I believe it started with a January 20 New York Times editorial observer column by Dorothy Samuels: “Tripping up on trips: Judges love junkets as much as Tom Delay does.” Nightline appears to have picked up the story idea from the Times and assigned it to Brian Ross for a January 23 broadcast: “Supreme ethics problem?” Nightline investigated the bombshell question: “What was Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia doing on day of Supreme Court swearing-in.” (Answer: Teaching a long-planned one-day course on the separation of powers for lawyers from around the country.) From the Nightline story came a rerun of the same bogus story via a January 27 New York Times editorial: “Justices and junkets.”
The sponsor of the course that Justice Scalia taught is the Federalist Society; the Federalist Society has posted links to its illuminating correspondence with ABC News on its home page. The Federalist Society has also condensed the relevant facts for us as follows:
1. Justice Scalia taught a comprehensive course about the separation of powers under our Constitution. Reminiscent of Dan Rather
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