Scalia's Proudest Moment

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says refusing to recuse himself in a case involving Vice President Dick Cheney is the "proudest thing" he's done on the court. Critics questioned Scalia's impartiality in the 2004 case upholding Cheney's request to keep the details of secret White House strategy sessions private — after Scalia took a hunting trip with the vice president just weeks after the court agreed to hear the case.

But Scalia tells law students at the University of Connecticut that he's proud he didn't allow himself to be chased off the case, saying, "For Pete's sake, if you can't trust your Supreme Court justice more than that, get a life."

Gray Lady Goes Silent

Count The New York Times among the media outlets who reported as fact Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's now-corrected claim that Scooter Libby was ordered to tell the press that Iraq's search for uranium was a "key judgment" in the National Intelligence Estimate. In its Sunday edition, the Times noted that what Libby "said he was authorized to portray as a 'key judgment' by intelligence officers had in fact been given much less prominence in the most important assessment of Iraq's weapons capability."

But while Fitzgerald issued his correction yesterday afternoon, it was nowhere to be found in today's Times or on the paper's Web site.

Ripping a Rival?

Meanwhile, the Times has devoted a significant amount of ink — and two broadsheet pages — to a scandal involving New York Post gossip reporter Jared Paul Stern, who has been accused of extorting $200,000 from billionaire businessman Ron Burkle in exchange for favorable coverage.

The New York Sun notes that the Times has dedicated 13 different reporters and more than 10,000 words to the story over the past two days. During the same period, the Times ran a mere two sentences about the genocide in Darfur — and nothing on a judge dismissing home state Senator Hillary Clinton as a defendant in a campaign fundraising lawsuit.

The Truth on Taxes

Eighty percent of Americans say Congress thinks tax money is theirs and not the taxpayer's. That according to the latest FOX News poll which also reveals that nearly half of Americans, 45 percent, say little or none of their tax dollars are spent on programs they personally support, while 43 percent say some or nearly all of their taxes go to programs they like.

Meanwhile, as tax day approaches, 65 percent of those polled say they've already filed their taxes with the IRS.

— FOX News' Aaron Bruns contributed to this report.