As one of Antonin Scalia s last rulings on the Supreme Court, he made the argument that black students should be discouraged from attending top ranked schools because they probably couldn t keep up. Instead he suggested they be sent to  slower-track schools  like, say, community college or lesser universities so they could shoot for mediocrity. It was an appallingly racist statement, from a sitting Supreme Court Justice no less, and one that flies directly in the face of the lived experience of one of the most successful African Americans of all time: Barack Obama.On the way to the White House, Obama overcame racism and adversity to thrive at two top shelf schools   Harvard and the University of Chicago   and that education helped propel his career into law and eventually politics. It s hard to imagine Obama one day becoming president if he had taken Scalia s advice and settled on a  slower-track  community college.So, it hardly seems surprising that Obama isn t planning on cancelling his packed schedule to attend the funeral of a man, however important, that viewed people of his skin color as less competitive than their white counterparts. It s also a long-standing tradition that either the president or the vice president attend the funeral of a justice. Not both. Biden already announced that he was going.Four out of the past seven funerals for a Supreme Court justice have either had the president or vice president in attendance.Former President George W. Bush attended the funeral for Chief Justice William Rehnquist.Former President Bill Clinton attended the funerals for former Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Justice William Brennan but did not attend the funerals for Justices Harry Blackmun or Lewis F. Powell Jr.Former Vice President Al Gore attended the funeral for Justice Thurgood Marshall.So for any other president this wouldn t be a big deal. But it s Obama. And Republicans are Republicans. The freak out has already begun.While Fox News has devoted wall-to-wall outrage directed at Obama for not going to Scalia s funeral (he ll be in Cuba working out the details to zeitgeist shifting thawing of relations with America s once sworn enemy   kind of a big deal), Sen. Ted Cruz managed to amp up the hysteria to 11 while desperately clawing his way to second place in South Carolina.On the campaign trail, Cruz decided that he would accuse Obama of being an atheist. We ve got 11 more months of watching damage to this country. From a lawless and faithless president who is eager to travel to Cuba, but is unwilling even to show up at the funeral of Justice Antonin Scalia. This is a stark change in Cruz s earlier remarks that said it was irresponsible to  speculate on the President s faith.  It does, however, pander to the beliefs of the toxic fanatics at the very heart of the Republican Party. To them, Obama will always be a Kenyan, socialist, Muslim atheist no matter how many times he celebrates Christmas or mentions his faith in speeches.Cruz s shameful remarks come at a time when he is trying to woe many conservative Christians to support his campaign. In fact, his entire base is built on Christian extremists. Suggesting that Obama is a godless heathen is exactly the sort of thing that would get them fired up enough to vote for a sleazeball like Cruz.Ironically, Cruz s remarks come at a time where he and his fellow ideologues are melting down over the fact that the pope called Donald Trump s plan to build a massive cement wall across the entire southern border un-Christian. Conservatives blasted the pope for pointing out the obvious and suggested it was offensive for someone to speculate about another person s faith. In other words, the sheer amount of hypocrisy being generated by the Republican Party could power the sun.But perhaps there is just a twinge of jealousy in this mudslinging knowing that when Obama does go to church he takes us to church.Feature image from Gage Skidmore/Flickr