Scalia Flew As Guest On Cheney's Plane

[Kooperman]

Feb. 5, 2004, 12:18AM

Scalia flew as guest on Cheney's plane

Los Angeles Times

PATTERSON, La. -- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia traveled as an official guest of Vice President Dick Cheney's 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.

According to those who met them at the small airstrip here, the justice and the vice president flew from Washington on Jan. 5.

The Los Angeles Times previously reported that the two men hunted ducks together while the case was pending, but it wasn't clear then that they had traveled together on Air Force Two.

"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."

Aides to Cheney say the vice president, like the president, is entitled to travel to vacation spots on government jets and to take along guests at no cost.

But judges are bound by different rules. Federal law says that "any justice or judge shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might be questioned."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.hts/politics/2388750

[DudeAsInCool]

More importantly, what about the last Presidential election where Scalia ruled for Bush, saying "It would be unfair to George Bush" to have ruled in favor of Gore!" I'm no fan of this cretin--at all..