Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, before a Senate Judiciary Panel:
“Usually, the criticism in the press and the reaction of the public to the opinion has nothing to do with the law,” Scalia said. “If they like the result, it’s a wonderful opinion and these are wonderful judges, and if they dislike the result, then it’s a terrible opinion. They don’t look to see what the text of the statute is that was before us, and whether this result is indeed a reasonable interpretation of that.”
“None of that will appear in the press reports,” Scalia complained.
As is tradition, the conservative justice said he and his high court colleagues can’t respond to press criticism of their rulings, but suggested the media could do a better job of presenting to the public information that is relevant to the cases and the decisions.
“They’ll just tell you who the plaintiff was, what the issue was and who won. If you like the result then it’s a great opinion, and if you don’t like it, it’s terrible,” he said. “That’s just one of the disabilities we operate under.”
Memo to POLITICO: if you stopped calling Scalia a “conservative,” an ideological characterization, and started calling him what he is — a constructionist, a term that describes a specific interpretive approach to the Constitution — Scalia might like you a little better. Of course, if Scalia liked you better, you wouldn’t have “stories” like this.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, responding to inquiries about administration officials yelling and swearing at reporters:
He then framed his question within Carney’s experience as a journalist. “You were a reporter once, when government officials start yelling at you, sometimes it’s because they’re getting defensive, right?”
“I have no insight into the conversation she may, or may not, have had,” Carney began. “I know that you guys are all hard-bitten veteran journalists, and probably don’t complain when you have tough conversations with sources sometimes.”
He added, “Again, this is just generally speaking, I don’t know about it.”
Henry, unsatisfied with the response, followed up by asking, “She said this on the record, that she was yelled at and screamed at. Why would the administration be yelling at her about this story?”
“Again, I don’t…I take issue with the report,” Carney said. “I don’t know that it’s true. What I think is that I know you are tough enough to handle an extra decibel or two in a phone conversation. I’m not sure that that happened here, but it’s surprising to me.”
So….were you going to answer the question or not, Jay? No wonder reporters hate working with White House administrations.
