confiscating the dollars of people who disagree with them politically; redistricting along leftist lines will return. Scalia ensured that the Supreme Court wasn’t a transformative institution; now it will become the chief tool in the left’s arsenal.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of conservative politics that the only thing standing between the United States and the death of its founding document was a brilliant 79-year-old jurist. But unless Republicans stand up on their hind legs now, that will certainly be the case.

Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News, Editor-in-Chief of DailyWire.com, and The New York Times bestselling author, most recently, of the book,The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.

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CBS Poll: Trump Poised for Landslide Win Over Establishment in South Carolina

AP

by Mike Flynn14 Feb 2016

A new poll from CBS News conducted before Saturday’s GOP debate, shows Donald Trump with 42 percent support among Republicans, and a massive 22 point lead over second-place candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

The three candidates vying for the “establishment lane” — Jeb Bush, Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)combine for just 30 percent support.

The poll of likely Republican primary voters, drawn from a larger sample of 1,300 registered voters, shows Trump with 42 percent, followed by Cruz with 20 percent.

Rubio is third with 15 percent, ahead of Kasich with 9 percent and of Jeb Bush with 6 percent. Ben Carson also has 6 percent, tied with Jeb Bush for last.

Trump leads the field by wide margins among both “moderate” and “conservative” Republican voters. Trump also leads Cruz by 16 points among evangelical voters, 41-25. Cruz edges Donald Trump among “very conservative” voters by 4 points, 37 percent to 33 percent.

One major caveat to this poll is that the number of “very conservative” voters included in the poll sample is very low, compared to prior elections. In both 2008and 2012, Republican voters who identified themselves as “very conservative” made up roughly 35 percent of the electorate. In this poll, they are just 27 percent of the sample.

That said, Trump’s lead is so large that even if “very conservative” voters turned out in historic numbers, it wouldn’t likely tip the balance that much based on current trends.

It is important to keep in mind that the poll was conducted from Wednesday to Friday, before Saturday’s Republican debate in Charleston.

It was also conducted, obviously, before news of the death of Sumpreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was announced. The possibility of the next President making an immediate Supreme Court appointment raises the stakes of the primary and general even higher.

Only Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are currently ready to be President, according to the poll of South Carolina Republicans. Strong majorities of Republicans, 58 and 57 percent respectively, said Trump and Cruz were ready on day one, while just 28 and 27 percent said they were not.

A slim plurality of Republicans said Bush and Kasich were ready, while a plurality said Marco Rubio was not ready. By an overwhelming 33 point margin, Republican voters said Ben Carson was not ready to be President.

Just less than half of Republicans, 42 percent said they were certain in their candidate decision. Around a quarter, 23 percent, said it was likely they could change their mind still.

In 2012, 56 percent of South Carolina Republicans made their final decision in the last three days of the campaign. In 2008, just34 percent made a final decision in the last three days.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this latest poll is the terrible headwinds against the three “establishment” candidates, Bush, Kasich and Rubio. Together, they earn just 30 percent support from likely Republican voters.

While the media focuses on which position each will finish, the levels of their actual support are very low. In New Hampshire, the three candidates devoted considerable personal time campaigning and, together, spent well over $60 million in paid advertising. In actual voting, however, the three commanded less than 40 percent of the Republican vote.

Even if their vote were combined in South Carolina, the three would be running 12 points behind current frontrunner Donald Trump.

When asked their opinion of the “Republican establishment,” 45 percent of likely Republican voters said it was a “bad thing.”

Only 11 percent said it was positive. Bush, Kasich and Rubio are battling for the “establishment” lane, but it seems to be a road to nowhere in a Republican primary this year.

More than two-thirds of Republicans, 68 percent, want the next President to stand up to Democrats. Less than one third want a Republican President to “negotiate more effectively” with Democrats. For all their resources, endorsements and attention from national pundits, Bush, Kasich and Rubio may simply be the wrong candidates in 2016.

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CBS Poll: Trump Poised for Landslide Win Over Establishment in South Carolina

AP

by MIKE FLYNN14 Feb 2016

A new poll from CBS News conducted before Saturday’s GOP debate, shows Donald Trump with 42 percent support among Republicans, and a massive 22 point lead over second-place candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

The three candidates vying for the “establishment lane” — Jeb Bush, Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)combine for just 30 percent support.

The poll of likely Republican primary voters, drawn from a larger sample of 1,300 registered voters, shows Trump with 42 percent, followed by Cruz with 20 percent.

Rubio is third with 15 percent, ahead of Kasich with 9 percent and of Jeb Bush with 6 percent. Ben Carson also has 6 percent, tied with Jeb Bush for last.

Trump leads the field by wide margins among both “moderate” and “conservative” Republican voters. Trump also leads Cruz by 16 points among evangelical voters, 41-25. Cruz edges Donald Trump among “very conservative” voters by 4 points, 37 percent to 33 percent.

One major caveat to this poll is that the number of “very conservative” voters included in the poll sample is very low, compared to prior elections. In both 2008and 2012, Republican voters who identified themselves as “very conservative” made up roughly 35 percent of the electorate. In this poll, they are just 27 percent of the sample.

That said, Trump’s lead is so large that even if “very conservative” voters turned out in historic numbers, it wouldn’t likely tip the balance that much based on current trends.

It is important to keep in mind that the poll was conducted from Wednesday to Friday, before Saturday’s Republican debate in Charleston.

It was also conducted, obviously, before news of the death of Sumpreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was announced. The possibility of the next President making an immediate Supreme Court appointment raises the stakes of the primary and general even higher.

Only Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are currently ready to be President, according to the poll of South Carolina Republicans. Strong majorities of Republicans, 58 and 57 percent respectively, said Trump and Cruz were ready on day one, while just 28 and 27 percent said they were not.

A slim plurality of Republicans said Bush and Kasich were ready, while a plurality said Marco Rubio was not ready. By an overwhelming 33 point margin, Republican voters said Ben Carson was not ready to be President.

Just less than half of Republicans, 42 percent said they were certain in their candidate decision. Around a quarter, 23 percent, said it was likely they could change their mind still.

In 2012, 56 percent of South Carolina Republicans made their final decision in the last three days of the campaign. In 2008, just34 percent made a final decision in the last three days.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this latest poll is the terrible headwinds against the three “establishment” candidates, Bush, Kasich and Rubio. Together, they earn just 30 percent support from likely Republican voters.

While the media focuses on which position each will finish, the levels of their actual support are very low. In New Hampshire, the three candidates devoted considerable personal time campaigning and, together, spent well over $60 million in paid advertising. In actual voting, however, the three commanded less than 40 percent of the Republican vote.

Even if their vote were combined in South Carolina, the three would be running 12 points behind current frontrunner Donald Trump.

When asked their opinion of the “Republican establishment,” 45 percent of likely Republican voters said it was a “bad thing.”

Only 11 percent said it was positive. Bush, Kasich and Rubio are battling for the “establishment” lane, but it seems to be a road to nowhere in a Republican primary this year.

More than two-thirds of Republicans, 68 percent, want the next President to stand up to Democrats. Less than one third want a Republican President to “negotiate more effectively” with Democrats. For all their resources, endorsements and attention from national pundits, Bush, Kasich and Rubio may simply be the wrong candidates in 2016.

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For all The Details of Antonin Scalia Passing. Including detail breakdown of both Democrat and Republican Debates and South Carolina Primary

“It was a story about America, The fact that people were drawn into the song as a result of symbols that I chose to use was the reason I chose to use those symbols in the first place.” Don Mclean

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1.Capitalism vs Communism – Tribute To Antonin Scalia
-"Justice Antonin Scalia was a man of God, a patriot and an unwavering defender of the written Constitution and the rule of law," Texas Governor Greg Abbott. "He was the solid rock who turned away so many attempts to depart from and distort the Constitution," Abbott said. "We mourn his passing, and we pray that his successor on the Supreme Court will take his place as a champion for the written Constitution and the Rule of Law. Cecilia and I extend our deepest condolences to his family, and we will keep them in our thoughts and prayers."
-Presidential candidate and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) lauded Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia after news of the justice's death broke Saturday, but said President Barack Obama should not be the one to appoint his replacement. "Justice Scalia was an American hero. We owe it to him, & the Nation, for the Senate to ensure that the next President names his replacement," he tweeted. Cruz, who served as Texas' solicitor general argued several cases in front of Scalia, praised the justice's decades-long tenure on the court. He singled out his insistence on a textual interpretation of the US Constitution.  "Today our Nation mourns the loss of one of the greatest Justices in history – Justice Antonin Scalia," Cruz said in a statement. "A champion of our liberties and a stalwart defender of the Constitution, he will go down as one of the few Justices who single-handedly changed the course of legal history." "As liberals and conservatives alike would agree, through his powerful and persuasive opinions, Justice Scalia fundamentally changed how courts interpret the Constitution and statutes, returning the focus to the original meaning of the text after decades of judicial activism. And he authored some of the most important decisions ever, including District of Columbia v. Heller, which recognized our fundamental right under the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms. He was an unrelenting defender of religious liberty, free speech, federalism, the constitutional separation of powers, and private property rights. All liberty-loving Americans should be in mourning. (Business Insider)
-Trump - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump hailed the legacy of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Saturday. "Justice Scalia was a remarkable person and a brilliant Supreme Court Justice, one of the best of all time," Trump said. Scalia was a considered a hero by many conservatives because of his sharp wit and consistent advocacy on behalf of originalism, or interpreting the Constitution as its drafters intended it at the time. "His career was defined by his reverence for the Constitution and his legacy of protecting Americans’ most cherished freedoms," Trump continued. "He was a justice who did not believe in legislating from the bench and he is a person whom I held in the highest regard and will always greatly respect his intelligence and conviction to uphold the Constitution of our country."  Trump also described Scalia's death as a "massive setback" for the conservative movement and our COUNTRY. (Business Insider)
-Hillary Clinton's website has an entire page dedicated to the court, warning supporters that a Republican president could oversee a shift to the right.  "As many as four seats on the Supreme Court could become vacant during the next few years — which means that a Republican president could have the power to transform the court, and American law, for generations to come," "That’s why it’s so terrifying when Ted Cruz says he would be 'willing to spend the capital to ensure that every Supreme Court nominee that I put on the court is a principled judicial conservative.' But he’s not alone: all of the Republican candidates for president are likely to appoint staunchly conservative justices." (Business Insider)
-The survey, taken at the end of January, found that 43 percent of Americans under 30 had a favorable view of socialism. Less than a third of millennials had a favorable view of capitalism. No other age or ethnic demographic preferred socialism over capitalism.
-Seniors, unsurprisingly, had the most favorable view of capitalism. Just 23 percent of Americans older than 65 had a positive view of socialism. Sixty-three percent of seniors, though, had a favorable view of capitalism.
-In the past 20 years, the number of people living in poverty worldwide has fallen by half. In 1990, 43 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. In 2013, the United Nations estimated that just 22 percent of the world’s population continued to live in extreme poverty. “Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast,” the UN Human Development report said. Even if millenials aren’t swayed by the dramatic improvement in worldwide living standards, one would hope they would see the benefits of capitalism in the products and services that inhabit their world.
2.
3.Trump - The newspaper tweeted: “Front page: DAWN OF THE BRAIN DEAD – Trump comes back to life with N.H. win.”
4.Hillary – wins in NH as Bernie takes a 60 to 38 wins
-Though Mrs. Clinton had only nine pledged delegates through the voting process, she has an additional six superdelegates as of Wednesday morning, giving her a total of 15. Sanders has 13 delegates, all of which he won through the popular vote. Two superdelegates are uncommitted at this point. So even though the results appeared to be a massive win for Sanders, the delegate count, where it matters, tells a different story
-Clinton Foundation receives suybpoena form State Department Investigators and not a single question from the moderator who is a Clinton Foundation Donor.
5.Illegal Immigration
-Germany - German Govt Begins Migrant Propaganda Campaign, Urges Citizens To Overcome Their ‘Dark Side’

Blog: Dems in Senate passed a resolution in1960 against election year Supreme Court appointments

www.americanthinker.com

Read it and weep, Democrats. The shoe is on the other foot. David Bernstein at theWashington Post’s Volokh Conspiracy blog:

 Thanks to a VC commenter, I discovered that in August 1960, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a resolution, S.RES. 334, “Expressing the sense of the Senate that the president should not make recess appointments to the Supreme Court, except to prevent or end a breakdown in the administration of the Court’s business.”  Each of President Eisenhower’s SCOTUS appointments had initially been a recess appointment who was later confirmed by the Senate, and the Democrats were apparently concerned that Ike would try to fill any last-minute vacancy that might arise with a recess appointment.

Read it and weep, Democrats. The shoe is on the other foot. David Bernstein at the Washington Post’sVolokh Conspiracy blog:

 Thanks to a VC commenter, I discovered that in August 1960, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a resolution, S.RES. 334, “Expressing the sense of the Senate that the president should not make recess appointments to the Supreme Court, except to prevent or end a breakdown in the administration of the Court’s business.”  Each of President Eisenhower’s SCOTUS appointments had initially been a recess appointment who was later confirmed by the Senate, and the Democrats were apparently concerned that Ike would try to fill any last-minute vacancy that might arise with a recess appointment.

The GOP opposed this, of course. Hypocrisy goes two ways. But the majority won.

As it should this time.

Hat tip: Instapundit

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Scalia said to have died of a heart attack

www.washingtonpost.com

MARFA, Tex. — Inside the cloistered chambers of the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia’s days were highly regulated and predictable. He met with clerks, wrote opinions and appeared for arguments in the august courtroom on a schedule set months in advance.

Yet as details of his sudden death trickled in Sunday, it appeared that the hours afterward were anything but orderly. The man known for his elegant legal opinions and profound intellect was found dead in his room at a hunting resort, either by a housekeeper or the ranch owner, according to conflicting accounts.

It then took hours for authorities in remote West Texas to find a justice of the peace, officials said Sunday. When they did, she pronounced Scalia dead of natural causes without seeing the body and decided not to order an autopsy. A second justice of the peace, who was called but couldn’t get to Scalia’s body in time, said she would have ordered an autopsy.

“If it had been me . . . I would want to know,” Juanita Bishop, a justice of the peace in Presidio, Tex., told The Washington Post in an interview Sunday about the chaotic hours after Scalia’s death at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a luxury compound less than an hour from the Mexican border and about 40 miles south of Marfa.

The U.S. Marshals Service has not issued a statement about the events surrounding Scalia’s death Saturday. And as official Washington tried to process what the justice’s death means for politics and the law, some details of his final hours remained opaque.

As late as Sunday afternoon, there were conflicting reports about whether an autopsy would be performed, though officials later said Scalia’s body was being embalmed and there would be no autopsy. One report, by WFAA-TV in Dallas, said the death certificate would show the cause of the death was a heart attack.

One thing was clear: Scalia had died in his element, doing what he loved at the ranch that has played host to movie stars and European royalty and is famous for bird hunts and bigger game, such as bison and mountain lions.

“Other than being with his family or in church, there’s no place he’d rather be than on a hunt,” said Houston lawyer Mark Lanier, who accompanied Scalia on hunting trips seeking wild boar, deer and even alligators. Lanier said he first learned of Scalia’s love for hunting through former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor. “He’ll do anything if you take him hunting,” Lanier recalled O’Connor saying.

Although it is uncertain whether Scalia went hunting on this particular trip to Cibolo Creek, law enforcement officials said he arrived Friday and attended a party that night with about 40 people. Scalia left the festivities early to go to bed, said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not an authorized representative. It was unclear whether Scalia was not feeling well at the time.

Scalia did not appear for breakfast with others from the party, officials said; people at first thought he might be sleeping in, but they eventually grew concerned. A housekeeper found the body, according to Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevara; other witnesses said the housekeeper opened Scalia’s door at the request of the ranch owner.

After emergency personnel and officials from the U.S. Marshals Service were called to the scene, two local judges who also serve as justices of the peace were called, Guevara said in an interview Sunday. Both were out of town, she said — not unusual in a remote region where municipalities are spread far apart.

Guevara also was out of town, but she said she declared Scalia dead based on information provided by officials at the scene, citing Texas laws that allow a justice of the peace to declare someone dead without seeing the body.

Guevara declined to comment further to The Post, but told WFAA that Scalia’s death certificate would list myocardial infarction — a heart attack — as the official cause of death.

She told the station that she planned to drive to the ranch but changed her mind when a U.S. marshal told her by phone: “It’s not necessary for you to come, judge. If you’re asking for an autopsy, that’s what we need to clarify.”

Guevara said she asked the Marshals whether there were “any signs of foul play. And they said, ‘Absolutely not,’ ” she told the station. After talking with Scalia’s personal physician, she said, she pronounced him dead and declined to order an inquest.

Scalia’s body was taken to Sunset Funeral Home in El Paso by a procession of about 20 law enforcement officers. It arrived there about 2:30 a.m. Sunday, according to Chris Lujan, a manager for the funeral home. The funeral home is about 31/2 hours from the ranch where Scalia died.

Lujan said that Scalia’s family did not request an autopsy and that the body is being prepared for the funeral and will be transported back to Washington on Monday. It is under guard by six law enforcement officials, including U.S. marshals and Texas state troopers, Lujan said.

“An autopsy was declined at about 3:30 a.m.,” Lujan said. “The justice of the peace said there was no indication of foul play and that he died in his sleep from natural causes.”

Funeral arrangements for Scalia were unclear Sunday.

Straub and Moravec, in Marfa, Tex., are freelance writers. Horwitz and Markon reported from Washington. Alice Crites in Washington contributed to his report.

Read more:

Scalia’s death upends court dynamics.

These are the top cases to be heard by an 8-member court.

The three types of people Obama could nominate.

Scalia: A brilliant mind, and a frequent critic of civil rights.

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