Scalia died at a remote resort. Who pays for these trips and what do justices have to disclose? - WP
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Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death over the weekend at a West Texas ranch spawned a host of questions about how authorities in the area responded.
It also raised questions about the nature of his travel, who paid for a Supreme Court justice to visit the remote resort and whether justices are subject to the same disclosure guidelines as other judges or federal officials. Here is a guide to these questions.
Where did Justice Scalia die?
Scalia was at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort tucked away in the Big Bend region of Texas about 30 miles from the border with Mexico.
The ranch is 30,000-acre getaway that is home to John B. Poindexter, according to the website of J.B. Poindexter & Co. It is a remote location that has reportedly attracted the likes of Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall and Bruce Willis. When Tommy Lee Jones directed a movie more than a decade ago, he filmed several scenes at the ranch, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Who paid for his trip?
All of which raises the question: Who pays for a Supreme Court justice to make this kind of trip?
Not Scalia, it turns out. Poindexter told The Washington Post that Scalia was not charged for his stay, something he described as a policy for all guests at the ranch.
“I did not pay for the Justice’s trip to Cibolo Creek Ranch,” Poindexter wrote in a brief email Tuesday. “He was an invited guest, along with a friend, just like 35 others.”
Poindexter added: “The Justice was treated no differently by me, as no one was charged for activities, room and board, beverages, etc. That is a 22-year policy.’’
However, Poindexter said he did not pay for Scalia’s charter flight to Texas.
A person familiar with the ranch’s operations said Poindexter hosts such events two or three times a year.
Poindexter, who would not identify Scalia’s friend, is a Texas native and decorated Vietnam veteran who owns Houston-based J.B. Poindexter & Co., a manufacturing firm.
The company has seven subsidiaries, with combined annual revenue of nearly $1 billion, according to information on its website. Among the items it manufacturers are delivery vans for UPS and FedEx and machine components for limousines and hearses. The company has 5,000 employees, the site said.
One of Poindexter’s companies was involved in a case that made it to the high court. Last year, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case involving an age discrimination lawsuit filed against one of these companies, court records show.
The nature of Poindexter’s relationship with Scalia remained unclear Tuesday, one of several lingering questions about his visit. It was not known whether Scalia had paid for his own ticket to fly to the ranch or if someone else picked up the tab, just as it was not immediately clear if Scalia had visited before.
It is also still not known who else was at the Texas ranch for the weekend, and unless that is revealed, there could be concerns about who could have tried to raise an issue around Scalia, said Stephen Gillers, who teaches legal and judicial ethics at the New York University School of Law. He compared it to unease that arises when judges and officials from major companies are invited to seminars or educational events that bring them together for periods of time.
“People worry at those kinds of things; there’s a creation of access on the part of people with an interest in the courts, and that is unfair,” Gillers said Tuesday.
Antonin Scalia died on Saturday, Feb. 13. Here's a look back on his tenure, his judicial philosophy and the legacy he leaves behind. (Monica Akhtar,Natalie Jennings/The Washington Post)
How do justices disclose their gifts and investments?
Much the same way other federal judges do: by filing reports outlining their outside income, gifts and times they are reimbursed for things.
The 1978 Ethics in Government Act, passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal, states that all federal judges — up to and including the chief justice and the associate justices — are required to report certain gifts. It also requires them to identify and describe when someone who is not a relative gives them “transportation, lodging, food, or entertainment” worth a certain amount.
A review of Scalia’s recent financial disclosure reports posted online by OpenSecrets.org shows that, like his colleagues, he regularly filed for unspecified reimbursements from universities, legal societies and other organizations after making trips for lectures and speeches. Scalia was among the court’s most active travelers. However, these disclosure forms offer scant details about who else attends events with the justices.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. devoted part of his 2011 report on the state of the federal judiciary to the topic of these disclosures. He also made sure to note that it was not entirely clear, in the court’s eyes, whether Congress could even extend such requirements to the justices.
“The Court has never addressed whether Congress may impose those requirements on the Supreme Court,” he wrote. “The Justices nevertheless comply with those provisions.”
Are there other ethical questions regarding justices?
The biggest ethical questions involve when justices should recuse themselves from cases, says Giller.
“Is [the justice] the final arbiter of whether or not he has to recuse himself? And the answer is yes,” he said. “Every other federal judge below the Supreme Court, every other federal judge’s decision about whether or not he should be recused is potentially subject to the review of a higher judge or other judges on his court. But no one reviews the decision of a justice.”
He pointed to perhaps the most famous case involving a justice and recusal, which involved Scalia himself. Scalia joined then-Vice President Richard B. Cheney on a hunting trip while Cheney was the subject of a lawsuit over his energy task force, and in response to calls that he sit out the case, Scalia issued a highly unusual 21-page argument explaining why he refused to do so.
There are also calls for recusal stemming from things justices did before they joined the bench. Justice Elena Kagan, who served as the Obama administration’s solicitor general before her appointment, dismissed suggestions to recuse herself from decisions on health-care reform. Kagan had said that while in the administration she was not involved in preparations for legal challenges the act would face.
For his part, Roberts has defended the court’s policy allowing justices to decide for themselves if they should step away from certain cases, defending the court’s members as capable of making this decision themselves.
In his 2011 report, Roberts noted that while lower courts can substitute for one another, there is only one U.S. Supreme Court, “and if a Justice withdraws from a case, the Court must sit without its full membership.” The justices have “an obligation to the Court” before making the decision on recusal, he wrote.
Roberts issued his report at the end of a year in which more than 100 law professors nationwide asked Congress to give the Supreme Court an ethical code of conduct after it emerged that Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas had attended private political meetings sponsored by billionaire conservative donors David and Charles Koch. That same year, Kagan was called on to recuse herself from hearing challenges to health-care reform, and a watchdog group said Thomas had failed to report his wife’s income from a conservative think tank before he amended his financial forms.
While Roberts did not specifically mention those issues, he said it would not be wise for justices to review the recusal decisions made by their peers. He said that “it would create an undesirable situation” enabling justices to play a role in determining which others get to weigh in on cases.
“I have complete confidence in the capability of my colleagues to determine when recusal is warranted,” he wrote. “They are jurists of exceptional integrity and experience whose character and fitness have been examined through a rigorous appointment and confirmation process.”
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Antonin Scalia, the influential and most provocative member of the Supreme Court, has died. He was 79.
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Oct. 8, 2010 Justice Antonin Scalia at the Supreme Court. Larry Downing/Reuters
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Mark Berman covers national news for The Washington Post and anchors Post Nation, a destination for breaking news and stories from around the country.
Jerry Markon covers the Department of Homeland Security for the Post’s National Desk. He also serves as lead Web and newspaper writer for major breaking national news.
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Eliot Spitzer was accused by a luxury prostitute that he assaulted after an argument.
Apparently, New York’s former governor Eliot Spitzer is involved in another prostitution scandal. But his attorney claims that his client’s accuser in the recent sex scandal, a 25-year-old Russian-born luxury hooker, has ‘emotional difficulties.’
Police are conducting an investigation after the woman alleged that Spitzer, 56, has assaulted her and tried to choke her when she broke the news to him that they could no longer see each other as she was planning to fly back to Russia.
The two have met for the last time in a $1,000-per-night Plaza Hotel room on Saturday. Reportedly, Spitzer has been a client of the $5,000-per-hour prostitute for two years now. But she planned to go back to her parents as her her occupation brought her a small fortune.
Spitzer’s attorney Adam Kaufmann declined to tell for how long the two have been seeing each other. He only said that it was for a ‘period of time.’ But according to the woman’s initial report, which has been retracted before she flew to Russia, it was for two years. Spitzer was known as her ‘Client 9.’
Kaufmann said that his client met with the woman in the hotel room but she became ‘highly emotional’ and threatened him that she would do self-harm. When police arrived after a 911 call, officers saw that she had a n open wound on her wrist and there was a broken glass on the floor.
She was rushed to the hospital, where she told investigators that her client assaulted her when she told him that she was going back to Russia. According to police, the woman was the one to dial 911 and the one who tried to cancel the call.
The attorney said about the incident that Spitzer tried to calm her down when he saw her in a clear state of distress. He failed to provide the reason for the woman’s emotional troubles.
A spokesperson for the former governor declined the truthfulness of the allegations. On Monday, Spitzer made the first comment, and said his accuser was not his girlfriend as some media outlets had reported. He declined to comment on the nature of their relationship.
At hospital, the woman told investigators that she would drop all charges. She also became uncooperative. Initially, she said that she and Spitzer had an argument over her departure to Moscow, so she used a shard from a broken glass to cut her wrist. Kaufman and the police said that she was discharged and left for Russia on Sunday night.
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Jose Guardado, a pilgrim from Oklahoma, views souvenir T-shirts a day before attending a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. (Dan Dalstra/Reuters)
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — With hundreds of thousands of people watching, Pope Francis plans to ascend a ramp overlooking the Rio Grande on Wednesday and pray for migrants who have lost their lives crossing this border.
He’ll see the highways and railroads leading toward the brown hills of El Paso, and his fans — including some migrants who lived through the crossing — looking back at him from the United States.
With that stirring finale to his six-day trip to Mexico, Pope Francis also will be plunging into one of the most controversial issues in the presidential race up north: how the United States regards immigrants.
Mexican priests say the Juarez finale is intended as an extension of the pope’s message of unity and empathy that he has delivered during his stops in Mexico and in other countries. But his remarks will also be attuned to the divisive politics taking place north of the border.
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Feb. 16, 2016 Pope Francis waves while leaving the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See in Mexico City, just before leaving for Michoacan state. Antonio Nava/AFP/Getty Images
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In the Republican primary race, Donald Trump and other candidates have vowed to increase border security and sharply limit the entry of Syrian refugees. Trump has threatened to ban most Muslims from visiting the United States, revoke birthright citizenship for children of unauthorized migrants, and build a multibillion-dollar wall to seal off the stream of Mexicans and Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty.
The pope’s visit here is expected to be a not-so-subtle repudiation of all that.
“The pope wanted to come to Juarez to make public the suffering of the migrants,” the Rev. Roberto Luna, a priest in Ciudad Juarez, said. “The pope says that this world is a house for everyone. He’s convinced that we should treat migrants as brothers.”
Even before he arrived, Francis was blasted by Trump, who called the pontiff “a very political person.” Speaking in a Fox Business Network interview, Trump added he didn’t think the pope “understands the danger of the open border we have with Mexico.”
“And I think Mexico got him to do it because Mexico wants to keep the border just the way it is, because they’re making a fortune and we’re losing,” Trump added.
From the time he stepped onto the red carpet at the Mexico City airport, Pope Francis has offered pointed critiques of the failings in Mexico's government and society, pressing his papal finger on the country’s most sensitive wounds. In front of President Enrique Peña Nieto, whose popularity has plummeted amid conflict-of-interest scandals and atrocities linked to security forces, the popechastised the country’s leaders for a culture of corruption. Before the nation’s Catholic bishops, the pope warned against social climbing and putting faith in the “chariots and horses of today’s pharaohs.” He spoke of the dangers of wealth and greed in a vast slum outside of the capital.
It was a rare moment of irritation for Pope Francis during an event in Michoacan, Mexico, on Feb. 16, when he was knocked off balance by an overly enthusiastic crowd member. (Reuters)
But many church observers say that Pope Francis, the Argentine-born son of an Italian father, finds special importance in the immigration issue, particularly at a time when large numbers of refugeesare traversing the Middle East and Europe.
“The influence that the pope can have is to remind us that we are all migrants,” said the Rev. Nicolas Villanueva Arellano, a priest in the Tijuana archdiocese whose father was a resident in California. “More than building walls, we should be trying to build bridges.”
“He’s calling us to be compassionate to people who have to move from one place to another,” Villanueva added. “They’re not doing it because they want to. Necessity obliges them.”
“For the pope, it is very important to send this message and call attention to the thousands of people [leaving home], and not just in Mexico, because it’s a situation happening across the world,” Maria Soledad Loaeza Tovar, a professor at the College of Mexico and an expert in foreign relations. “He emphasizes the theme of the marginalized, of the excluded, of those who feel isolated, who feel they’re not part of society.”
Juarez itself was marginalized not too many years ago. And now it is a city ripe for redemption. The number of killings in Juarez last year fell to about 300, one-tenth of the murder rate at the peak of the drug war in 2010, according to the state government. This could be the result of civic unity and police work; or because of the Sinaloa Cartel’s defeat of its rivals for control of the drug trafficking routes in this portion of border.
Either way, Juarez is relieved and ready for better days.
A visit to Juarez is “the most visible signal” of the pope’s opinion on cross-border migration, Luna said.
“This pope, he creates community, hope. He brings happiness to people,” he said. “That will be his legacy in history.”
Martinez reported from Mexico City.
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Joshua Partlow is The Post’s bureau chief in Mexico. He has served previously as the bureau chief in Kabul and as a correspondent in Brazil and Iraq.
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A California judge says Apple must help federal investigators crack the password protection on the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. Video provided by Newsy Newslook
Apple's iPhone 4S(Photo: Kimihiro Hoshino, AFP)
When U.S. Magistrate Sheri Pym ruled that Apple must help the FBI break into an iPhone belonging to one of the killers in the San Bernardino, Calif., shootings, the tech world shuddered.
Why? The battle of encryption "backdoors" has been longstanding in Silicon Valley, where a company's success could be made or broken based on its ability to protect customer data.
The issue came into the spotlight after Edward Snowden disclosed the extent to which technology and phone companies were letting the U.S. federal government spy on data being transmitted through their network.
Since Edward Snowden's whistleblowing revelations, Facebook, Apple and Twitter have unilaterally said they are not going to create such backdoors anymore.
So here's the "backdoor" the FBI wants: Right now, iPhone users have the option to set a security feature that only allows a certain number of tries to guess the correct passcode to unlock the phone before all the data on the iPhone is deleted. It's a security measure Apple put in place to keep important data out of the wrong hands.
Federal prosecutors looking for more information behind the San Bernardino shootings don’t know the phone's passcode. If they guess incorrectly too many times, the data they hope to find will be deleted.
That's why the FBI wants Apple to disable the security feature. Once the security is crippled, agents would be able to guess as many combinations as possible.
Kurt Opsahl, general counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital rights non-profit, explained that this "backdoor" means Apple will have to to write brand new code that will compromise key features of the phone's security. Apple has five business days to respond to the request.
What does Apple have to say about this? Apple CEO Tim Cook said late Tuesday that the company would oppose the ruling. In a message to customers published on Apple's website, he said: "We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack. For years, cryptologists and national security experts have been warning against weakening encryption. Doing so would hurt only the well-meaning and law-abiding citizens who rely on companies like Apple to protect their data."
Back in December, Cook defended the company's use of encryption on its mobile devices, saying users should not have to trade privacy for national security, in a broad interview with 60 Minutes. In the interview, Cook stood by the company's stance of refusing to offer encrypted texts and messages from users.
What does this mean for the next time the government wants access? The order doesn't create a precedent in the sense that other courts will be compelled to follow it, but it will give the government more ammunition.
What do digital rights experts have to say? There are two things that make this order very dangerous, Opsahl said. The first is the question it raises about who can make this type of demand. If the U.S. government can force Apple to do this, why can't the Chinese or Russian governments?
The second is that while the government is requesting a program to allow it to break into this one, specific iPhone, once the program is created it will essentially be a master key. It would be possible for the government to take this key, modify it and use it on other phones. That risks a lot, that the government will have this power and it will not be misused, he said.
And the lawmakers? Well, they are torn. Key House Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., says Congress shouldn't force tech companies to have encryption backdoors. Congress is struggling with how to handle the complex issue.
On the other side of things, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Vice Chair Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., say they want to require tech companies to provide a backdoor into encrypted communication when law enforcement officials obtain a court order to investigate a specific person.
What now? This could push the tech companies to give users access to unbreakable encryption. To some extent, it's already happening. Companies like Apple and Google — responding to consumer demands for privacy — have developed smart phones and other devices with encryption that is so strong that even the companies can't break it.
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President Barack Obama says it's clear the two killers in the California shootings had gone down the "dark path of radicalization." Obama, speaking from the Oval office, said terrorists are turning to less complicated acts like mass shootings. (Dec. AP
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MASS SHOOTING IN SAN BERNARDINO, CALIF.Local residents pay tribute to San Bernadino victims | 01:23
Local residents in San Bernardino lay flowers and messages of solidarity near the site of the shooting that left 14 dead. Video provided by AFP Newslook
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