Wonkette

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would like all you Sad Sallies who are still sore over the 2000 election (which he personally decided, on a bet) to hike up your panties and get over it. “That was like so ten minutes ago,” he tells 60 Minutes‘ Leslie Stahl in an interview to be aired this weekend. Scalia explains that he is great friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and other known liberals whom he has had the graciousness not to murder or even jail in their many years on the Supreme Court. And then he lets loose with a shocking revelation! MORE »

* Maverick straight talker Chuck Hagel won’t be a complete mirror image of Joe Lieberman until he’s lost a Presidential election. [WP]
* Scooter Libby’s personal hell is spending eternity trapped in 2003. [NYT]
* Military now kills Iranian agents captured in Iraq, no more “Ludovico technique.” [WP]
* John Warner copied Joe Biden’s homework, plans to turn in his “resolution of opposition, opposition.” [WP]
* How are lawsuits against the NSA’s warrantless spying program going? Sorry, that’s classified. [WP, NYT]
* Strategic energy independence or an ash choked planet: choose one. [WSJ]
* Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she, er, the court misses the benefits of two women on the bench. This is code for “enjoy your abortions while you can!” [USAT]
* Subliminal messages hidden in SOTU, like the speech itself, contain “nothing, nothing at all. ” [LAT]

• Yeas and Nays: Vernon Jordan calls and demands that Nathan’s (G’town) bring chilidogs out to his car as he drives by… Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will preside over a mock trial involving Henrik Ibsen characters. Former theater students, law students equally appalled. [Examiner]
• Reliable Source: Hill Staffers, Reps Bob Etheridge and James McGovern, eat school lunch — voluntarily — because it was free. Lunch options given goofy names, you really should just go read it for yourself. [WP]

It’s a full service edition of Wonk’d, as Bill Frist stands Chrst-like in front of a three-way mirror for a suit fitting, and Jenna and Barbara Bush get spa treatments. LL Cool J and Wolf Blitzer take to the city’s fine dining establishments, while Dick Cheney and Ashlee Simpson stick to the ‘burbs.

Different strokes for different folks. While Teresa Heinz Kerry might not think twice about dropping six bills on dinner, Ruth Bader Ginsburg shops at Safeway like the rest of us. That, and Sam Donaldson has to bribe a cabbie to get picked up, just like we do.

You know the drill: the full list of sightings appears after the jump. And please continue to email us with your celebrity sightings, with “Wonk’d” or “Sighting” in the subject line. Thanks in advance for your delectable contributions.

MORE »

Today Wonkette took a field trip to the U.S. Supreme Court. We were all excited, ’cause we — like many others — thought it might be the last day of the Term.

The Court would hand down decisions in all its big-ticket cases — like the Texas redistricting case, and the Guantanamo Bay detainee case. Maybe a justice would announce his or her retirement. We might be present for the making of history.

As it turned out, the SCOTUS faked us out. Moving into overtime, they announced that tomorrow will be the last day of the Term. Perhaps their recent night at the movies caused the justices to fall behind in their work.

Nevertheless, our visit to the Court was worthwhile. Even though the decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld will have to wait until tomorrow, we did get to watch Justice Kennedy try to explain the confusing raft of opinions in the Texas redistricting case. And we swooned when the hunky Chief Justice started talkin’ dirty to us, about Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on “Consular Relations”…

After the jump, part one of our two-part photo essay on our day with the Supremes.

Update: Part Two is available here.

MORE »

Supreme Court justices are people too. And like all good Americans, they love going to the movies. From today’s Reliable Source:

So what if you have 25 cases to wrap up by the end of the month? No reason the whole office can’t bail out a little early one night to catch a movie together!

For the folks on the Supreme Court, a retirement was even more cause for a midweek treat. On Wednesday afternoon, all nine justices — plus recently retired colleague Sandra Day O’Connor and a handful of spouses — sneaked over to the Library of Congress for a private screening of the John Wayne classic “Red River.”

More details and commentary, after the jump.

MORE »

This morning the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of Anna Nicole Smith, the luscious ex-Playmate seeking a fair share of her late husband’s estate. We’re not terribly surprised, having predicted this outcome; but we are pleased for her. (It seems the justices were unable to resist Smith’s audacious strategy of proceeding pro se before them.)

Okay, this is the paragraph where we’d block quote a key excerpt from the opinion. But we won’t do that, since it’s kinda boring. Yes, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the opinion, but this time it’s not her fault. Despite the high-profile parties, the subject matter of the litigation — the extent of the “probate exception” to federal jurisdiction — is less-than-scintillating. We’ll spare you the details, and you can thank us later. (If you’d like some actual legal analysis of the decision, check out SCOTUSblog, among many other fine blawgs.)

With a widely expected outcome and a soporific, technical legal issue, we don’t have much to say. Two quick observations about the case appear after the jump.

MORE »

From Linda Greenhouse’s account of the Supreme Court argument earlier this week in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the controversial case about detainees’ rights: MORE »

Because Wonkette is a family blog — with just a soupcon of assfucking — we’re showing you this G-rated picture of Justice Antonin Scalia, with all five fingers raised.

Justice Antonin Scalia goes hunting with Dick Cheney. But in case you need more support for the proposition that Nino is the coolest, most bad-ass justice on the Supreme Court, consider this report from the Boston Herald:

Minutes after receiving the Eucharist at a special Mass for lawyers and politicians at Cathedral of the Holy Cross, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had a special blessing of his own for those who question his impartiality when it comes to matters of church and state.

“You know what I say to those people?” Scalia, 70, replied, making an obscene gesture under his chin when asked by a Herald reporter if he fends off a lot of flak for publicly celebrating his conservative Roman Catholic beliefs.

“That’s Sicilian,” the Italian jurist said, interpreting for the “Sopranos” challenged.

Considering how much we drop the F bomb around here, Justice Scalia is a man after our own heart. Can you believe that he flipped someone the bird with bits of the Eucharist still between his teeth? Cert denied!

(We love Cheney for the same reason, since he used the F-word on the floor of the U.S. Senate. And we have lots of other reasons for loving Cheney too.)

Update: This post is the subject of a correction/clarification.

More evidence of Scalia’s coolness after the jump.

MORE »

From the AP report on yesterday’s oral argument in the Texas redistricting case: MORE »

Tonight, the Independent Women’s Forum presents National Review editor Kate O’Bierne, reading from her smash hit Women Who Make the World Worse. We’re terribly excited: MORE »

“Here, you’ve still got some of Schumer’s spittle on you…” MORE »

MORE »