Duck Hunting with the Dowbrigade

Antonin Scalia, the
Soprano’s favorite Supreme Court Justice, is in hot water again, and
once again it is his choice of hunting buddies that
got him there.  Just as the furor was starting to die down concerning
his hunting trip with Vice President Cheney so soon before the court
will hear arguments in the case arising from Cheney’s refusal to reveal
the names of the industry insiders who were called in to talk with his
Energy Task Force, there are new accusations.

This
time Scalia is accused of going hunting with the Dean of the University of Kansas
Law School, who was also the lawyer for the State of Kansas, and the
then-Govenor of Kansas, at a time when an important case involving the
state was before the Court.

Now, the Dowbrigade knows that the resulting impression of impropriety
is completely unfounded and, as any social scientist worth his salt would
tell you, based on an unreasonably small sample size. Justice Scalia
obviously just loves being outdoors, the sweet smell of cordite escaping on
the breeze, the reassuring feel of modern weaponry in his hands, and
the chance to kill small, unarmed (but fleet) creatures.

The problem, as we see it, is merely one of public relations perspective.  In
order to completely defuse this potentially embarrassing situation (for Supreme
Court Justices, like Caesar’s wife in more ways than one, must avoid
any IMPRESSION of impropriety), Scalia need only take one simple step.  He
needs to diversity his hunting buddies.  He needs to go hunting
with someone who not only has no pending cases before the SC, but whose
whole political orientation was so out of wack with his own as to
be impossible to reconcile in a single world view.

Someone, for example, like the Dowbrigade.  Yes, we are volunteering
to take a little hunting trip with Justice Scalia, a trip we believe
might be edifying AND enjoyable for both of us. A real briefcase nuke
in the old echo chamber.

Despite the fact that the Dowbrigade suffers from a life-long quasi-Buddhist
abhorrence of killing in any form, he has no aversion to weapons, having
achieved the rank of Marksman First Class in his days as a NRA
adolescent shooter, and a Varsity Letter from Harvard for exemplary service on the Harvard
Sharp Shooting
Team, affectionately known as "the Snotty Snipers".

So we could hang with old Antonin. Hell, who knows how many of the world’s
problems we could sort out over a case of Coors and a couple of those new
big-bore rifles with the Granite Mountain Arms large
magnum repeating
action, and a woods full of critters. Even WITHOUT killing anything we’re sure we could scare the hell out of a wide variety of lifeforms.

So what do you say, Justice Scalia? Why not show those carping critics
that there’s nothing to those nasty rumors. If you can go hunting with
the Dowbrigade, your impartiality, if not your better judgment, will be unimpeachable.

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