Mar. 30, 2004 - 19:59 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Ya' Wanna Buy A Duck ?

Joe Penner, was it him who said that, or one of the people on his radio show ? I guess it fits the present political scene.

Scalia and Cheney in the apparent farce now on the scene. Vice president Cheney, the head of the National Energy Policy Development Group.

In the Rocky Mountain News this morning is an article by Paul Campos, a professor of law at the University Of Colorado. "Scalia Ducking The Issue"

"Those who specialize in such complaints ought to read Justice Antonin Scalia's March 18 memorandum, in which he denies a motion by the Sierra Club, asking him to recuse himself from a case pending before the Supreme Court. That case involves the records of the National Energy Policy Development Group headed by Vice President Cheney.

Environmental groups and others want to know what role, if any, energy officials played in shaping the group's development of White House energy policy."

"Two federal lower courts ordered Cheney to turn over NEPDG documents. Cheney refused, and instead appealed to the Supreme Court. Three weeks after the Court agreed to hear he case, Scalia went on his now-infamous duck-hunting trip, flying with Cheney from Washington to Louisiana on Air Force Two, where they spent two days together, wielding weapons of duck destruction in a murky corner of the bayou."

"Federal law requires a judge to recuse himself from a case if his "impartiality" might be reasonably questioned. What cannot be reasonably questioned is that it's a monumental error in judgment for a Supreme Court justice to go on a two-day hunting trip with the vice president of the United States when the legality of controversial decisions made by the vice president is the subject of a suit pending before the court. Respectable arguments can be made as to why a justice who has placed himself in this position still might properly choose to participate in the decision of such a suit, but Scalia's memorandum doesn't make them. Instead, he engages in 21 pages of egotistical bluster and posturing, in the course of which he makes various claims that, as lawyers say, don't pass the red face test."

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If both the justice and the vice president are pure as the driven snow, there will always be room for doubt about how the energy problem has been dealt with, to my way of looking at it. I wonder, in that murky bay in the corner of the bayou which one said, "Ya wanna buy a duck" ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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