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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eashoa' M'sheekha who wrote (1200)	2/7/2004 1:53:51 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 81568

GLOBE EDITORIAL Scalia's apparent conflict 2/7/2004 FOR THREE YEARS, Vice President Richard Cheney has been stonewalling attempts by Congress and two public-interest groups to reveal details about a Cheney-led task force that drafted the Bush administration's energy policy with the help of industry executives. A suit to get this information, by the Sierra Club and the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, is headed to the Supreme Court. Showing extreme bad judgment, Justice Antonin Scalia went on a four-day duck-hunting trip with Cheney last month, after the Supreme Court had accepted the case. Cheney provided Scalia with a freebie seat on his Air Force Two plane for the trip down, which means Scalia accepted a gift from a litigant in a case before him. Democrats in Congress have asked Scalia to recuse himself from the case, which he has so far refused to do. That's a mistake. It is quite possible that Scalia and Cheney never breathed a word about the case while pursuing ducks in Louisiana as guests of an oil services company owner. But federal law requires that the judge step aside in any case where his "impartiality might reasonably be questioned." Scalia has already done so in a different case, involving the "under God" phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance, because he had delivered a speech critical of a lower-court decision in the case. Scalia bases his refusal to sit out the Cheney suit on the grounds that Supreme Court justices have traditionally socialized with high-level members of the executive branch, even if there are cases involving the officials before the court. But there is a difference between meeting at a Georgetown dinner party and spending a long flight and two days together in a hunting lodge. Also, the suit turns not just on the interpretation of a law but on Cheney's very conduct of the task force. Finally, it is impossible to separate Scalia's duck-blind camaraderie with Cheney from Scalia's part in the Supreme Court's highly questionable 5-4 ruling in Bush v. Gore that made Cheney vice president in the first place. Scalia should leave the Cheney case to his eight fellow justices. boston.com