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We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity.  We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.

From Inauguration.

President Obama shaking hands with Chief Justice Roberts.

Justice Sotomayor administers the oath to Vice President Biden.

 

You can see the Justices in the lower left-hand corner. Justice Scalia is wearing his dapper beanie. Tony Mauro has more on the skull caps.

Here you can see Roberts and Sotomayor:

Scalia has the skull cap!

I saw Kagan but couldn’t get a screen shot.

Here is the back of Justice Thomas:

H/T Atlantic, a pic of Scalia’s hat.

 

Update:

University of Richmond LawProf Kevin Walsh writes:

The hat is a custom-made replica of the hat depicted in Holbein’s famous portrait of St. Thomas More. It was a gift from the St. Thomas More Society of Richmond, Virginia. We presented it to him in November 2010 as a memento of his participation in our 27th annual Red Mass and dinner.

 

I kinda see the resemblance.

H/T Michelle Olson

Update: Here is the video, and the official White House video.

Update: The New York Times has a great shot of the entire stage. I cropped out the Justices.

In the front row, closest to the President, are Scalia, Sotomayor, and Thomas. Next row are Breyer, Ginsburg, Thomas, Kennedy (who is not labelled, but wearing the cap). In the last row are Justices Kagan and Alito, who is sitting next to James Taylor.

Senator John Cornyn tweets this pic of the Justices at the inauguration.

[tweet https://twitter.com/JohnCornyn/status/293460283245076481]

Update: And from WaPo. Justice Ginsburg is hidden behind Justice Scalia. You can only see her hat.

 

Taleb also writes about media-driven neuroticism about tragedies from Black Swan events:

Consider that every day, 6,200 persons die in the United States, many of preventable causes. But the media only report the most anecdotal and sensational cases (hurricanes, freak accidents, small plane crashes), giving us a more and more distorted map of real risks. In an ancestral environment, the anecdote, the “interesting,” is information; today, no longer. Likewise, by presenting us with explanations and theories, the media induce an illusion of understanding the world. And the understanding of events (and risks) on the part of members of the press is so retrospective that they would put the security checks after the plane ride, or what the ancients call post bellum auxilium, sending troops after the battle. Owing to domain dependence, we forget the need to check our map of the world against reality. So we are living in a more and more fragile world, while thinking it is more and more understandable. To conclude, the best way to mitigate interventionism is to ration the supply of information, as naturalistically as possible. This is hard to accept in the age of the Internet. It has been very hard for me to explain that the more data you get, the less you know what’s going on, and the more iatrogenics you will cause. People are still under the illusion that “science” means more data.

Very salient advice in today’s political climate.

I guess now I’m both? Or neither? In any event, I moved from New York to Texas.

Reuters reports that Sotomayor, who was unceremoniously delayed during the Vice President’s swearing in–which ran late–made it to New York on time for her book signing.

Biden’s office scheduled the swearing-in for 8 a.m. EST/1300 GMT to allow Sotomayor, the first Hispanic on the nation’s highest court, enough time to catch a train for a three-hour ride to New York.

On Sunday at 2:30 p.m./1730 GMT, Sotomayor had been due to speak at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Manhattan and sign copies of her memoir, “My Beloved World.”

Her schedule was squeezed, however, when the private ceremony at the vice president’s Naval Observatory residence began more than 20 minutes late after a Mass for Biden’s friends and family.

I noticed she was getting antsy during a prayer given before-hand. I’m sorry the Justice’s schedule was “squeezed.”

Before Sotomayor departed, Biden made clear he appreciated her sticking around to give him the oath of office.

“I wanted to explain to you what a wonderful honor it was and how much out of her way the justice had to go,” Biden said after the short event, attended by family and about 120 guests.

“She is due in New York. She has to leave right now, so I apologize,” Biden said. “We are going to walk out, you see her car’s waiting so she can catch a train I hope I haven’t caused her to miss.”

I thought he may have been passive aggressive, but who knows.

Despite the time pressure, Sotomayor delivered the vice presidential oath impeccably – unlike Chief Justice John Roberts, who mixed up the words to the shorter presidential oath when he swore in Barack Obama as president in 2009.

Sotomayor made the book signing in New York and read out a chapter to some 200 people about her parents and childhood in the Bronx.

Phew! At least she made it! And 200 people. 200 people showed up to a book signing of a Justice in Manhattan? Doesn’t that seem like a small turnout? I’ve organized events at law school with a bigger turnouts than that.

The list price of the book on B&N is $27.95. Let’s say everyone bought one copy. That would be $5,590. Everyone was allowed to buy up to 4 copies. That would be $22,360. Let’s say her royalty is 15% (which is high). That would be, on the upper end, $3,354.

She said she was “deeply touched” by the people who had waited at the bookstore for hours to see her. “That’s an awesome amount of love to feel.”

Oh, the people who rearrange their schedules to see the Justice. Oh wait.

Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said the book event was a longstanding commitment that Sotomayor could not break.

Yeah, I’m not buying it.

Fortunately, Joe Biden is no longer President as the President as taken his oath, without any errors.

Let’s see which Justices show up tomorrow (the only reason I’ll be watching).