“The Supreme Court agreed last month to take up Cheney’s appeal in a case that involves his refusal to disclose the identities of members of his energy task force. Three weeks later, Scalia and Cheney went duck hunting together in the marshes of southern Louisiana.

Scalia maintains there was nothing improper about the trip, but it has prompted more than 20 newspaper editorial demands for President Reagan’s conservative appointee to stay out of the Cheney case.” —Fox Scalia retains the right to make his own decision about whether to recuse himself, unless a party with standing in the case asks him to do so and he refuses, in which case — albeit highly unlikely — the entire Court could review the question of his conflict of interest.

Joshua Micah Marshall: “When I look at the federal investigation being launched into the Janet Jackson boob incident, I realize what I like about this administration: they believe in accountability.”

“Never mind the investigation by the Federal Communications Commission into the Super Bowl halftime show that ended with the baring of Janet Jackson’s breast. Where is the inquiry into the crude, crass Super Bowl commercials celebrating a dog trained to bite crotches, a flatulent horse, a monkey pitching woo to a woman, a man tortured with a bikini waxing and an elderly couple fighting over a bag of potato chips?” —New York Times

“CBS announced today plans to enhance its ability to edit out any inappropriate and unexpected events from the Sunday, Feb. 8 broadcast of the “46th Annual Grammy Awards” on CBS.”

“And did no one notice that her tit was adorned with a little silver sun? The sun is a star, and since it’s decorated with a silver star, we can only assume this mammary has seen battle! Her boob is as highly decorated as John Kerry! And John Kerry threw his medals away. Janet (“Miss Jackson” if you’re nasty) wears hers with pride.” —Wonkette

Everyone knows, of course, that Bush fell asleep and missed the incident (after assiduously staying away from pretzels during the first half, I presume).

And, of course, in response to this new media crisis, Michael Powell is doing his part to reduce the record budget deficit, threatening to fine each of the 200 or so CBS affiliates that aired the offending segment up to $27,500 each, although he would personally like the penalty to be ten times higher. However, the Jackson flap is only one of recent celebrity exploits on TV that have the decency freaks howling for blood.

And TiVo reports that the “costume malfunction” was the most-replayed television moment in the history of the DVR. (I knew that the cloud around its silver lining is its amassing data about its users’ viewing habits, but I was not aware TiVo’s datamining is so detailed as to include a log of all rewinds and reviews. )

Will he seek to replace Cheney on the Republican ticket? [joke…]

“Bush’s approval numbers dip.” —CNN [Memo to David Brooks et al: Now do you begin to grasp what ‘electability’ might mean?]

And furthermore:

Support for going to war with Iraq also dipped below 50% for the first time, to 49%. The proportion of Americans who were certain that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to develop them before the war fell dramatically. More than four in 10 said the administration deliberately misled the public about whether Iraq had the banned weapons.

I caught this just before it went off the scroll at Boing Boing: “An anonymous reader sez, ‘The BBC made a unique deal with Real Networks which disposes of their spyware tactics. Basically, if a user clicks on a link to download Real Player from a BBC website, the referrer script sends them to a page where they can download an expiry-free, spyware-free and nuicance-free version of the player. It’s because the BBC have such a stringent public service remit, that it was offensive to charge people a license fee for BBC content, then make them pay all over again for the facility to view/listen to it.'”