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You’ve likely heard of the lock-out of longshoreman in port facilities on the West coast and how President Bush has now invoked the Taft-Hartley Act to force the workers to go back to work. There’s been a lot of sloppy reporting on this case — and we’ll be saying more about that. But for the moment let me draw your attention to this.

Eugene Scalia (yes, son of Antonin) is the Solicitor of the Department of Labor. He’s actually not quite an appointee. President Bush couldn’t get enough votes to get him confirmed so he put Scalia in the job through a recess appointment this last January, as he did with Otto Reich at State. So Scalia is the head lawyer on the government’s negotiations between the Pacific Maritime Association and the longshoreman’s union, the ILWU.

So far so good.

But it turns out that Scalia has a bit of a conflict. Before he became Solicitor one of his legal clients was — you guessed it — the Pacific Maritime Association. Click here to see the key page of Scalia’s public disclosure statement, which has just been added to the TPM Document Collection.

On Monday, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard L. Trumka called on Scalia to recuse himself. So far though Scalia hasn’t even responded to Trumka’s request. And the press has simply failed to mention it. No one seems to think it’s even important enough to report on. The AFL-CIO’s Lane Windham told TPM today that Scalia “can’t try to be impartial when he’s represented one of the parties.” And we find it sorta hard to disagree with her.

TPM made repeated efforts this afternoon to contact Mr. Scalia but he was not available for comment.

Scalia’s recess appointment is only good through this session. And presumably they’ll try to send him up again. Especially if the Republicans win back the Senate next month. Isn’t this a pretty clear conflict? What does it say that Scalia doesn’t seem to care? Doesn’t it deserve more press attention? Doesn’t it show that the Democrats may have been right in thinking he wasn’t suited for the job? Can’t we expect better?

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