The Future of Free Speech?

Well, if that don't just beat all!

Justice Antonin Scalia is famously averse to having his speeches recorded by the media, so much so that in March 2003, he barred news cameras from a ceremony in which he received the "Citidel of Free Speech Award." [link] Really, you couldn't make this stuff up.

But I digress. Yesterday, Scalia was giving a speech to high school students in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Although television cameras were barred from the speech, there was no announcement prohibiting recording devices. And, in fact, two reporters were recording the speech when they were approached by a "deputy federal marshal" named Melanie Rube, who told them that they would have to erase their tapes. When one of the reporters resisted, the deputy federal marshal took the recording device from her hands; the reporter later relented and showed the deputy how to erase the recording. [link]

Out of curiosity, I ran "Melanie Rube" through Google, and came up with a reference to her, by name, by Senator Orrin Hatch on the Floor of the Senate. Specifically, he quoted her as "endorsing" the nomination of Charles Pickering, Sr. to the federal bench. [link] In fact, she's quoted in a book published by the Committee for Justice praising Judge Pickering's "compassion" and extolling the "positive impact" that he would have if confirmed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. [link -- see page 27 of the pdf file].

Now, you should be aware that the U.S. Marshal Service is an executive agency, although it is tasked with defending and assisting in the operations of the judicial branch. It is also an organization that, throughout its (or its immediate predecessor's) history, has been described as "rabidly partisan". For example, in 1880, here is what one magazine had to say: The Nation, an independent Republican periodical and a leader in the movement for civil service reform, insisted that "the U.S. Marshal . . . is always a partisan, and often a rabid partisan, and is rarely appointed for anything but partisanship" (Nation 1880). [link]

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I promise. But consider the evidence of conspiracy here: A Supreme Court justice who has recently and over the past three years been excoriated by the Left as being improperly partisan is being protected by a deputy U.S. Marshall who has herself been very vocal in support of a judge whose nomination triggered one of the nastiest and most partisan nomination fights in 25 years, and who has been the subject of much media criticism. In the course of protecting her principal, this deputy marshal uses her official position not only to demand that two reporters refrain from taping the justice while he speaks at a public forum, but confiscates their recording devices and demands that they erase what has already been recorded.

I'm not saying that anything that took place was illegal. But even if there's nothing wrong with what happened, it just looks bad. And in a system where the legitimacy of the Court is predicated on not only a lack of impropriety but also the appearance of no improprities, the fact that it looks bad makes it actually bad.