Quid Pro Quack

Maureen Dowd - 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?

"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.