Quid Pro Quack

These are really dangerous times (see below).

NY Times
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: March 21, 2004

WASHINGTON

That incandescent intellect, the Stephen Hawking of jurisprudence, has been kind enough to take time from his busy schedule to explain to us how the Republic really works.

Antonin Scalia has devoted 21 pages to illuminating the impertinence of those who suggest that it is wrong for a Supreme Court justice to take favors from a friend with a case before the court.

Res ipsa loquitur, baby. Why should the justice who put Dick Cheney in the White House stop helping him now? It's the logrolling, stupid!

"Many justices have reached this court precisely because they were friends of the incumbent president or other senior officials," the justice sniffs.

That elite old boy network can really help in those dicey moments when you need to stop the wrong sort, like Al Gore, from getting ahead.

You don't stop ingratiating yourself with your powerful friends and accepting "social courtesies" from them just because you get on the court. Ingratitude is a terrible vice.

Anyway, what's the point of being in the ultimate insiders' club if you have to fly coach, eat at IHOP and follow silly rules on conflict of interest?

Justice Scalia proffers that while he accepted the vice president's offer of a ride on Air Force Two to Louisiana for a duck hunting trip, taking along his son and son-in-law, there was no quid pro quack. "I never hunted in the same blind as the vice president," he says. No need for justice to be blind when the blinds are just.
Not since Tony Soprano discovered ducks in his swimming pool have ducks revealed so much about the man.

The justice elucidates that if he and his family had not accepted a free ride on Air Force Two, there would have been "considerable inconvenience" to his other friends, who would have had to meet a commercial plane in New Orleans and arrange car and boat trips to the hunting camp.

read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/opinion/21DOWD.html?th

The justice elucidates that if he and his family had not accepted a free ride on Air Force Two, there would have been "considerable inconvenience" to his other friends, who would have had to meet a commercial plane in New Orleans and arrange car and boat trips to the hunting camp.

Let's see, meet a commercial plane...arrange car and boat trips...

Wait. Isn't that what the rest of us "little people" would have to do?

he said "I was not even in the same blind as .." as if that make a rat's ass difference.

But, admittedly, Scalia gave her the ammunition with his opinionated brief. His reasoning shows that he is a man who is completely out of touch with reality and doesn't realize how far gone he is -- seduced by a cornucopia of plenitude that comes from being part of the elite good ole boy network. And when someone is that far gone, can he really be objective about judging on issues that pertain to the rest of us poor slobs?

Unfortunately you have just described the three branches of our current government. The scary thing is that half of this country thinks this is ok.