Awkward: Sen. Ted Cruz recalls watching porn with Sandra Day O’Connor


How many times will Sen. Ted Cruz have to tell the story about watching pornography on a computer with now-retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor while he was a clerk at the Supreme Court?

A candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Cruz humored a TMZ photographer and told the story one more time.

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The story goes like this:

"...The year I was a clerk for Rehnquist, the Internet was nascent technology. The court was considering one of the first cases challenging the constitutionality of a law passed by Congress to regulate Internet pornography," Cruz wrote in Politico.

“Most of the justices were in their 60s or older. Few knew much or anything about the Internet. So the librarians of the court designed a tutorial for them. They set up sessions for two justices at a time and their clerks. As it happened, our Rehnquist group was paired with Justice O’Connor’s.

“In a small room gathered the chief, O’Connor, and their respective law clerks. The librarians' purpose was to demonstrate to the justices how easy it was to find porn on the Internet.

“I remember standing behind the computer, watching the librarian go to a search engine, turn off the filters, and type in the word cantaloupe, though misspelling it slightly. After she pressed 'return,' a slew of hard-core, explicit images showed up on screen.

“Here I was, a 26-year-old man looking at explicit porn with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who was standing alongside the colleague (my boss) she had once dated in law school. As we watched these graphic pictures fill our screens, wide-eyed, no one said a word. Except for Justice O’Connor, who lowered her head, squinted slightly, and muttered, ‘Oh, my.’”