From Reuters, today -

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia refused on Thursday to remove himself from a case about Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, even though their recent duck-hunting trip raised questions about his impartiality…

According to the motion, Scalia and his daughter were Cheney’s guests on Air Force Two on a Jan. 5 flight to Louisiana. Cheney and Scalia were guests of the president of an energy services company on a duck-hunting vacation.

“The vice president and I were never in the same blind and never discussed the case,” Scalia said, referring to a shelter used to conceal duck hunters.

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In a further development, the Court has taken the unusual step of replacing the attorney for the respondent in the case. In an order filed by Justice Antonin Scalia, Judicial Watch counsel Paul J. Orfanedes was notified this morning that he has been dismissed from the case by the Supreme Court, for reasons of “excessive sticking-his-nose-where-it-don’t-belong.”

His replacement, appointed by the court, will be Lynne Cheney, 62, of Washington D.C. According to the order, Mrs. Cheney, though not a lawyer, is “eminently qualified to argue this thing on behalf of Judicial Watch, the Sierra Club, and the rest of those hippies.”

Reached at her home, Mrs. Cheney responded to criticism that her commitment to the job might be in question due to her marital relationship with Vice President Dick Cheney. “We have never once discussed this case,” she said. “We keep a strict division between our personal and professional lives. I will argue for the release of those documents detailing Mr. Cheney’s energy industry contacts to the best of my ability. I will serve the respondents with professionalism, no matter how thin and ludicrous their case may be.”

The Vice President declined to dwell on the matter when asked about his wife’s appointment. “Nice. She’ll be great. But I don’t want anything to distract me from communicating my essential message, and that is that John Kerry is a huge pussy,” he said.