Democratic Presidential Candidate Sen. Joe Lieberman and Sen.Patrick Leahy raised questions regarding a private hunting trip Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia took with Vice President Dick Cheney earlier this month. The questions directed at Chief Justice Rehnquist focused on possibly disqualifying Scalia from certain cases that may indirectly support Vice President Cheney's interest. While this private meeting may be considered to be corruptible, is candidate Lieberman's position as a jurists in the indiscretions of VP Cheney equally suspect of alterior motives?

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/01/22/scalia.cheney.trip/index.html
http://newsports.us

Obviously Lieberman's questions have a political motive, but given his position on the governmental affairs committee it's a legitimate issue for him to be raising. As far as Scalia/Cheney goes - while I think Scalia has a lot of integrity and wouldn't let himself be swayed by Cheney, he's also smart enough to know that there would be an appearance of impropriety and therefore should've avoided the trip altogether.

When you get 2 of the lefts favorite whipping boys together theres bound to be questions about what they were doing, from plotting the overthrow of earth, destruction of the constitution, or take over of the moon and mars for mineral rights. I am sure there were plenty of black helicopters hovering overhead that day.

You missed the point, Trav. The point was that as a judge, Scalia is supposed to be impartial. If he's friends with Cheney, there's a conflict of interest.

so this is the first judge to ever do anything private with any public official? its funny how many firsts there are sine W took office!

Scalia/Cheney going hunting? Bad judgement on both their parts.

Total conflict of interest - if any issue concerning Cheney is in-front of the S-court then Scalia should step aside.

Originally posted by Travh20
so this is the first judge to ever do anything private with any public official? its funny how many firsts there are sine W took office!
No, and that doesn't matter! We're talking here and now!

LOL, seems that "we're talking about here and now" argument never really went over well during the Clinton scandals Borg.