[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 27 (Thursday, March 4, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H859-H864]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY'S ABUSES OF POWER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Blackburn). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pallone) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, I come to the floor this afternoon to 
urge Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to recuse himself from a case 
that the Supreme Court will hear this year regarding Vice President 
Cheney.
  I am also here this evening to voice my concern over another example 
of Vice President Cheney abusing his power as Vice President to 
continue to keep secret documents that would significantly impact our 
Nation's future energy policy.
  Madam Speaker, for 3 years now the Vice President has done everything 
he can to keep the record of his energy task force secret. This secret 
task force developed President Bush's energy policy, a policy that was 
then made into legislation here in Congress, legislation that is now 
stalled in the other body. Nevertheless, the end result of this task 
force and of that legislation was bad energy policy. There is no doubt 
that the energy industry succeeded with its influence during these 
secret closed door meetings in crafting an energy policy that benefited 
them rather than benefitting Americans who at the time desperately 
needed relief from high energy prices.
  For 3 years now the Vice President has refused to let the American 
people know who made up this White House energy task force. For 3 years 
now the Vice President has refused to let the American people know how 
and why the task force came to the conclusions it did about energy 
policy. And finally, after 3 years of hiding the information, it 
appeared that we would finally get some of the information Cheney was 
fighting so hard to keep secret, thanks to the Sierra Club and another 
conservative group called Judicial Watch who jointly sued the Vice 
President and the energy task force, seeking an accounting of energy 
participation in crafting the Bush administration's destructive energy 
policy.
  There was a Federal district court order that said that the 
administration as a result of this suit had to provide information 
about participation from these industries, which the Bush 
administration refused to do. The Bush

[[Page H860]]

administration claimed constitutional immunity from such inquiries. But 
the Federal court rejected the Bush administration's contentions and 
pointed out that the administration was attempting to ``cloak what is 
tantamount to an aggrandizement of executive power with the legitimacy 
of precedent where none exists.''
  So what happened is that the district court basically at the request 
of the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch insisted that the members of the 
energy task force had to be made public.
  Now, you would think under normal circumstances that the Bush 
administration or the Vice President would say okay, the court has now 
ruled on this. They have said that this secret energy task force has to 
be made public effectively and at that point would simply say, okay, we 
will make the information public. But no. Refusing to give in, Vice 
President Cheney then appealed the court decision, asking the D.C. 
District Court to make new law that would effectively shield the Bush 
administration from any scrutiny.
  In my opinion that is the height of arrogance. Here we have a 
district court saying that information about this task force should be 
made public. What is the real harm? I cannot imagine that there would 
be any harm in making it public, but he nonetheless insisted that he 
will not go along with the district court's opinion. And the Bush 
administration actually went to court and asked the court to shield 
President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the rest of the 
administration from any scrutiny from opening up this energy task 
force.
  Now, what happened, of course, is that the court denied the Bush 
administration's request. And so what did Vice President Cheney then 
do? Well, he appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court. 
And on December 15 of last year, the Court agreed to take the case and 
the Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments next month in April.
  An interesting phenomenon though is that 3 weeks after the Supreme 
Court agreed to hear this case on December 15, just 3 weeks later 
Justice Scalia, a member of the Supreme Court, and one of his children 
accompanied Vice President Cheney on an Air Force II flight from 
Washington, D.C. to Morgan City, Louisiana.
  There, according to news reports, Justice Scalia and the Vice 
President were guests of a Wallace Carline, president of an energy 
services company, and they went on a duck hunting vacation. Neither the 
Vice President nor Justice Scalia made this duck hunting vacation 
public. Had it not been for the investigative work of the Los Angeles 
Times we might still not know that these two spent several days 
together hunting duck in Louisiana.
  After the vacation made national headlines, Justice Scalia offered 
the following response. He said, ``Social contacts with high level 
executive officials, including Cabinet officers, have never been 
thought improper for judges who may have before them cases in which 
those people are involved in their official capacity. For example, 
Supreme Court Justices are regularly invited to dine at the White 
House, whether or not a suit seeking to compel or prevent certain 
presidential action is pending. I expect that all of the justices were 
invited to Vice President Cheney's annual Christmas party. The 
invitation was not improper, nor was the attendance.''
  That was Justice Scalia's response.
  Madam Speaker, let me say I do not think this response by Justice 
Scalia is acceptable. I do not think, Madam Speaker, you would expect 
the American people to believe that a social dinner in which hundreds 
of people are gathered at the White House is the same as spending one-
on-one time with the Vice President on his jet, on the American 
taxpayers' dime. You spent days of quality one-on-one time with the 
Vice President, and that is certainly difficult than quickly exchanging 
a hello at a White House social gathering with hundreds of other 
people.
  In case you think or someone thinks it is my own prejudice because I 
happen to be a Democrat, you do not have to take my word for it. The 
media and the American public are also not buying Justice Scalia's 
explanation for this duck hunting vacation. And I just wanted to quote 
several comments from editorials in newspapers around the country 
commenting on this conflict of interest or potential conflict of 
interest.
  The San Diego Union Tribune said, ``As legal experts point out, a 
private hunting trip is not a simple social event. It is extremely 
personal access by a litigant to a judge hearing his case.''
  The Charlotte Observer in North Carolina made the following 
observation in their editorial comments. ``When a judge goes on a 3-day 
hunting trip in Louisiana as the guest of a man who is at the center of 
a case before the Supreme Court, that is hardly the kind of casual 
social contact that most people would consider innocuous.''
  Then we have a New York Times editorial, ``Vacationing with a 
litigant in a small group outside the public eye raises a far greater 
appearance of impropriety than attending a White House dinner.''
  I could give you other examples, Madam Speaker, as well. I think the 
New York Times went on to say or I would like to go on to say that I 
think it is quite ironic that the man hosting the two men, Wallace 
Carline, made his fortune in the energy sector. He was the one that 
hosted the Vice President and Justice Scalia, and he of course is an 
energy corporate executive. And some of the newspapers commented on 
that as well.
  The Salt Lake Tribune editorial page noted, ``Perhaps the 
businessman, Wallace Carline, of Diamond Services Corporation, was a 
member of the secret advisory committee that Cheney convened to draft 
the administration's pro-oil energy policy. Perhaps he was not. Whether 
the public ever knows that is up in part to Mr. Hunting Buddy Scalia.''
  The point is we do not know what the conflicts are in terms of Mr. 
Carline because we do not know whether he is on the energy task force. 
If we found out that he was on the energy task force, which is one of 
the things that this suit is trying to determine, then that would 
indicate even more strongly the nature of the conflict of interest.
  But I do not think there is any doubt that this vacation serves as a 
conflict of interest, and because of that Justice Scalia should recuse 
himself from hearing the Cheney case.
  One has to understand that the issue here is not just the actual 
conflict but the appearance of it. Those of us who went to law school 
know that when you talk about ethics and the issue of whether a judge 
should recuse himself from a case, it is an issue not only of a 
potential conflict but also the appearance of conflict. And I do not 
think there is any question that the appearance of conflict is here 
because of the fact that this case involving the Vice President was 
imminent before the Supreme Court and that Justice Scalia would have to 
make a ruling and a decision on the case.
  I want to point out that it is not just Justice Scalia who is 
responsible for the conflict of interest. Vice President Cheney should 
have realized that vacationing with a Supreme Court Justice not even 3 
weeks after the court agreed to hear his appeal had the appearance and 
was a conflict of interest. I think the Vice President, unfortunately, 
seems to be willing to do anything to ensure that the records of this 
energy task force are never made public.
  I do not really understand, Madam Speaker, what the Vice President is 
trying to hide. Would it be embarrassing to the administration to have 
to admit that every member of the task force was an oil or gas 
executive? Probably. But thinking about it, that really would not be 
anything new. I do not know that anybody would really be surprised by 
that. So I am beginning to think that there is something else that is 
being hidden here.
  What could be so damaging in these documents that the Vice President 
and the Bush administration do not want them released? We could 
speculate that somewhere within these documents there is proof that the 
Bush administration was looking at taking out Iraqi leader Saddam 
Hussein in order to take control of that nation's rich oil reserves.
  Well, interestingly enough former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill 
stated in his recent book that Vice President Cheney strongly suggested 
U.S. intervention in Iraq well before the terrorist attacks of 
September 11. Additional

[[Page H861]]

evidence exists that Cheney played an early planning role in the war in 
a national security document dated February 3, 2001, months before 
September 11.
  According to a report in the New Yorker Magazine, the top secret 
document written by a high National Security Council staffer, 
``directed the NSC staff to cooperate fully with the energy task force 
as it considered the melding of two seemingly unrelated areas of 
policy, the review of operational policies towards rogue states such as 
Iraq and actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas 
fields.''
  Now, I am just speculating here and I know others have speculated in 
this same manner, but really that is all we can do right now because 
the Vice President refuses to allow the American public to see these 
documents from his energy task force.
  I would like to point out incidentally, Madam Speaker, that I do not 
understand why congressional Republicans are not demanding that these 
documents be released by the administration. Of course, some of my 
colleagues on the Democratic side have been asking for it. My 
colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), who tried for 
months to get the administration to turn over these documents from the 
energy task force, he said it best in my opinion during a floor speech 
last week after the General Accounting Office refused to force the Vice 
President to turn over the documents. And this is what the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Waxman) said. He said, ``The hypocrisy about this 
issue on the Republican side is simply breathtaking. During the 1990s 
it was Republicans in Congress who embarked on a concerted effort to 
undermine the authority of then-President Clinton.

                              {time}  1545

  Congressional committees spent over $15 million investigating the 
White House. They demanded and received information on the innermost 
workings of the White House. They subpoenaed top White House officials 
to testify about the advice they gave the President. They forced the 
White House to disclose internal White House documents, memos, e-mails, 
phone records, even lists of guests at White House movie showings; and 
they launched countless GAO investigations into everything from 
President Clinton's health care task force to his working group on 
China permanent normal trade relations.
  Yet we do not see anybody on the Republican side insisting, even 
after the court has said that it should be, that any of the documents 
be released from this energy task force. How different is that in any 
way from President Clinton's health care task force or his working 
group on China permanent normal trade relations? We do not see any 
difference.
  The gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) continued in this speech 
when he said, ``And if the White House resisted, these same leaders 
insisted that Congress and the public's right to know was paramount.''
  Defending his numerous demands for White House records, for example, 
one of my colleagues, who I respect a great deal, the gentleman from 
Indiana (Mr. Burton), insisted on the House floor that public 
disclosure of the facts is the essence and, in large part, the purpose 
of congressional oversight. The American people have a right to know 
the facts. Other Republican leaders reiterated this message over and 
over again on countless television shows.
  So when President Clinton was President and he had task forces on 
health care, on China, on other issues, the Republicans insisted that 
this was a right-to-know issue and that the records of the White House 
task forces, such as the health care one, had to be made public, that 
this somehow was a fundamental issue that went to the public's right to 
know; but now we do not hear our colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle, the Republicans here in Congress, saying that the energy task 
force records should be made available, the document, the members of 
the energy task force should be made available.
  Frankly, I do not see the difference. It seems to me the same right-
to-know issue exists with regard to the energy task force under 
President Bush and Vice President Cheney that existed with regard to 
similar-type task forces under President Clinton.
  The bottom line is that on the Republican side oversight does not 
seem to be a priority anymore, not when it comes to a President who is 
of their own party or a Vice President who is of their own party.
  Normally, I would not restate one of my colleague's statements, but 
the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) was right in what he was 
stating about access to these documents; and I think that he, being the 
ranking Democrat on the Committee on Government Reform, is frustrated 
because Republicans here in Congress no longer seem to care or play any 
role to oversee the actions of this Republican administration, and I 
think that is a very dangerous precedent for the future of our country.
  Now that the Republican majority has given up its oversight ability, 
the only ones who can now force Vice President Cheney to hand over 
these documents is the Supreme Court, and I do not know exactly, Madam 
Speaker, how we can effectuate that; but I do think that we need to 
speak out. We need to speak out and say that under the circumstances, 
Justice Scalia must recuse himself from this case; Vice President 
Cheney must be forced essentially to turn over these documents. I would 
hope that the Justice would take this action on his own. I would hope 
that the Vice President would take this action on his own, and we would 
not have to have these lawsuits occur. But until such time as they 
agree to do so, I also think it is important for us as Members of the 
Congress to come down on the floor and speak out because this is just 
another example, in my opinion, of the Republican Party's abuse of 
power and a very bad example because it basically nullifies our ability 
to know what happened in this White House energy task force which was 
essentially instrumental in putting together the legislation that is 
now pending in the other body, that passed this House, that is the 
basis for our national energy policy.
  I see one of my colleague from Washington is here, and I appreciate 
his coming down; and I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pallone) for yielding. I appreciate him bringing this important matter 
up for discussion because I think it strikes at the very heart of 
American democracy, which is a fundamental tenet that people have to 
trust the system, to have confidence in the ultimate results of what 
has happened here in Washington, DC.
  Unfortunately, due to ignoring some basic tenets that people have to 
trust the cards and who is dealing the cards before they are going to 
trust the outcome of the game, people have doubts about what is going 
on in Washington, DC right now; and my colleague has brought up two 
reasons why those doubts have been fanned, and those reasons have to do 
with being centered around this secretive energy task force which has 
been shielded from public attention, that has been cloaked by secrecy 
all the way now to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is now involved in a 
situation which I believe can diminish people's trust, not only in the 
executive branch in government but in the judicial branch in 
government. I would like to address those concerns if I can.

  First, I want to talk about the judicial branch of government and why 
I believe right now it is at risk of undergoing some loss of trust in 
the American people associated with this energy task force situation. 
Perhaps my colleague has spoken about this already, but let me address 
what my understanding of the situation is, and what I know about this 
comes from the newspapers, so I am going to relay what I have read 
about this situation.
  As we know, the Vice President convened a task force to develop the 
administration policy, official policy of the executive authority of 
the United States of America, and he asked people to come in secretly 
and who came in was secret. When they met was secret. What they talked 
about was secret. What policies were developed as a result of that 
input was secret. Who got the tax breaks as a result of those 
discussions is secret. Who got the public subsidies from American 
taxpayers was secret. What deals were cut to give American taxpayers' 
money away to multi-million dollar corporations was

[[Page H862]]

secret. It was secret then, it is secret now, and apparently the 
executive branch wants to keep that secret to infinity, to eternity.
  Now, this has caused extreme angst and concern of my constituents, 
and I hear about this problem frequently. So what has happened as a 
result of that abnormal, unusual, unjustified secrecy is some citizens 
have challenged that, rightfully so, I believe, in court. At least one 
significant court, a court of appeals, has ruled that this veil of 
secrecy should be lifted.
  Appropriately, that matter is now pending before the U.S. Supreme 
Court. The executive branch has appealed. They have the right to appeal 
that, and we respect their right to appeal that so that the Supreme 
Court can decide the legal issue, and it is important for the Supreme 
Court to decide this legal issue, and we have no problem with the 
executive branch making whatever arguments they believe are appropriate 
to have this matter dealt with.
  However, when it is dealt with, it has to be done in a manner that is 
consistent with American jurisprudence and consistent with Americans' 
expectation that the carving in the marble over the Supreme Court is 
going to be more than a carving because the carving says, ``Equal 
Justice Under Law,'' and Americans expect equal justice under law; and 
when they expect equal justice under law, they expect that everyone 
will be treated equally, that there will not be personal relationships 
that could possibly influence the decision of the highest court, the 
bastion of liberty, the single most important court in the world that 
has been the bastion of preserving our personal individual liberties 
since the beginning of this country.
  Now, I am going to display a little bit of pride in the American 
judicial system for a minute. I am an old lawyer, a small-town 
practicing lawyer; and I really, truly believe that the American 
independent judicial system is one of, if not the principal, the 
reasons we have personal liberties in America today, because the 
Supreme Court of the United States historically has been a guardian of 
personal liberty, has protected the first amendment. It has protected 
our rights of freedom of speech. It has protected our rights of freedom 
of religion. It has protected our rights that we enjoy in reality, not 
just in paper, because you know what? The Soviet Union had the same 
bill of rights we do. They just did not have the courts to enforce 
them.
  We have a judicial system that is independent, and rightfully, from 
the political winds that blow, as much as we can make it, so that it 
will make decisions based on freedom rather than politics. So I believe 
very strongly in how important a clean, even-handed, fair, independent 
judiciary is to American democracy; and I believe right now that is at 
risk, that Americans' trust in that system is at risk.
  Now, I will not mention one decision that had a little controversy 
associated with it at the beginning of this administration. That is 
history. We do not want to talk about that, but today we have a 
situation where the Vice President, whose name is attached to this 
specific litigation, to decide whether or not his secret plan will 
remain secret, rather his cabal of people he got into the room, who he 
will not tell us about, will always remain secret and Americans will 
never know about it. Clearly, he has an interest in the resolution 
politically and a great sense personally in the resolution of this 
issue, and I respect the Vice President's right and the executive 
branch's right to have this matter heard on a fair basis by the U.S. 
Supreme Court.

  But we know that what has happened is in a fairly short time, before 
this matter will be heard before the U.S. Supreme Court, we are told in 
press reports that the Vice President of the United States invited one 
of the nine people, the only nine people in the world that can affect 
his secret task force or the secrecy of his task force, of only nine 
people in the world who can help him win his victory to keep this 
information from the American public, he invited one of them to come 
down to a duck hunting club in the South, I believe it was Louisiana, 
invited him, gave him free, I believe, I am told, a flight down on a 
jet to this duck hunting club where they could hobnob in secrecy for 
several days, where the American public was not invited into their 
discussions, where they did whatever people rightfully do in duck 
blinds across the world, which I respect and admire and am somewhat 
jealous of, which is great, and we admire collegiality.
  We admire people enjoying each other's company, but we cannot allow 
Americans to doubt the integrity of the United States Supreme Court, 
and when a Vice President of the United States, whose name is attached 
to the very litigation that we are associated with, whose political 
fate is somewhat tied up ultimately in the outcome of this litigation, 
who has the entire country focusing on the energy policy rightfully of 
this country, that is going to be decided by his duck hunting buddy, 
Americans are not wholly confident about that situation.
  We have a concept in the law called ``an appearance of fairness,'' 
and I do not mean any personal disrespect for the particular Justice 
involved here. I do not mean to demean his stature in any way, but 
under the circumstances of this case, it is not up to the standards of 
the American judicial system to have that situation exist while one of 
the nine people involved, where there is no further appeal, this is not 
just the district court where you can say well if the one district 
court makes a mistake later on, some appellate judge is going to clean 
it up. There is no more cleaning up after the U.S. Supreme Court. This 
is it.
  That is why I believe that it was a mistake of significant order for 
the Vice President of the United States to invite someone who will be 
deciding his case on this vacation shortly before this decision is 
going to be decided, and I can tell you that this has not helped 
restore the integrity and maintain the integrity of the U.S. Supreme 
Court on the high levels of expectations that we should have, and this 
is not a personal issue. It is a matter of integrity of the American 
judicial system.
  Now, this is all tied up and it kind of flows from the concept of 
secrecy. I mean, what we found is that in public life openness and 
sunshine is the antivirus agent and the best antivirus agent for things 
that are not healthy in American democracy; and what the Vice President 
has found is his insistence of not allowing public disclosure of this 
information has resulted in this controversy, which is most 
unfortunate.
  We have legitimate policy disagreements with this administration, 
about energy policy. We believe that the administration's energy policy 
is a tremendous energy policy for 2 centuries ago, in that it was very 
successful in handing out tremendous special interest breaks to large 
corporations, many in the fossil fuel business, that are not 
sufficiently visionary to deal with what we need to really break our 
addiction to Saudi Arabian oil, to stop global warming, and to grow new 
jobs in this country.

                              {time}  1600

  And we have a better policy, we believe.
  But before we get to the policy, this administration needs to come 
clean with the American people about what type of back-door, closed-
room dealing went on to create this proposal by them. And this 
administration should not infect the judicial system. The executive 
branch here should not infect the judicial system here by carrying this 
secret policy all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and thereby 
reducing not only the respect for the executive branch but for the 
judicial branch as well.
  I think at this point it would be well advised for the Supreme Court 
to consider this as a court, not as an individual judge or justice to 
resolve what its policies should be. I have heard the justification by 
the particular justice involved here. He has suggested that social 
interaction of one nature or another is to be expected in Washington, 
D.C. People are going to bump into each other at charity banquets, 
receptions and galas, and he is entirely correct. Those things will 
happen and they are expected, and I have never heard that anybody would 
gripe if this particular justice would have bumped into the Vice 
President at the former Members of Congress reception I was at the 
other night. I do not think anybody would have been raising a hue and 
cry about that issue.

[[Page H863]]

  The fact of the matter here is that we are talking about a very 
visible, important, and national public policy decision by the U.S. 
Supreme Court, and the gentleman who is the very person whose conduct 
is in question in this litigation spent several days, with very few 
other people, in a duck blind in Louisiana before this major national 
decision will be made by this sitting justice, based on discussions he 
has had with this Vice President, with no public disclosure whatsoever. 
And I am here to say that is wrong.
  Republicans believe that is wrong, Independents believe that is 
wrong, Democrats believe that is wrong, and most importantly those who 
believe in the integrity of the American judicial system believe that 
is wrong. And I am one of them. I walk by the U.S. Supreme Court every 
day on my way to work. It is a beautiful white building. And the reason 
it is beautiful is it has maintained the trust of the American people 
that they will get a fair deal ultimately in the U.S. Supreme Court. 
The minute that they cannot believe that we have got big problems in 
American democracy.
  I am encouraging the executive to rethink this entire secrecy policy 
and the U.S. Supreme Court to consider it as well, and I appreciate the 
gentleman bringing this to our attention.
  Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for the 
various points he made, but if I could develop a couple of them because 
I think some of them were particularly incisive.
  First of all, the gentleman started off by talking about the 
reputation of the Supreme Court being at stake here. I think that is 
true. I have to say that I came to this issue initially because of my 
concern over the policy aspects. In other words, we have this energy 
task force which made recommendations and became the basis for 
legislation that moved in the Congress. And, frankly, I feel that most 
of that work should have been done here in the Congress.
  In other words, we have committees, we have hearings, we introduce 
bills, and we move forward with legislation on something as important 
as this. But as the gentleman and I both know, in this case, almost 
everything that was in the legislation that was moved here by the 
Republican majority came out of this task force. So unlike the normal 
circumstance where somebody introduces a bill, we have a committee 
hearing, we have witnesses, we develop the legislation, it comes to the 
floor, and there is all this public input, which there was public 
input, that did happen in this case, but the seeds of this were 
developed in this secret task force.
  We do not come to the floor and complain about these problems with 
the abuse of power by the Republicans just because we are Democrats. We 
worry about the impact on public policy and whether or not it is good 
public policy in terms of our energy independence, for example, because 
of maybe who was involved in putting this legislation together.
  So I did not come to this, is what I am trying to say, by reference 
to the Supreme Court and the reputation of the Supreme Court, but I 
think the gentleman justly brings up the fact that that is a very 
important part of this; the trust and the ability of us to believe that 
the Supreme Court is going to make a very fair decision. That is 
probably just as important here as what the energy policy is that came 
out of this task force.
  When the gentleman mentioned that, I was looking at this New York 
Times editorial from last Saturday, which I had quoted earlier before 
the gentleman came down to speak, and I am not going to read the whole 
thing, but it is right on point in the last two paragraphs as to what 
the gentleman said. The New York Times editorial from February 28, last 
Saturday, reads: ``The law says a Federal judge must recuse himself 
from proceedings where his impartiality might be questioned. What 
matters, the Supreme Court has held, is not the reality of bias but its 
appearance. By vacationing in a small group with Mr. Cheney and taking 
things of value, Justice Scalia indicated an appearance of bias in Mr. 
Cheney's favor. It raises an appearance of partiality and should have 
been avoided.''
  Then they go on to say, ``the recusal rules protect not only 
litigants but also the court itself. Justice Scalia's actions have 
again made the court fodder for late night comedy, as it was after the 
2000 election. If Justice Scalia stays on the case and votes in Mr. 
Cheney's favor the Court will no doubt face more criticism. Justice 
Scalia should recuse himself either of his own volition or with the 
encouragement of his colleagues.''
  Of course, they are referencing back to the Presidential election and 
the Court's decision in the Presidential election. But the point is it 
is the Supreme Court itself whose reputation is at stake, as 
the gentleman pointed out. And they have had problems in the last few 
years, so they do not need another problem. Also, it is not really the 
issue of whether or not they actually discussed this litigation, 
because we do not know that, but the appearance of it, which is really 
what this is all about.

  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman once again.
  Mr. INSLEE. And let me say why I think this is so important. This is 
not important to Democrats, this is important to all Americans, 
Republicans, Independents, Green Party, you name it. Again, the reason 
is this is the people's House, the House of Representatives. We like to 
believe we do a good, and we do a good job some of the time at least, 
when we win our battles anyway, but we have to understand that the way 
people set up this country is that they had a peculiar genius and they 
understood to protect individual liberty they were going to need a 
separate entity that could stand alone and could even stand against 
sometimes very passionate emotional issues for individual liberty. That 
in our system of justice has been, I believe, a major tenet of the 
success of American democracy.
  Brown vs. Board of Education came from the Supreme Court. It did not 
come from the House of Representatives. The protection of people's 
civil liberties and their religious expression came from the Supreme 
Court. The Supreme Court has enforced the Bill of Rights in a lot of 
ways. And unless the Supreme Court remains inviolate and enjoys the 
popular support of the American people to understand they are going to 
get a fair shake, then those individual liberties are in danger.
  So I think this is much bigger than the energy task force. Although 
this is important, the issue of secrecy, but what is more important is 
the basic trust of the American people in that white marble building 
there that I believe is at risk in this very, very high profile 
decision. That is why I believe the Supreme Court should make a 
decision as a group on this, not as individual justices, because they 
as a group have a stake in this particular controversy.
  Again, I do not blame the Supreme Court. I think this was a mistake 
by the Vice President to initiate this controversy both in the secrecy 
aspect of it and the effort to have these out of court contacts with 
the person who will be deciding the case. So we hope that those things 
are remedied.
  Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, I know my colleague mentioned the fact 
that the Supreme Court should act on this collectively. My 
understanding is that on Tuesday of this week, March 2, the Supreme 
Court issued its first collective statement related to the controversy 
surrounding Justice Scalia, and basically said they would let Justice 
Scalia decide by himself whether he should sit in on this case in which 
the Vice President is the named plaintiff.
  Again, I think that is unfortunate, because I do think that since 
Justice Scalia has been so reluctant to recuse himself, the likelihood 
that he would do it on his own is probably less than if the Court as a 
whole made that decision. But, nonetheless, we can still hope that if 
we continue to talk about this and bring it up that maybe he will 
recuse himself.
  I have some statistics about the current justices recusing themselves 
from cases, and the fact is many have recused themselves in many cases. 
Chief Justice Rehnquist, for example, has recused himself 299 times 
since he joined the Court and Justice Clarence Thomas has recused 
himself 199 times. So it is not unusual for that to happen. I still, 
for the life of me, do not understand why in this situation, which is 
so high profile, that Justice Scalia does not simply say, look, I will 
stay out of

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this one. I will recuse myself and I will not allow myself to 
participate.
  It seems like it is a very simple thing that could be done, and I do 
think it is important for us to continue to bring it up. Because the 
bottom line, Madam Speaker, is that this energy task force has played a 
very important part in energy legislation that was developed here. And 
the whole concept of the appearance of impropriety on behalf of both 
the Vice President and the Supreme Court is at stake.
  So we are bringing this up tonight, myself and the gentleman from 
Washington, but we are going to have to come back here again and bring 
it up because this case will be heard in April and there is still the 
opportunity for Justice Scalia to heed the advice of the litigants, the 
Sierra Club and the other public advocates who have asked he recuse 
himself in this case.

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