Barney Frank: “I think it was highly inappropriate for Justice Scalia to go on a hunting trip with Vice President Cheney when he was a…”

“I think it was highly inappropriate for Justice Scalia to go on a hunting trip with Vice President Cheney when he was a defendant in a case, but it is inaccurate to say that this calls into question Justice Scalia's impartiality. You cannot call into question that which does not exist. Questioning Justice Scalia's impartiality is like questioning Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake's sense of propriety, or Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, or the President's plan to cut the budget deficit in half in 5 years. In fact, if you read Justice Scalia's opinions, they are singularly devoid of impartiality. Here is a man of very vigorous views and prejudices, and he does not see any reason why he should not write them into various opinions. So, I guess in some ways this is a defense of Justice Scalia. I wish he had refrained from going on that hunting trip with the Vice President, but those who accuse him of having damaged his impartiality, he has a defense of that, well-known to lawyers, it is a defense of impossibility.”