Posted on 02/04/2009 10:28:37 AM PST by presidio9
In a room filled with some of Palm Beach County's most powerful people, it took a 20-year-old political science student to throw off U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Tuesday afternoon.
Student Sarah Jeck stood in front of 750 people and asked Scalia why cameras are not allowed in the U.S. Supreme Court even though the court hearings are open, transcripts are available and the court's justices are open enough to go "out on book tours." Scalia was at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in part to do a book signing and wasn't happy at the question.
"Read the next question," Scalia replied. "That's a nasty, impolite question."
Scalia's trademark mixture of humor, confidence and combativeness was on full display Tuesday at a luncheon put on by the Palm Beach County Forum Club and Bar Association.
In a half-hour speech, he described the division on the nation's highest court, not between liberal and conservative, but how the justices view the U.S. Constitution. More than 750 people packed the luncheon, including judges, politicians and prominent local attorneys, to listen to a man admired as fervently as he is maligned. In the back corner, sat Jeck and her Florida Atlantic University classmates, excited to hear Scalia speak.
His speech centered on two main schools of thought on constitutional law:
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
She “threw him off”? More like the other way around.
And there's your answer in a nutshell. Because the septuagenarians on the court can be cranky, inattentive, or just plain asleep during the proceedings. Who'd want that on camera?
What was nasty about it?
Read the lead. Is this reportage or an editorial?
Well, to my lights, it sure isn’t reportage.
This girl has a future in the mainstream media - she deftly took his answer and completely ignoring it's content twisted it into a soundbite to serve her political point of view.
This seems like a perfectly reasonable question to me.
What’s nasy and impolite are the vast majority of rulings sent down.
I don’t get it. It sounded like a valid question. Did I miss something? Who peed in Justice Scalia’s Wheaties?
I agree that it didn’t seem to be particularly nasty. Perhaps he was annoyed because he was there to discuss interpretation, and this was more of a proceedural issue. This would probably be a better question for Roberts, I’m guessing.
I’ll hear the audio before I’ll believe the reporter. It’s that bad.
The only legitimate reason I can think of for prohibition of cameras is to prevent lawyers from playing to them ... but it’s easy to think of reasons why video would be helpful.
Most Americans have no idea what goes on at the Supreme Court – none – except that somehow the court decides really important questions, like whether everyone in the country will be allowed to commit sodomy. Most Americans don’t have time to read the court’s often-lengthy opinions, and downloading and listening to audio recordings is more than a little cumbersome.
Tool. After all, it’s ‘his’ court. Lol.
We are clowns. Every dam public office or court room should have a camera in there watching our ‘masters’.
She probably p’d him off by mentioning the book tour part while he was there on a book tour. Still, there was nothing particularly nasty about the question.
It’s one which has been answered time and again. They do not want hours and hours of questions and deliberations edited down into 10 second soundbites. The Supreme Court is considering the totality of a question and not what would be revealed in a short clip, regardless of how poignant.
Seems like a reasonable question to me.
Oh, sure, she’s the ass here, not Scalia.
The reason it was at least impolite, was the end of the question when she said the Justices can go on book tours—it sounded like she was not only asking a question, but insinuating that he, Scalia, could express his opinions in a book and on tour but not as well on camera. It was not a proper way to end the question.
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