Scalia and Cheney; Who's cleaning whose fowl?
Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
Vice President Cheney convenes an energy task force, which meets in private, primarily with representatives of the energy industries, and seals the records of these meetings. Fans of open government want to know how important policy questions such as this are decided, particularly seeing as how nobody outside of the industry had any input in developing this policy, so they sue in Federal Court to open up the records.
The vice-president's office, taking time out from the task of leaking the identities of covert operatives, resist this, right up to the Supreme Court, where the matter is now pending.
Among the justices on this court is one Antonin Scalia. Mr. Scalia thinks very highly of himself, particularly his sense of probity, and believes everybody else should, too, unquestioningly. Mr. Scalia is apparently non-plussed that there are people among us (shamefully, I must admit to being one of them) who would question his ability to judge this matter disinterestedly and ought therefore to recuse himself.
Oh. Why, you ask, would some of us think this (I heard a voice in the back of the room asking)? It seems that Mr. Scalia, in addition to other, perhaps more inoccuous social contacts with Mr. Cheney, went hunting with Mr. Cheney recently. For several days, they and other among their rich and powerful social set banged away at duckies in Louisiana. Mr. Scalia's way was paid for in part by Mr. Cheney. He was, in other words, at least in part, Mr. Cheney's guest. He is, to some degree, maybe a very small degree, beholden to Mr. Cheney.
If such a situation were to happen in our local courts, if I were to take out to dinner on the eve of trial the judge to preside over my shop-lifting trial (it was just a couple of items, small ones, and I really needed them), everybody else involved in, or even aware of, the matter would recognize that it was wrong and demand that the judge remove himself. At once.
Why is it so much harder to see that this is the right thing to do when the stakes are so much greater?
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