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Judge, Jury, and Executioner
By Horace Cooper
April 19, 2004

Not since the Menedez brothers decided to kill their mother to stop their father from abusing her have we seen such self-serving hypocrisy like that over Supreme Court Justice Scalia's decision not to recuse himself in a case involving Vice President Dick Cheney.

Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but not by much. So-called environmental activists and their supporters on Capitol Hill joined in a quasi-legal and mostly media clamor to get Scalia to remove himself from the case.

Justice Scalia considered the matter and decided that since he and the Vice-President did not discuss the case while on the trip, there is no reason for him to sit the case out. Now to hear the Sierra Club and its supporters tell it, this just means that Justice Scalia doesn't care about bias. But if they were to push this while ignoring any claims of bias of their own, wouldn't that make them hypocrites.

Well hypocrisy meet the Sierra Club. It seems that a member of the Sierra Club's board of Directors also serves both as Chief Scientist for the Everglades National Park under the Department of Interior and as a member of the Everglades Technical Oversight Committee. For you and I the conflicts that such a position might present would be obvious. But for Mr. Nick Aumen, Sierra Club Board member and Department of Interior employee this is just the starting point. Notwithstanding the biblical admonition that "no servant can serve two masters," Mr. Aumen goes one better, he's also on the board of the Grassy Waters Preserve (a lobbying group dedicated to creating a 20-square mile Everglades Education Center).

It's Mr. Aumen's responsibility to make recommendations to the Department of Interior regarding the Everglades. How he separates out his role on the Grassy Waters Preserve or the Sierra Club from his responsibilities to the Department of Interior and the American taxpayer is anyone's guess.

But wait, there's more. Mr. Aumen's former employer was the South Florida Water Management District, which terminated him. Now Mr. Aumen influences federal project funds given to the South Florida Water Management District. He also sits on the board of the Technical Oversight Committee for the Everglades. It's this organization that determines whether the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) is in compliance with its objectives and goals. One of Texan Dick Armey's axioms is that "You can't get ahead while you're trying to get even." Since Mr. Aumen was fired from the district, you'd think that it might be hard to believe that he can possibly be neutral about SFWMD's work, yet recusal isn't even on the table for Mr. Aumen.

In an ethical tightrope that Johnny Cochran couldn't even handle, Mr. Aumen pledges to work with a slate of Board Members at the Sierra Club committed to making the removal of George Bush - ostensibly Mr. Aumen's boss - from the White House the Sierra Club's number one goal in 2004.

Conflict of interest? Perhaps. Good government, definitely not.

It is clear that Mr. Aumen is in a unique position to cost taxpayers a great deal of money while pursuing the agendas of his many masters. Beyond that the Sierra Club gets the benefits of his multiple hats in the lobbying arena since Mr. Aumen advises legislators at both the state and federal level, as well as the Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, regarding the Everglades. So here we have it, Nick Aumen; judge, jury and executioner.

To date, the Everglades restoration, which is the largest environmental restoration project of its kind in the world, has continued to move forward despite the multiple roles played by Nick Aumen. If you're listening for the clamoring from the Sierra Club and their so-called environmentalist supporters for this obvious conflict of interest to be dealt with, keep listening; the silence is deafening.

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Horace Cooper writes a regular political analysis column for United Press International and GOPUSA.com.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.