Why should members of Congress get to receive lots of tainted largess, whereas judges are left behind? At least three federal judges don’t see a problem with judges accepting expensive services from an organization financed by large corporations, corporations that often appear before the judges as litigants:

“An organization called the Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment (FREE) routinely hosts free junkets for federal judges where they can ride horses, bunk with industry attorneys, and learn how to decide environmental cases in ways that benefit FREE’s corporate funders. Those funders include corporations such as Texaco, Exxon, General Electric, Koch, Monsanto, and Shell. FREE’s board of trustees includes three sitting U.S. Court of Appeals Judges: Edith Clement of the Fifth Circuit and Alice Batchelder and Danny Boggs, both of the Sixth Circuit. Yet, despite the obvious ethical problems raised by Clement, Batchelder and Boggs’ service on the board of an organization that both provides free trips to judges and is funded by frequent litigants before those judges’ courts, these three judges continue to serve.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/09/bpa-found-on-receipts-and_n_794067.html