Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor held a reception for an anti-mining group last week. This in itself is improper, as Ed Whelan pointed out.

Whether rightly or wrongly, former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor maintains that she now has senior status and can sit on lower-court cases. Yet she somehow feels free to engage in crass political activity that is inconsistent with the Code of Conduct for United States Judges.

I would think that everyone would agree that O’Connor’s latest instance of political misconduct is especially fishy.

That’s not the only thing that’s fishy. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson not only attended the event, she was a speaker.

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is hosting an invitation-only reception this evening to bolster opposition to a potential gold mine near Alaska’s Bristol Bay, home to the one of the world’s largest salmon runs. O’Connor will host a delegation of Alaskan salmon advocates – including environmental groups, commercial fishing outfits and Alaska natives – who are in town this week to ask EPA to pre-emptively block multinational mining outfit Anglo American from building an open-pit gold mine in the bay’s headquarters. They may get to take their case straight to the top, as a source tells POLITICO’s Patrick Reis that Lisa Jackson will attend the event as well.

See photos of Jackson and O’Connor at the podium here. We don’t know what she said, because the event was closed to the press. For all we know, she assured the anti-mining group that the EPA will block any permits for the proposed gold mine. CEI‘s Myron Ebell calls Jackson’s conduct “grossly improper,” and Chris Abraham points out that the EPA’s top official shouldn’t be out there pushing her private agenda. Unfortunately, that’s about all we’re seeing from the Obama administration officials.