Franken vs. Scalia in a Celebrity Deathmatch. Who wins?
Page Six said Franken, who hosts a program on the liberal Air America network, ‘found out the hard way not to mess with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who chided Franken as if he were a delinquent schoolboy.”
Franken asked ‘hypothetically’ whether a judge should recuse himself if he had gone duck-hunting or flown in a private jet with a party in a case before his court, the Post reported.
The reference was to Scalia’s flying and hunting trip with Vice President Dick Cheney in January 2003, three weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a White House appeal in a case involving private meetings of Cheney’s energy task force.
Scalia lectured Franken, ‘Demeanor is the wrong word. You mean ethics.’
The justice explained a judge does not have to recuse himself from a case if his friend, in an official capacity, was a nominal party in the dispute, according to Opinion Journal Editor James Taranto, who witnessed the exchange.
Damn. That’s just plain embarassing.
But oh… poor Al Franken! What if Scalia hurt his psyche? His self-esteem?!?!
“I don’t think I was any meaner than I had to be,” Scalia told New York Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove at the cocktail party. “My kids have been working on me to get out and do more public appearances. … They think it makes it harder to demonize you – and I agree.”
Indeed.