"You editorialized that they "skipped" the ceremony -- a statement that implies a willful decision not to attend, an irresponsible accusation not corroborated by the available facts."
skip ( P ) Pronunciation Key (skp)
v. skipped, skip·ping, skips
v. intr.
6) Informal. To fail to attend: We skipped science class again.
Now, pull your panties out of the bunch they are in and relax.
But I will ammend my initial comment to "Kennedy skipped, Souter made a willful decision not to attend"
Better?
You changed a headline dishonestly, and you're telling me to "relax?" To use your example, Justices Kennedy and Souter didn't "skip" the ceremony as kids would "skip" science class to go fishing, they were out of town (out of the country, in Kennedy's case) and couldn't get to the ceremony. There's enough to attack Kennedy and Souter for without simply making up stuff out of whole cloth.