The only thing that pisses me off about Biden’s “gaffe” (i.e., impolitic truth-telling) in Poland is that it knocked the Supreme Court legitimacy crisis off front pages nationwide. From Rolling Stone:
There have been plenty of scandalous Supreme Court rulings in its long history, but there has never been a scandal like this. There have been plenty of scandals over judicial nominees, as Justice Thomas knows all too well, but never one that caused a clear and continuing threat to the appearance of the court’s impartiality. One credible legal scholar after another has come forward in the past days to express shock at Thomas for not having recused himself from any cases involving the January insurrection, given his wife’s role in the affair. At the least, they say, he must recuse himself now from any such cases.
I think the recusal ship sailed when Thomas participated in two cases that were directly related to his Christianist zealot wife’s activities. But recusal is probably the best we can hope for. In a column today, Jennifer Rubin quotes Dan Goldman, counsel during Trump Impeachment 1, who said, recusal is “necessary but not sufficient.” Goldman says an impeachment investigation should be on the table but that the House should start with an oversight investigation.
The House select committee that’s already investigating the insurrection and larger attempt to overthrow the government might be the right venue, but will the Republicans on the committee go along with that? Probably not because it calls the legitimacy of their entire movement into question.
Over the weekend, Josh Marshall noted that the current controversy swirling around Thomas involves a lot more than what Thomas did or didn’t do related to the 2020 election, as weighty as that is. Never Trump Republicans like Liz Cheney and scores of others have been telling themselves that Trump is an aberration, not the logical evolution of a party that had grown increasingly radical for decades, very much including during the Bush-Cheney years:
What makes Thomas so significant is that he shows that this line between Trump and pre-Trump Bush-Cheney conservatism may be impossible to draw. Indeed, with the role of Ginni Thomas, John Eastman and very likely Justice Thomas himself we see that the trajectory may not even move in the expected direction – with newfangled Trumpers corrupting the old guard. It may have been the old guard or at least significant elements of it all along, finding an opportunity in Trump and his movement.
Just as they found an opportunity in a close election in 2000, with many of the very same characters involved. This isn’t news to Marshall, the folks who read his site or the people who read this blog, where the general consensus is that Trump was an accelerant on an already smoldering dumpster fire.
But Marshall says “it’s definitely new to much of the political establishment on both sides of the aisle.” I think he has a point there.
With very few exceptions, Republicans who rightly regard the Trumps as icky wouldn’t be on board with the idea of exposing Thomas as a corrupt Christianist kook because such a finding has implications that predate 2020. And there are elected Democrats who aren’t yet ready to admit that most of their “friends across the aisle” have abandoned democracy in the pursuit of raw power.
So, if we’re lucky, we’ll get the “necessary” recusal — gallingly, at the whim of the perpetrator. “Sufficient” is probably off the table.
Open thread.
Spanky
The gaffe will fade. The Thomas scandal will not. Every vote by that man will be an opportunity to remind the world of his illegitimacy.
The Moar You Know
If Thomas had enough decency to recuse himself, he wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place.
Baud
The
rumble in the jungleboxers at the Oscars would have had the same effect. There’s always something.Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Funny that, ain’t it?
Almost like someone doesn’t want the good Justice’s wife’s adventures discussed.
I’ve seen enough true crime shows to know that’s what gets an investigator’s juices going.
Brachiator
I don’t think that the Democrats know what to do about it.
And the related problem is that a chunk of the electorate yearns for authoritarianism. They foolishly believe that this would insure that they get what they want.
cope
Please take these comments with the awareness that I am always wrong but from the start, I have thought “the gaffe” was absolutely meant as a serious message to Putin. Even the walk-backs by the administration were part of the plan.
ETA: This also puts the republic party in the position of simultaneously complaining about Biden’s lack of “strength” and being overly aggressive.
BC in Illinois
The Virginia / Clarence Thomas discussion brings up one of my pet peeves.
When people talk about “the appearance of a conflict of interest,” they are almost always talking about an actual conflict of interest. Back in the last century, I worked for a publishing company and had to sign an annual form about the corporate conflict-of-interest policy. if I were receiving gifts, favors, etc., from people the company was doing business with, that was an actual, real conflict of interest. I would have an interest in doing the best for the company and an interest in keeping the gifts flowing. It was forbidden. They didn’t have to show that I had made decisions that were not in the best interest of the company. Just having two “interests” at work was forbidden.
Clarence Thomas has an oath to the Constitution of the United States. That he has an interest in a movement in opposition to the Constitution is not the appearance of a conflict of interest.
It IS a conflict of interest.
It is the appearance of corruption.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@The Moar You Know: And therein lies the problem. If he were the kind of man to recuse himself, he’d have done it already. So he’d have to be pressured enough to respond by recusing. And I can’t see happening both because of the people the Rs are and because of the person he is.
p.a.
I don’t doubt this is true. And every D who doesn’t yet understand what the Rethug party has become, leaf, branch, trunk, and root, is an idiot. If any in safe seats are still functioning under this delusion, they should be primary’ed (sp). The rest, depends on local conditions.
patrick II
Putin has openly called for regime change in Ukraine and even sent an assassination squad to that effect. Why is that a one-way street?
Baud
@BC in Illinois:
When Thurgood Marshall was on the Supreme Court, he recused himself from NAACP cases because of his past association with that organization. There was no actual conflict of interest (that I’m aware of), but he did it to avoid the appearance of conflict.
Thomas should definitely recuse, at a minimum.
jonas
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@patrick II:
Probably because Russia has nukes and lots of them
Leto
The usual cognitive dissonance. Like you, Betty, said most people who read this blog, as well as the people the front pagers post, recognized this a long time ago. Rick Perlstein’s books, as well as a host of other authors/academics, have made that ABC connection crystal clear. But like Brachiator said, too many of our electorate want an authoritarian leader and are more than happy to vote that way. I’ve run out of ideas on how to change people’s minds on these things. You can show them how they’ll be more prosperous (financially because that’s all they give a shit about), happier, how the world will be safer, etc… and they just DGAF. And then that goes back to Cole’s eternal observation: you’re at a restaurant… spaghetti/anthrax etc…
Kay
He’s never going to recuse. At this point it would be an admission that he should have recused the other two times it came before him, and that’s never going to happen.
It’s depressing. Another discredited and devalued “institution”. Get ready for another round of “shadow docket” rulings! None of them care at all about the legitimacy of that court. It’s just raw power at this point.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
For a garden variety state court judicial candidacy, I had to disclose my wife’s investments and employment in order to avoid any appearances of conflicts. I can make no overtly political speeches at political meetings I attend, and am mandated (should I win) to recuse myself from any case where my wife or any dependent (vaguely defined) could have an interest.
For years, Thomas has remained on cases where his wife was deeply enmeshed with the groups bringing the action – and he always rules for/with those groups. Scalia and Alito routinely gave paid speeches to those groups as well.
The whole fucking thing is offensive. We need a nonprofit, crowdfunded “conflict watch” group to identify conflicts and to file amicus briefs urging recusal for appellate judges who pull this.
One other thing – lawyers are loathe to try to hold judges in their own cases to account. We’re cowardly, and the fuckers in black robes are petty. I’m pretty certain that nobody who actively litigates in any federal appellate court or SCOTUS is keen to seek the recusal, and that it is out of sheer terror. You find someone with a vanity admission to file it, so it doesn’t affect their living.
Leto
@patrick II: @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I love how we redraw the nuclear blackmail line all the time. I’m surprised we were able to pass sanctions because of nukes.
jonas
If Thomas were a Democratic-appointed justice, the howls of outrage on the right, calls for impeachment, resignation, etc. would be deafening. A GOP-controlled Congress would have already drawn up articles of impeachment.
Gin & Tonic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): So does the US. What’s your point?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Redshift
@BC in Illinois: That is true, but I don’t think it’s a reason to be peeved. The reason for the “appearance of a conflict of interest” standard isn’t to let people off the hook or to be like “innocent until proven guilty.” It’s too prevent people from just saying “I know there’s no conflict, no matter how it looks,” and keep abusing their position until it can be proven.
And we see exactly why in this case, since the Supreme Court (and the presidency) are virtually the only powerful positions where the rules are “I get to judge whether what I’m doing is a conflict or corrupt unless you have the votes to impeach.”
Kay
“Credibility” in an institution is like a savings account that the current occupants didn’t earn. They walked in and just got it handed to them and the deal was they were supposed to preserve it for the next generation. But they don’t care- they just piss it away and draw down the account until its empty. Spend, spend, spend. They never make deposits.
Clearly they need to be policed because they have proven they won’t police themselves. Withdraw consent- no more “honor system”. Put in some rules and make them follow them.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Roberts Court or Taney Court – which was worse?
Discuss among yourselves…
marcopolo
Just to add some more info/context about the current state of our legal system, anyone else remember this from last fall?
131 Federal Judges Broke the Law by Hearing Cases Where They Had a Financial Interest
At the doctors waiting to be called so no time for more comments re Thomas, but yeah to everything I’m reading.
Villago Delenda Est
All six Federalist Society hacks need to be removed, or at least rendered powerless, or the Supreme Court is doomed. Roberts knows this, but can’t fight it. His legacy will be one of the total politicization of the USSC, far more than it ever was in the past. The framers had a notion that this sort of thing could happen, but had this naive hope that only people like them, with a balanced view of things, would be at the levers of power. From Reagan on, this notion has been nullified.
topclimber
@Kay: We have had right wing justices admonish us about doubting the impartiality of this Court. Maybe the Dem-appointed ones might want to give a speech about how avoiding conflicts is key to public legitimization of the Supremes. Purely coincidental timing of course.
Redshift
@Leto:
The people whose minds we need to change are the people who don’t vote regularly, and the people who think because we voted TFG out everything is back to normal. We’re not going to change the minds of the authoritarians.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Goku, whatever the “rules” of the Supreme Court these people are all elite lawyers. No one should have to tell them how to spot an obvious conflict.
It’s ridiculous. We hold the lowliest storefront lawyer to a higher standard than this. It makes a mockery of the whole thing.
Here’s the question people should ask whenever they see this (recurring) elite claim that the rules don’t apply to them – “what if everyone did that?”
Just throw out the ethics rules. If they don’t apply to these incredibly powerful judges at least make them not apply to less powerful people. At least make it consistent.
Leto
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Roberts doesn’t have any actual power. Here’s the wiki page with his actual powers and duties. It’s not much. A lot of it is based on “protocol” which is shorthand for it’s all made up and nobody has to actually follow it because what the hell are they going to do if they don’t? Now that the Turtle has sat the Terrible Three, they don’t need Roberts for shit. He was ineffective before, he’s irrelevant now.
As Kay, and so many others have pointed out, it’s just a raw power grab and a culmination of decades of money/time spent to get this result. Ethics? Conflicts of interest? Corruption? They don’t care.
Kay
@topclimber:
I actually like that D judges don’t go to partisan events and whine about their own “legitimacy” and demand respect.
Leave that bullshit to conservatives. No thanks. All we need is all of them out there expressing their grievances and petulantly demanding the public find them “credible” – it’ll just be more of a shit show than it already is.
Tractarian
Sheesh, for all his professorial stylings, Josh Marshall is sure capable of some confusing sentences.
(I had to read this six times before I realized it meant the opposite of what I first understood….)
Wag
Breaking news- the Jan 6 commission WILL seek testimony from Ginny Thomas
SiubhanDuinne
@cope:
Fully concur. I think they gamed the whole thing out, including the horrified reaction of the media and the sad head-shaking by some Dems, and determined that getting the message out was well worth a couple of days of bad press (like that’s anything new anyhow).
Kay
What could the possible justification be for not calling Ginni Thomas as a witness and getting her phone records?
She’s just..ultra special?
Right now all over the United States people are being ordered to testify and turn over records. But these ultra special people cannot be.
No one should comply with any of it. Whatever bargain the public made has been broken. They held up their end- the supposed “keepers of the institutions” reneged.
Wag
@cope:
@SiubhanDuinne:
Agreed. All part of a plan that I fully support.
topclimber
@Kay: Oh, not at a partisan event, for sure. I was thinking more of a bar association meeting on ethics.
I don’t see arguing for strict conflicts standards as whining.
Leto
@Wag: can’t wait for the inevitable delay tactics (including using her husband’s position as a shield), and for it to eventually wind up before the SC. Should be fun.
ian
My opinion is this is an area where the founders really screwed the pooch. They thought that congress would have sufficient regard for it’s own prerogatives and institutional well being that congress would overcome factional infighting to vote to remove justices in these circumstances. Turns out our factions (well, the one faction hellbent on autocracy) care more about self-gain then maintaining our systems of government. Now all anyone can do is watch as Thomas refuses to recuse himself, and continues to vote on matters regarding an insurrection that his wife was part of.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Leto:
@Gin & Tonic:
I think there’s a big difference between economic sanctions in response to an unprovoked invasion and sending in an assassination squad to kill the leader of a nuclear armed state. One clearly is a more severe escalation, particularly if it fails and the US/Ukraine’s involvement is found out. Then it would become a matter of personal survival for Putin and that’s dangerous when nukes are involved
VeniceRiley
I accidentally watched Fox for a minute. CNN and MSNBC sounded exactly the same as Fox. Back to the food network!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
The Supreme Court has long been our shittiest national institution, preserving and enhancing power and privilege for conservative social fixtures (police, church, large employers, the wealthiest among us). It had a brief phase from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s when it was only slightly less shitty, and conservatives lost their minds over it.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Hollywood Joe Biden would just unleash a specialized squad led by a gruff, cigar chomping officer who would succeed at killing Putin despite spectacular odds against it all while cracking jokes. There’d be a stirring speech at the end, and then credits would roll (maybe with an outtake real).
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
“Yippee-ka-yay-ski, motherfucker.”
Brantl
@Kay:Goku, whatever the “rules” of the Supreme Court these people are all elite lawyers.
Clarence Thomas, has never been, is not, and will never be, an elite lawyer. Sorry, that’s inarguable. The only reason he was ever appointed was that he was black, and more conservative than Scalia.
UncleEbeneezer
Americans have been burying our collective heads in the sand about the fact that Conservatism is nothing more than the raw pursuit of power, forever. Because it is so intimately tied to Whiteness, most white voters (even Democrats) simply can’t bring themselves to admit the truth about Conservatives and Republicans. Elected Democrats who are willing to say the truth, will not be rewarded for it and will likely be punished for doing so. Outside of a deep blue district, openly calling Republicans anti-democratic, bigoted fascists will lose a Democrat their seat very quickly. This is the big problem. We can’t even speak the truth about the evil of the other side because too many (mostly-white) voters freak the fuck out every time we do. Our entire system/world is held hostage to the White Fragility of voters in swing states (and the officials elected to represent them). Think about it. Even in this year of our lord Beyonce, 2022, after all we’ve seen, after the KBJ hearings only a week ago, we still can’t say “Republicans are racist” without getting a predictable AF hissy fit from a large swath of Americans. Much as I’d love to see Dems speak truth to power about how odious the GOP is, I know full well that doing so might be electoral suicide. So I do understand why they hold their tongues.
Ishiyama
The Democratic party took Bush v. Gore lying down. That was a political failure even worse than Johnson letting Nixon undermine the Paris peace talks. They should have treated it the way Lincoln reacted to the Dred Scott decision.
The Republicans have broken faith with democracy again and again since 1968, but the Democratic establishment doesn’t even squeak about it.
UncleEbeneezer
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Hell, make it BiPartisan and let Ahnuld lead it!
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
I agree.
Chief Oshkosh
Actually, it doesn’t impugn the legitimacy of their movement to call for oversight of the judiciary. If they truly believed in a just cause, then they’d want to have as much judicial transparency as possible. Now, having said that, we all know that they do not have a just cause, nor do they believe that they have a just cause. They simply want what they want and they are not too particular as to how they get what they want. Thus, the Republicans will not go along with adding the Thomas Cray-Cray Affair to the ongoing J6 investigation, but not because they’re worried about the effect on the perceived legitimacy of their movement. They couldn’t care less about that perception since they know that there are ZERO repercussions to simply taking what they want, justly or unjustly. If at some point they think that the perception of justice matters, then yeah, they’ll toss Ginni and hubby into the fire, but until then, they ain’t gonna go along with anything.
jnfr
Apparently cable news today is determined to make everything about Biden’s “gaffe” over and over, and has pretty much sailed right past the Thomases scandal.
Wag
@Leto: Yep. Loads of fun
Geminid
@Redshift: The thoughtful Magdi Semrau has put up a good, short four-part essay about the Supreme Court’s status, beginning:
Semrau discusses this special status and speculates as to it’s origins, before concluding:
From @Magi_jay, March 25.
FelonyGovt
As an arbitrator I have to disclose every possible conflict, including any acquaintance or prior case involving the parties and their counsel, and any connection with my husband or other family members. I’m instructed that if there is any doubt at all, I must disclose (and allow the parties to decline my services). And I’ve recused myself in several cases. Nice to know that the Supreme Court appears to have no such requirements.
Kay
Hunter Biden seems to be the only person who can held accountable, for anything.
Our justice system functions in regard to only one prestigious person: Hunter Biden. That’s it. They got that one guy.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@FelonyGovt:
Back when Scalia was pocketing checks from right wing groups all over, it occurred to me that there needed to be some efforts made with regard to addressing his expanding lists conflicts.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: So many of the “why didn’t Dems react stronger?” questions are pretty easily answered by taking a hard look at how our electorate (yes, even on our side) would react. We love to rightfully lament their inaction or extreme caution with regards to holding Republicans accountable and speaking out more forcefully, but the big elephant in the room is that the reason that they don’t is because not enough voters would have their backs if they did.
My big takeaway from the Youngkin victory in VA, wasn’t about Dem messaging failure. It was: holy shit, look at just how eager white (and white-adjacent) swing voters are to jump right back to supporting a fascist party for even the most tiny/trivial reasons. After all the great stuff that Northam did, white VA voters were still just itching to revert to giving the GOP (and it’s fascism, racism etc.) another chance just because of pandemic school closing policies and bullshit CRT hysteria.
We can continually rend our garments about how Dems fail to thread the needle to keep enough swing voters onboard to win crucial elections, but to me the much bigger problem is that our voters create such impossible needles to thread in the first place.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay:
And ask that question while you’re holding a baseball bat. Because if the elite are allowed to break laws, then there are no laws. And if there are no laws, then why can’t the elite person being questioned be beaten to death with the bat, right there on the spot, if it benefits the person wielding the bat?
Preventing decline towards a Hobbsian ‘society’ is one of many important reasons we have laws. But, the elite always think that they’ll always be in power, so they like Hobbes. Maybe instead of beating them to death with bats, we should send them to Somalia to see how this all ends up. That approach would certainly save on dry cleaning bills for all involved…
dww44
@Spanky:
Well the gaffe is getting a second wind on my TV and is being led by CNN which I have noticed since the election (they were strongly anti-Trump and have been thoroughly criticized by the right) has been at pains to find stuff to blame Biden for. They’re trying to make amends for being neutral about Trump,
This effort at neutrality in the media seems always to weaken Democrats. There’s a lesson, maybe more than one, to be learned here. In the short term we need a few deep pockets to create our own biased mass consumption media as the mass conservative reactionary media currently has a choke hold.
Ruckus
@patrick II:
Why is that a one-way street?
Actual better human beings.
Life isn’t tit for tat. Or at least it shouldn’t be. You don’t keep doing the same thing wrong, you fix the problem so that the world can get better, not just change sides on a continuous basis.
Our history is replete with people doing the same thing over and over, repeating the crap. The only way to make it better is to change the process whenever possible – don’t repeat, improve.
Kay
@FelonyGovt:
Wait till his wife’s January 6th testimony case gets to him. That’ll really “restore confidence”.
Rock bottom. I hope they have the clerks write a 60 page opinion on why Clarence Thomas doesn’t think his wife should be compelled to testify.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
?
dww44
@dww44:
Since I can’t seem to edit, the sentence should have said NOT neutral
@dww44:
Can’t seem to edit, so this :
should have read “not neutral”
debbie
I just listened to an hour-long interview with Alexander Vindeman and Lawrence Wilkerson (Colin Powell’s CoS). I had no idea Wilkerson hated Ukraine so much. Everyone is totally corrupt and he would sacrifice all 400,000,000 Ukrainian lives if it meant avoiding a nuclear attack. It was really quite a shock to hear his vehemence.
Another Scott
@ian: There would seem to be an easy out for the SCOTUS, if they want to take it. They could simply refuse cert and let the DC Circuit have the final say on whatever actions involve Thomas (I assume that it would go to the DC Circuit first).
Will they? Dunno.
IANAL.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Chief Oshkosh:
It’s just that 90% of it is “norms”. 99% of “law abiding” is by consent. If they’re just going to abandon that, why shouldn’t everyone else?
Chief Oshkosh
@ian:
Also remember that the ‘founders’ were pretty ragged out by the time they called it a day and posted a Constitution. They knew it was imperfect and needed revision. They put into place a way to do that. However, it turns out they the process they created for change is simply unworkable as soon as you have party interests driving or overriding individual interests.
Heck, Jefferson (not one of the Constitution creators, btw), thought that we should tear up the Constitution every 19 years and start fresh. I always thought that that was silly, but maybe not…
Kenneth Fair
@cope: Exactly. This “gaffe” was too well planned to be an actual gaffe.
Biden and his administration have been near-flawless on their handling of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, way better than I ever expected.
Kay
Ooof. “In a civil case”
Apparently this information is not available to prosecutors? Couldn’t they just read it?
Salty Sam
Had Biden NOT made “The Gaffe”, media would have willingly created some other shiny object in order to distract from the continuing takedown of democracy in the US. They are as complicit in the advance of fascism as the RWNJs.
ETA: I might have know Baud would have beat me to this point all the way back at #3…
cmorenc
@Kay:
Oh, but most of the RW Justices, especially Roberts, very much *do* care about maintaining the legitimacy of SCOTUS. However, they care more about preserving their ability to exercise unchallengeable power to fundamentally uproot and alter constitutional principles from their longstanding moorings, especially those established roughly during the era 1935-1980, and reshape the country along fundamentalist RW principles both in the secular and religious senses (“Federalist society” exemplifies the “secular” part of RW fundamentalism). They only care about preserving enough legitimacy to pursue their primary goal of fundamentally altering constitutional principles along hard-RW ideological lines.
Matt McIrvin
@Chief Oshkosh:
We’d be the Holy Empire of Jesus now if we did that.
topclimber
OT but interesting–Turkey’s analysis of Ukraine/Russian negotiations.
LongHairedWeirdo
I think the expectation of recusal ship sailed when (Scalia, I think) refused to recuse himself from a case involving his hunting buddy, Dick Cheney. (I knew a Richard from youth – he was called “Dick” and it just wasn’t funny. Keep in mind, he was probably in his 60s when I was a child! You did *not* tease elders in that day. Mr. Cheney is the first man I’ve seen who personifies the unkind definition.)
The idea that the SCOTUS isn’t tainted with partiality is obvious on inspection from their Republican-friendly decisions, not to mention a full third of the SCOTUS being filled in blatantly partisan actions.
Ms. Thomas proved one thing to us: there are either Trumpists who are so deep in kayfabe that they won’t surface, there are Trumpists who are cunning enough to pretend to be deep in kayfabe, and, of course, it raises the possibility that some of the players have been calling Democrats wrong, and evil, for so long that they’ve come to believe it. That last bit? That’s *really* scary. Those are the people willing to kill people.
Ah, but we should continue to pretend that “batshit crazy” isn’t “batshit crazy” because a Distinguished Politician Said So.
Joe Falco
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I love it when a plan comes together.
Betty
New court decision flagged by Kay on Eastman emails suggests Trump committed a crime. There seems to be some Cruz involvement with Eastman as well. Maybe things will come together soon.
Villago Delenda Est
@Salty Sam: And this is precisely why the Village needs to be nuked from orbit. Only way to be sure.
Betty Cracker
@UncleEbeneezer:
How about framing the argument in terms of democracy vs. autocracy, which isn’t just happening in the United States and within the context of our awful racialized politics but is in fact a global struggle? It’s on our TVs right now in the form of explosions and civilian deaths as Russia’s murderous autocrat is attempting to snuff out a democracy.
That same autocrat is the unrequited love-object of the GOP’s wannabe autocrat/former president, whom elected Republicans and various Republican functionaries proved willing to subvert American democracy to keep in power. Seems like maybe speaking that truth wouldn’t be tantamount to committing electoral suicide.
Ancient Atheist
Here’s the deal. Republicans will win the Mid-term elections and January 6th investigations will disappear. Hunter Biden will be the new scandal.
janesays
I suppose they could try to go the impeachment route, but we all know that story just ends with him getting acquitted in the Senate and continuing on his merry ways as if nothing happened. Because substantively, nothing will have happened, except a minor edit to his Wikipedia page.
Brachiator
@Ancient Atheist:
Because everything old is new again.
lowtechcyclist
This is the problem. The GOP has gone totally off the deep end. They’re a racist, treasonous, authoritarian party. The very few semi-sane GOP Congresscritters aren’t enough to save it. This is fundamentally a Trumpist party, even as it moves beyond Trump himself.
The GOP has been willing to demonize the Democratic Party as a whole as long as I can remember, on the basis of stuff that had nothing to do with the Democratic Party. CRT, defund the police, child porn, whatever.
Well, now the whole fucking GOP can be demonized by just telling the fucking truth about it. The Dems need to abandon this comity bullshit, and do exactly that.
They’re Putin-loving traitors, on the side of an authoritarian who was willing to raze whole cities if he couldn’t control them and their residents. Even going to Moscow on July 4, just a few years ago. How many of them have condemned Tuckyo Rose?
They’re Covid traitors who’ve spent the past two years fighting for Covid-19 to spread as much as possible and kill as many Americans as possible.
And we’re finding out daily just how many of them were how deep into trying to overturn the 2020 election by a mix of brute force and bullshit legalisms.
They’re traitors every fucking which way. It’s time the Dems forget about getting along with them, and start calling them out on it.
David Collier-Brown
We don’t have impeachments in Canada, so this discussion seems really odd from up here.
There is no block against laying charges against a Canadian spouse of a Supreme Court Justice, and a charge of being an accessory against the justice him- or herself. That follows from “the King is not above the Law” (Magna Carta).
In the US, if Mr Thomas’ wife is charged, could he be named as one of your “unindicted co-conspirators”?
topclimber
@Ancient Atheist: Here I was hoping for a little faith from an atheist.
Gin & Tonic
@topclimber: Interesting, thanks for the link.
Geminid
@topclimber: I read that Turkey will host a round of talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul March 28-29. The Turkish Foreign Minister refereed a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian FMs earlier this month in the resort city of Antalya. This time it appears that the negotiating teams that have already met in Belarus will be talking.
janesays
It is, but unfortunately there is literally only one constitutional remedy to that problem, and there is no chance in hell it will give us any meaningful resolution, as getting 67 votes to convict in the Senate is indisputably impossible.
emmyelle
I remember when I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in 2003, it occurred to me that George W Bush was Minister Fudge: an unaccomplished member of the ruling class, elevated to power beyond his ability or worthiness, corrupt in the unremarkable ways that we are used to, bumblingly incompetent much of the time, and completely unaware of, or at least unconcerned with, who he was letting within arms reach of control of the magical world. You could say that Fudge is/was a “never Voldomorter-er”. But because of who Fudge surrounded himself with, he actually made Voldormort’s return not only possible but also inevitable. And Order of the Phoenix ended without Fudge acknowledging, or perhaps even not being aware, that his hapless bumbling and lack of curiosity about what he was ushering in was why the Ministry was in deep peril.
Geminid
@Ancient Atheist: I think that the January 6th Commitee intends to wrap up it’s work by the end of the current Congress. As to the criminal investigations, they can survive a Republican takeover of Congress, which is not at all a certainty anyway.
Nora Lenderbee
@Kay: Don’t forget Satan Incarnate, HRC.
OT: since this is an open thread, can I rant for a second? I’m an editor. I am sick of working with writers who can’t write a clear sentence, don’t know basic grammar, and never seem to learn from what I tell them. These are professional writers, yet they use comma splices constantly. They can’t create a three-item bullet list without failing parallel construction. They garble the simplest phrases. The worst part is that they don’t seem to care one bit about even the most egregious errors.
I am this close to quitting, for good. I can’t stand this anymore.
janesays
More precisely, “unless you have the votes to convict”. Getting an impeachment through the House isn’t really all that difficult – you just need a simple majority. Getting to an actual conviction in the Senate is nearly impossible. I think there’s a pretty solid possibility that Joe Biden will be impeached for some bullshit made-up nonsense at some point in the next Congress. I am just confident that the impeachment will end with a no-doubt acquittal by the Senate, with plenty of votes to spare.
Ruckus
@Leto:
You are right but I wonder if it is not for the reason you think.
Humans repeat what they know. We have, for basically our entire existence acted in the same manner about life, the horrors of life, about how to fix the horrors of humanity and we keep repeating the same history over and over. And over. We understand how to resolve problems right in front of us, we don’t really see how to resolve the problems that our resolutions create. It’s not solving the issues, it’s pushing the can down the road for the next time. We keep fighting, killing each other for things we get for a short time till the repetition of the cycle is complete and we start over.
The old saying, History Repeats Itself is almost an absolute truth, because we don’t actually change the reason it repeats itself. We go through the same motions over and over and use the same tools to make the same changes to arrive back where we started.
Kay
@Nora Lenderbee:
Right. Hillary Clinton is the only powerful person who has to testify before Congress. Everyone else whines and sues and runs out the clock.
Hunter Biden is apparently going to be our fall guy for all criminality and lawbreaking for the last decade. It was all him. We had ONE white collar criminal and now that they got him, we can all rest easy.
CaseyL
@janesays: Getting 67 votes in the Senate is indisputably impossible because half the Senate will not only condone but encourage lawlessness that enables their fascist takeover of the US.
debbie
@Nora Lenderbee:
I’ve been there. Best thing I ever did was create a style manual for them to follow.
Ruckus
@Leto:
They don’t care.
I think they do care, just not in any positive way that their jobs and country would suggest they should. Their way makes them more powerful and therefore they think correct. How they get there, proper or not is irrelevant because they think that them winning and getting wealthier and harder to dislodge is the goal. It is their goal. It is not the goal their job suggests it is or that we think the goal of their job is. But it is their goal.
They are not the PUBLIC servants their job says they are. They are the SELF servants that they appear to be.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: I do like the Autocracy framing and believe it can be fit into greater Race/Class framework that has been shown by people like Anat Shenker-Osorio to be appealing to voters. And I know Dan Pfeiffer (of Pod Save America) has urged our side to do something like this (incorporating the threat of Autocracy and the instability/danger it brings, into the Dem story). But I’m not sure how many new voters it really grabs. Wasn’t there a recent story about Dem polling that showed the threat to Democracy being pretty low on the list of priorities for swing voters? This was before Russia, Ginny Thomas etc., but I still suspect that too many voters will hand-wave away concerns about Autocracy. If I’m wrong, I’m totally down for whatever message keeps Dems in (and hopefully expands their) power. I’d be curious to know how this approach to plays to people outside of my very Blue circles.
dww44
@cope:
While I agree with your whole comment, thank you for using the “republic” party. Bout time they got some pushback on their use of the “Democrat” party. Which they’ve purposefully done for years now. Everyone knows they know better. They’re just “owning” the libs.
Montanareddog
Hasn’t beloved jackal Immanentize been involved as counsel in cases before SCOTUS? I would love to hear his taken on Associate Justice Thomas’ behaviour. (If he has commented on another thread, I must have missed it).
Nelle
@Nora Lenderbee: You are singing my Song of Great Irritation.
Repatriated
@Chief Oshkosh:
The thing that broke the Amendment process wasn’t partisanship, it was an expanded electorate. Basically, anything that 3/4 of the rich white guys wanted to change could be changed, while nothing that 1/4 of that same group wanted could be. They were the only ones allowed to vote! Rich white guys have a lot of interests in common.
They have far fewer interests in common with non-rich white guys, or women, or non-white guys.
What broke it was that to get change, you now need to get consensus across the entire diverse voting public, not just the rich white guys that made up the eletorate a couple of centuries ago. And the rich white guys only need to assemble 25% support to maintain a blocking coalition.
(This is a significant oversimplifcation – state sizes and voting patterns matter – but you get the idea.)
trollhattan
@Nora Lenderbee: @debbie:
In-house guide can be helpful, at the very least as a touchstone for when somebody messes up and you’re able to say, “See, this is how we are doing it here.”
Plus, a current edition of “Chicago” and specifying which dictionary to use (not American Heritage). For journalistic writing, AP Stylebook is straightforward and updated frequently.
Having done and supervised technical editing, sifting through science-y terminology is a whole other layer, and government style standards may need to be accommodated at the same time. I’ve had to mediate among state EPA, federal EPA and US Air Force reps while editing responses to comments on CERCLA reports in real time. This is why god invented booze.
Nora Lenderbee
@debbie: We have one. It’s only used by the people who don’t really need it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Nora Lenderbee: I hear you. I have taught first year composition. I felt better when I realized their problems were job security for me.
Also, I used to edit a scholarly journal. The writers submitting to us were English professors. But I found that if they were wrestling with difficult ideas, they sometimes lost control even of things like subject-verb agreement. It was like they had only so much attention to spread around. That made me feel better too.
Repatriated
@Repatriated:
But yes, partisanship was what broke the impeachment process.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Holy crap. How did I miss this?
Cacti
Thomas doesn’t have an ethical bone in his body. He straight up committed perjury in his SCOTUS confirmation hearing and it set the tone for the next 30 years.
StringOnAStick
Just a view from 30,000′ comment: even here, where the blog denizens are extremely well informed on the issues in front of us, we fail to add “Christian Supremacy” in front of every mention of what the R party is now. Yes, they are authoritarians but they are Christianist, White Supremacist authoritarians. Yes, they are fascists who want an autocracy, but they are Christianist fascists who want a White Supremacist, Christianist autocracy.
The quote I posted a few days ago from Bill Barr in 2019 made that very, very clear. The lane they are working is to create a loss of representation for us little people so that the properly religious get to make all the governing decisions for us since only they have the moral standing to do so. Our side shrinks from this realization and argument because most folks have been taught since childhood that Christianity in particular has a warm place for justice and proper action. They’ve weaponized this and we keep acting like the growth of RW Christianism is just the bible thumping loonies, not the real power center. Barr is nearly as powerful as you can get in our form of government; how many other fellow Christianists have been wormed into our institutions and offices since 2016? Since before that? How many low info voters see “oh, such and such running for office is saved? That’s nice” while not realizing profession of religious faith has changed from boiler plate requirement to code signalling to the fellow zealots?
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Those professors also didn’t understand there were differences between spoken and written English, I bet.
Ishiyama
@Montanareddog: I was there once. Rhenquist mispronounced my name. Thomas should have been removed long ago – there is more than one way to kill a cat.
SiubhanDuinne
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Kind of surprising Abramovich didn’t drown in the bathtub while falling from a seventh-storey window with a fatal self-inflicted bullet wound in his back.
Cacti
I’d say Christianist fascism is redundant. The original fascism was a right wing, Roman Catholic movement. It has reappeared under an Orthodox/Evangelical Protestant strain, but wherever it has existed, the church was there holding its hand
JPL
@Kay: From what I saw, there are questions about Hunter’s taxes. Why can’t Hunter use the trump ignorance excuse? Maybe they have something else, that I missed.
Miss Bianca
@Nora Lenderbee: Who are all these professional writers who are evidently getting paid far more than I am? For, evidently, far inferior work.
Kay
@JPL:
Hunter should fight, delay, obstruct and deny.
Theres no upside to following rules if only one side follows them. It’s a sucker move. If these are the new rules the both sides can play by them.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@StringOnAStick:
The eliminationist rhetoric is off the charts in red space activism – they do truly believe that they’re the only ones entitled a voice and to rule.
Nora Lenderbee
Thank you all so much for the understanding. My employer produces network security software, so Chicago and AP style are not that useful for us. To make up for that, we do have a thorough style guide as well as hundreds of TLAs (three-letter acronyms). My problem writers don’t argue with my edits and they make the changes, but they continue to do exactly the same thing. I’ve trained a lot of newer writers with success. This bunch really doesn’t seem to think that actually writing is their job.
Matt McIrvin
@Nora Lenderbee: I have to admit that decades of reading casual Internet writing have made me nearly blind to comma splices, and more willing to use them than I was, say, 30 years ago.
(What is still jarring is putting the comma after rather than before a conjunction when joining clauses. “I woke up and, made myself some breakfast.” When I was copyediting a college campus magazine back in the olden times, it seemed as if most of the writers did that habitually. My great nemesis was photo captions, since the people who wrote them would just paste them up without running them past me first, and they would misuse commas constantly in them.)
geg6
@BC in Illinois:
Yep. I had to turn down a box of cookies from a lender’s rep. It might have cost all of $10 and the rep knew well that I wouldn’t recommend any private lenders to students (we had discussed this many times and we had become friendly despite it), so there would have been no actual conflict. But according to University rules, I had to refuse the cookies.
Nora Lenderbee
@Miss Bianca: If you really want to write about uploading self-signed TLS certificates behind a NAT firewall, I’d be delighted to have you.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@SiubhanDuinne:
Two pops, right behind the ear….
Dorothy A. Winsor
@debbie: The journal was The Journal of Business and Technical Communication , so they should have understood! But who know.
UncleEbeneezer
@StringOnAStick: “White Christian Male Supremacy” is my go-to for the more detailed version of what they are. But it’s clunky to write out over and over. Personally, I feel like we are better served reminding or educating people that all of that (Christian, Male, Cis, Het) is all part of White Supremacy™. Anytime you see “White Supremacy” you can and should assume it includes the rest, because in reality, it absolutely does. Which, I think is more or less what you are saying, but I guess I would only tweak to say that I think we need to get people to understand that White Supremacy is an umbrella term for pretty much ALL the isms/phobias. They are all just different limbs connected to the same tree.
tokyokie
@Nora Lenderbee: As a newspaper copy editor for 30 years, I appreciate your lament. But when I was laid off, which has been the case with virtually every newspaper copy editor in the country, I didn’t bother to seek another editing position because I realized that nobody cared about good, precise writing. (I went into nursing instead.) But one fundamental rule I ascertained during my former career is that good writers appreciate good editors; it’s the lousy ones who think their scribblings are sacrosanct.
geg6
@jnfr:
Just another of the million reasons to never watch cable news. I gave it up completely a few months ago and I simply don’t see or hear these things. On the local news I watch, Ginni Thomas was big news and the Kingsley gaffe, which was covered pretty heavily on Friday wasn’t even mentioned.
gene108
The amount of corruption in the Republican Party that has become acceptable to their voters is beyond belief.
In a functioning democracy, there would be outrage across the board about political corruption and elected officials who did not respond against the corruption would be voted out of office.
Republican voters no longer care how corrupt their politicians are. Republican voters only standard is to make sure their politicians do not agree with anything Democrats want. The entire conservative movement is operating, very openly, under Cleek’s Law.
There’s no way to stop corruption like this, if so many people in this country not only tolerate it, but often celebrate it “to own the libs”.
Baud
@geg6:
Cable news caters to political junkies, who are more obsessed with Republicans and their message and culture than ordinary people.
PST
@Cacti:
I have to disagree. Original fascism — which is to say Italian fascism — started out distinctly anticlerical. I’m not saying that Italian fascism didn’t drift a bit in the course of making peace with the papacy and broadening its appeal, but the principle of subordination to the state and its leader was always fundamental. Fascist movements tend to elevate mythic traditions of nation and race that compete with religion for primary allegiance. I grant that there have been fascist regimes in which reactionary Catholicism was deeply implicated, but not all and certainly not the original one. Umberto Eco has famously written on the core characteristics of fascist ideologies and the way in which individual instances often omit a couple. I tend to think of the Baath Party as a fascist movement and offer it as an example that is non-Christian.
Eunicecycle
@UncleEbeneezer: this is probably one of the most important truths I’ve read yet. Thanks for saying it.
Brachiator
@tokyokie:
The lack of good copy editing really shows. Newspapers and online media outlets that have text stories. It is really sad.
Ksmiami
@Kay: I’m hoping for his early death. He looks pretty ill
Ksmiami
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Russia’s government needs to diaf
Old School
@Ksmiami:
Clarence Thomas is still working remotely today.
sdhays
@Ksmiami: Considering his age, “early” has already past, I think.
Dopey-o
Most voters will not understand the Democracy / Autocracy messaging. And 40% of American voters are predisposed to hating Black / Asian / gay / feminine / trans / disabled people and policies. Democracy is complicated, ambiguous and messy, so having a “strong leader” like Trump or Putin is immediately appealing to them when they walk into the voting booth.
IMHO, the message should contrast Democracy vs. You’re Getting Ripped Off. Talk about stagnant wages, expensive healthcare, home ownership, bankrupt schools, and how Joe and Jane Sixpack can’t save money to send their kids to college.
Talk about cancelling Social Security and Medicare, or federal funding to repair streets and hiways. There exists somewhere a laundry list of 5 or 6 items that can be remembered and will convince low-info voters that GOP rule will cause them serious pain.
”Autocracy” has no meaning to them, and is the wrong message.
Another Scott
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
JPL
BREAKING: Attorney John Eastman says he will **NOT APPEAL** the court order that releases 101 emails from January 4-7th 2021 including one that is being released under the crime/fraud exception as it indicates a possible crime being committed by Trump, Eastman & Giuliani.
Spiro Agnew’s Ghost ?????? (@SpiroAgnewGhost) / Twitter
Baud
@Another Scott: ?
@JPL: ?
Mike G
Probably not because it calls the legitimacy of their entire movement into question.Probably not because it exposes the blatant illegitimacy and moral bankruptcy of their entire organized crime movement.
Chris T.
@Brachiator:
Remember the woman who complained that Tramp was “not hurting the right people”?
Kathleen
@UncleEbeneezer: I so agree with you.
Miss Bianca
@Nora Lenderbee: Very late back to the party, but actually, YES, I would be thrilled if you are serious.
sab
My brother, who has spent his whole life getting as rich as his great-grandfather to refound the alleged dynasty, but meanwhile hasn’t gotten around to marrying. So what is the point. No dynasty since no kids. He already has more money than he could ever spend. But his politics is accumulate and don’t tax.
He made a lot of his money on the periphery of the oil patch. Apparently those guys are kind of a cult. Group think among your cohort instead thinking of what are your own goals.
I have spent years trying to understand or forgive his politics (severely damaging to my kids, while I took care of our parents while he was absent on vacation around the world.)
I don’t care any more. His politics are dangerous to our country and government. My older sister can be nostalgic. He is a quisling. Likes Russia. Likes Pompeo. Likes the Kochs.
Ancient Atheist
@topclimber: Men of faith proffer moral behavior that ultimately leads to others being enslaved. Bring joy, offer compassion, seek enlightenment on your chosen path.
Ancient Atheist
@Geminid: Republicans take the House and the Senate and tell Merrick Garland… Do you want a budget? Or not? Or the Senate and Congress could pass bills declaring pardons for all Jan 6th insurrectionist. Case closed.
sab
Betty, Supreme Court Justices are not going to recuse themselves until they have to. The good guys will. The bad guys won’t. This is just physics. Things whirling in space do whatever.