Wednesday, February 4, 2004

Huntin' Buddies Revisited

Remember ole Dick Cheney's huning trip with his good buddy Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court Justice who's going to be hearing Cheney's secrecy case soon? Well, we haven't heard the last of it: Scalia Was Cheney Hunt Trip Guest; Ethics Concern Raised Los Angeles Times 02/04/04.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia traveled as an official guest of Vice President Dick Cheney on a small government jet that served as Air Force Two when the pair came here last month to hunt ducks.

The revelation cast further doubts about whether Scalia can be an impartial judge in Cheney's upcoming case before the Supreme Court, legal ethics experts said. The hunting trip took place just weeks after the court agreed to take up Cheney's bid to keep secret the details of his energy policy task force. ...

Several experts in legal ethics questioned whether Scalia should decide the case.

"In my view, this further ratchets it up. If the vice president is the source of generosity, it means Scalia is accepting a gift of some value from a litigant in a case before him," said New York University Law Professor Stephen Gillers.

"It is not just a trip with a litigant. It's a trip at the expense of the litigant. This is an easy case for stepping aside," he said.

And ole Dick is being investigated by the Justice Department on Halliburton-related charges.

It's not beyond imagining that somebody on the Bush team wants a reason to get Dick Cheney off the Republican ticket this fall. But Cheney has behaved so badly that it may just be catching up to him.

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