"The irony of it was that the operating system was doing exactly what we'd told it to do," Klemm lamented.

Man...when things I write for Goats do exactly what I tell them to do, but that's not what they're supposed to do, I call that a "bug". If I'd only known I was being ironic, and not just a shoddy programmer, I could have saved huge amounts of time over the years ignoring the little ironies of the site instead of fixing the bugs.

Wampum has a good summary of the issues surrounding Cheney and Scalia sitting in a tree (hunting ducks) while at the same time sharing court dates on opposite sides of the bench.

At this point, I expect this kind of behavior from these people. I don't doubt that they think they have our best interests at heart, I just think that they're so clueless that they have no idea what anyone's best interests actually are. What bothers me is that they don't even seem, to understand why anyone could possibly have issues with the sort of blatantly unethical behavior they engage in.

Maybe they didn't discuss the case at all.

That's completely irrelevant.

That they don't comprehend that even the appearance of this sort of collusion undermines the separation of powers should be enough to have them branded as incompetent.

Unethical is actually the preferred outcome.