JUST IN: In the wake of ProPublica's latest, Judiciary Chair Durbin & Sen. Whitehouse announce that "when the Senate returns after the July 4th recess, the Senate Judiciary Committee will mark up Supreme Court ethics legislation. … [I]f the Court won’t act, then Congress must." pic.twitter.com/B5P0uTVqfV
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) June 21, 2023
Congratulations — as Betty said this morning — to ProPublica, which may finally have raised Leonard Leo’s Federalist machinations into general public notice. Uncovering Harlan Crow’s sponsorship of Clarence Thomas was a good start; that inspired the NYTimes to inquire whether John Roberts’ wife was using his position to promote her headhunting business; Politico dug up Neil Gorsuch’s iffy land deal. Three corrupt SC(R)OTUS judges would seem to make a pattern; four is… well, reason enough to expand the Court, if these dishonest ticks can’t be dug out of the public pelt.
“Leonard Leo … attended and helped organize the Alaska fishing vacation. Leo invited Singer to join, according to a person familiar with the trip, and asked Singer if he and Alito could fly on the billionaire’s jet.” https://t.co/e2iaYqCwMy
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) June 21, 2023
Alito is a fine target, because he’s a prickly little Opus Dei toad who thinks his position should place him above all criticism from the proles. As Ruth Marcus points out in the Washington Post:
… This time, it’s Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the venue is an Alaskan fishing lodge, and the underwriters of the junket are hedge fund tycoon Paul Singer and businessman Robin Arkley II. Both are donors to the conservative Federalist Society and were joined on the 2008 fishing trip by Federalist Society official Leonard Leo. Leo was fresh off helping Alito get confirmed two years earlier.
The entitlement. The hubris. The tone-deafness about how accepting these perks is perceived by ordinary people who believe judges are neutral umpires just calling balls and strikes.
When ProPublica reported on Clarence Thomas’s far-flung and repeated vacations with GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, the justice’s defense, if it can be called that, was that the Crows are among the Thomases’ “dearest friends” and that the acceptance of luxury travel (private jet flights, a yacht trip) was justified under the carve-out in federal ethics rules for acceptance of “personal hospitality.”
This time, in another story by ProPublica, the defense is, in part, effectively “I barely knew the guy when he offered me a spare seat on his private plane.” Heads, I travel; tails, you don’t know about it.…
The resort at which he stayed, where rooms ran $1,000 a night, was owned by Arkley, a conservative California businessman and financial supporter of the Federalist Society. What is Alito’s relationship with Arkley? How could it possibly be acceptable to take this kind of gift?
The private-jet connection was even more questionable. At the time of the event, Singer, a hedge fund manager and major donor to Republicans and conservative causes, was embroiled in a high-stakes legal battle with Argentina, which had defaulted on its debt. Singer’s hedge fund was trying to force the country to pay up, in full. The dispute had already made its way to the Supreme Court once, the year before, and it was entirely foreseeable that the matter would be back before the court.
And so it was, eight times, including a June 2014 decision in which the court ruled 7-1, with Alito in the majority, for Singer’s firm. It ended up making Singer’s fund $2 billion…
How does Sam Alito, one of the most powerful politicians in the United States of America, not have one (1) political communications advisor who can tell him that, if you release an angry prebuttal to a news story that hasn’t even run yet, you just create hype around that story?
— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) June 21, 2023
yes, i accepted my billionaire friend's invitation to hunt humans on his private island. but if i had not, the spare seat on my friend's golf cart would have gone to waste, and the extra rifle would have just got in the way
— flglmn (@flglmn) June 21, 2023
it has come to my attention that certain irresponsible persons are insinuating that my friend rupert might expect to earn some influence over me in return for this favor. nothing could be further from the truth. in fact that op ed page would have been blank had I not used it
— flglmn (@flglmn) June 21, 2023
i feel like, in addition to the naked bribery, the reason for lavishing these terrible little shits with gifts is to cultivate a state of terminal rich-person brain instead of forcing them to think about society like an upper-middle-class person would on their official salaries
— Alex P ?? jorts.horse/@saddestrobots (@SaddestRobots) June 21, 2023
Alito's excuse here (the private jet seat would have gone unused otherwise) is for the ages. But you start to see the bigger picture which is that Leonard Leo basically pairs each new Justice w a billionaire sponsor family when they arrive. https://t.co/LZoHk3pV1I
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 21, 2023
And here's more on Leonard Leo's SCOTUS-FedSoc Sponsor Family Program https://t.co/F5xF2vdM1O
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 21, 2023
… Alito seems to suggest that he was flying to Alaska and it turned out Singer happened to be flying to Alaska too. And he happened to have a spare seat on his private jet. So what sense would there be in having the seat go to waste? In the spirit of the Alaskan wilderness, taking the seat was sort of a resource-conservation effort in which Alito was lending a hand.
But of course Singer didn’t just happen to going to Alaska. He was going to Alaska specifically to spend quality time with Sam Alito. The whole thing had been arranged by The Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo, who asked Singer if he and Alito could fly up with him on his private jet.
And here’s where the whole picture starts to come into focus — both the Alito story and the Thomas ones. Needless to say, none of these billionaires are just old friends in the sense you or I might recognize. But they didn’t just glom on to their justice on their own. Everyone here is part of Leo’s network. Harlan Crow is a big Republican donor but also a big Federalist Society donor. So is Paul Singer. So is the owner of the fishing lodge. In fact, Leo’s network is so vast and deep-pocketed that eventually he decided he was too big for the Federalist Society and struck out on his own. Indeed last year he secured a record-breaking $1.6 billion donation as a kind of judicial corruption grubstake to fund all his future endeavors…
As we’ve noted before, there’s a long arc of the Federalist Society’s role placing justices on the Court. Thomas, now the oldest member of the Court, appointed in 1991, is old enough to have had a partly organic rise within the judicial ranks. He’s as much a part of the creation and maturation of the Federalist Society as one of its creations. By the time you get to a Brett Kavanaugh you’re talking about someone who was basically grown in a test tube for the specific purpose of one day serving on the Supreme Court.
We focus a lot on the pipeline the Federalist Society created to place ideologically true justices first on the appellate courts and then finally on the Supreme Court. What gets much less focus and what these stories highlight is the way the justices are essentially kept by the Federalist Society and the sponsor families once they ascend to the Court. It makes you wonder: which families got assigned to Neil, Brett and Amy?…
basically, gives them a family to stay with on holidays, keeps them out of trouble.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 21, 2023
Very hard to see how he’s not. Obvs Reagan, Gingrich, a few others. But in terms of deliverables hard to see even them quite comparing
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 21, 2023
Perfection!
Between Alito accepting lavish gifts from billionaires with business before the court to Sotomayor accepting paychecks from the same government that argues before her, tricky financial entanglements are widespread on the Supreme Court@DougJBalloon
— The Fig Economy (@figgityfigs) June 21, 2023
linnen
Impeach, don’t expand.
I’ve yet to read an argument in favor of expanding the Supreme Court that will keep the current situation from happening again.
NotMax
Sen. Whitehouse on O’Donnell right now.
Kay
AL is such a dog person :)
Suzanne
God. This unadulterated bullshit makes me so mad.
I have been having this fantasy of moving north. Like, Northwest Territories north. Somewhere that I can be left alone and not worry about getting shot.
Scout211
Ksmiami
Burn them all… take the corrupted SC down to the struts and rebuild it.
Kay
Ksmiami
@linnen: reduce the SC jurisdiction- expand it to 13 justices. No more shadow docket decisions. Get rid of the legal bribery that is Citizens United. Stop paying for the SC electric bills and security details once we get the House back.
Jackie
Within 24 hours we should know everything TIFG knows😉
“JUST IN: DOJ says it has made its first production of trial discovery to Donald Trump and his team — which means (per the below) he now knows who’s going to testify against him, and roughly what they’re going to say.”
https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1671687577777192962
Ksmiami
PS the illegitimate Robert’s court has made a mockery of the so called rule of law. Fuck them with rusty farm instruments. Seriously.
Another Scott
@linnen: I can think of at least one:
With 15 justices, the new ones would have a majority and could decide to impose actual ethics rules, getting around the concerns about separation of powers (that a sensible legislature might impose).
AmericanBar.org (from February 23):
That’s just one thing that a 15-seat SCOTUS could do.
Fight for 15!
Cheers,
Scott.
Scout211
@Jackie: Some good replies to that tweet.
Mike in NC
Not having lived in another country, I often think we have the most corrupt system of government on the planet.
Mike in NC
@Kay: Don’t make me like Empty Greene, even for a minute.
laura
Supreme Court reform is a boot endlessly kicking Leonard Leo in the nuts.
Kay
@Mike in NC:
I just realized the two women dress alike- they both wear sleeveless v neck dresses in solid colors. Maybe they could bond over that.
Citizen Alan
@linnen: you can’t convict a conservative for trying to overthrow the government. And you expect a conviction for bribery? Without which the GOP would cease to exist?
Princess
I don’t want to reduce this to electoral politics because the principles at stake are so important but … I think this kind of corruption is easily understood by voters and fundamentally disliked by most.
Jackie
@Scout211: Who’s David Dennison? Another fake alias TIFG used to use? I haven’t heard about that one.
Martin
@Another Scott: But if ⅓ of the existing court is corrupt, having gone through our existing process, what’s to ensure the 6 justices being added won’t succumb to the same result. Leonard Leo is still out there with his billion dollars to corrupt the court. McConnell is still invested in corrupting the court. There’s no meaningful transparency or accountability for being corrupt.
Those problems still need to be addressed – ideally before the court is expanded so we don’t expand it with corrupt members that are now inside trying to obstruct these efforts.
Geoduck
All of this is happening, and the news media has decided that the quest to find an imploded submarine at the bottom of the Atlantic is the most important current event.
sanjeevs
Elliott’s advantage was that they bought up debt with legal issues and had an inside track with the relevant New York judges.
Never suspected they had bought up a Supreme Court Justice though.
Brachiator
Semi related. When I taught a tax class, I tried to make things a little fun by trying to explain how much money billionaires have in comparison to multi millionaire athletes and celebrities. So, even a sports star making $100 million could be a guest on a yacht, but not be able to buy one and maintain it long term.
And so, this wild story recently popped up in my news feed. The ridiculous lives of the rich and famous.
And this is also after paying $3.7 million in back pay to the crew.
So, Supreme Court Justices hanging out on yachts is playing in a rarified atmosphere. It certainly looks bad that some of these jokers have no problem hanging with the Uber wealthy.
And I noted before that pundit David Brooks mentioned that he is friends with the plutocrat who has done so much for Clarence Thomas. Any reporter who has ever partied with the uber wealthy should formally note that association to respect transparency.
prostratedragon
@Jackie: Yes. It disgusts me that I know this.
Scout211
Yes
Wikipedia
West of the Rockies
I hope that, if nothing else, these stories are causing Alito and Thomas and Roberts and Gorsuch immense gastrointestinal distress: nausea, GERD, diverticulitis, diarrhea, and a nighttime expulsion of toxic-level methane.
Miserable fuckers.
steppy
So, who’s assigned to Kavanaugh? Who’s assigned to Barrett? Who’s assigned to Gorsuch? Who’s assigned to Roberts?
When are we going to find out that the above is true and who they are?
What is to be done with this Leo? It pains me to think of a way to rid him of his poisonous influence on the whole judiciary.
H.E.Wolf
That seems a little intemperate. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson don’t seem (to me) to be cut from the same cloth as the six conservatives, and I don’t think it serves the cause of equal justice under law to behave as if they are.
oldgold
Leo is not a kingmaker. He’s a pimp.
West of the Rockies
@Geoduck:
And a cheap-ass submarine at that with a repurposed gaming console used to operate the damn thing. Did they also install a sunroof from a ’94 Civic?
Yutsano
@Suzanne: When I was dating a Canadian, he was from Whitehorse. It’s actually pretty civilised. It’s also really close to Juneau if you ever want to fly back to the US while avoiding WestJet.
Jackie
@Scout211: Ahh. It still amuses me his youngest is named Barron – after I assume – was TIFG’s favorite alter ego.
dmsilev
Never has the phrase ‘root for injuries’ been more appropriate:
Geoduck
@steppy: Someone paid off Kavanaugh’s debts.
Kayla Rudbek
@steppy: and are they all going to St. Catherine of Siena parish when in DC? (Or whatever the current Opus Dei parish is)?
Jackie
And tomorrow we get to hear who bailed George Santos out! Or… will he choose jail to protect whomever?
Martin
@steppy: Someone is on Roberts. We have his wife being paid millions to matchmake lawyers to law firms that have business before the court.
mrmoshpotato
@laura:
But a lot of the Supreme Court is a tongue licking Leonard Leo’s nuts.
mrmoshpotato
@West of the Rockies:
They would have to have souls for that.
mrmoshpotato
@Ksmiami: Dude. Suck a rotted horse’s asshole.
Dangerman
Don’t just go after the Justices. Go after the Billionaires. There are lobbyist laws.
Martin
@Dangerman: Yeah, that’s clearly one of the more fundamental problems. If a solitary individual can buy the court, then the court will always be bought. The only real way out of that is to make sure no solitary individual can buy the court, Congress, and so on.
West of the Rockies
@mrmoshpotato:
Doesn’t seem like Anger Management class is going well.
piratedan
@mrmoshpotato: for moi, the most disappointing aspect to all of this, is that the people who are supposed to be the arbiters of the laws of the land can be so bereft of ethics. Granted that’s naive to believe that people will stop being people, still the ideals that are enshrined in school, the possibility that we can continue to strive to be that “more perfect union” and have those scales fall from my eyes as we watch the GOP continue to be antithesis of what generations of us hoped that we could be.
It’s like watching the GOP collectively piss on my childhood and citizenship. That makes me want to hurt them (id) but would happily enjoy watching our and future generations find a way to enshrine this idealism at the ballot box to burn their hopes and dreams to the ground (ego)
sdhays
@Martin: No, no, no. You don’t understand. She’s really, really good at finding just the right lawyer for just the right firm.
piratedan
@sdhays: emphasis on the descriptor “right”
Ksmiami
@mrmoshpotato: fuck you. I meant burn them metaphorically by outing their shit in public…and yes the Supreme Court needs to be rebuilt. It barely worked for this country anyway except for a brief moment in the post war yrs.
Ksmiami
@H.E.Wolf: rhetorical- burn the corrupted in the media- still, point stands that if these Justices can be bought, the entire edifice is rotten.
JaySinWA
Funny how the news media can report on Russian Oligarchs, but our own American billionaires doing much the same internally get a less threatening label.
sdhays
I’m intrigued by this proposal from the Brennan Center:
Senior phase justices would step in when there’s a vacancy or a recusal, and would otherwise sit on other courts, help the administration of the judicial system. This is all doable without a Constitutional amendment and, addresses, I think, the most critical problem – the lack of term limits. Life terms raise the stakes too high, reward gaming the system, and place too much power in the hands of a few cloistered judges – power that is corrupting even for otherwise decent judges.
NotMax
@Jackie
Presumably named for the financial publication.
West of the Rockies
@JaySinWA:
Speaking of reporting on Russian oligarchs, remember when there were multiple reports of luxury yachts being confiscated? Has that subsided? Were they all piloted to safe harbors?
Expatchad Putin has become Stalin, the destroyer of worlds
@Suzanne: The Philippines has worked marvelously for me since the Lesser Shrub
mrmoshpotato
Yup. Totally agree.
mrmoshpotato
@West of the Rockies: For Mr. Burn All The Supreme Court?
NotMax
@Expatchad Putin has become Stalin, the destroyer of worlds
But — balut.
//
Shalimar
@linnen: The best argument for expanding the Supreme Court has nothing to do with keeping this situation from happening again. There are 13 appellate courts. The Supreme Court caseload has increased, and there should be 13 justices overseeing those appellate courts, so no justice is responsible for more than one.
Other reforms are also necessary to impose some ethics on the assholes.
mrmoshpotato
@Shalimar:
Nominated.
Expatchad Putin has become Stalin, the destroyer of worlds
@Geoduck: BINGISSIMO!
Jackie
Can I say I have a crush on Jack Smith?
“Special counsel Jack Smith has begun producing evidence in the Mar-a-Lago documents case to Donald Trump, according to a Wednesday court filing that hints that investigators collected for the case multiple recordings of the former president – not just audio of an interview Trump gave at Bedminster for a forthcoming Mark Meadows memoir,” CNN reports.”
“Prosecutors in the filing used the plural ‘interviews’ to describe recordings of Trump – made with his consent – obtained by the special counsel that have now been turned over to his defense team. It is unclear what the additional recordings may be of or how relevant they will be to the Justice Department’s case against the former president, though the recordings include the Bedminster tape where Trump speaks about a secret military document to a writer and others, the prosecutors said in the filing.”
Political Wire
NotMax
@Suzanne
Eye of the taiga?
;)
Shalimar
@Ksmiami: This is why you don’t want to get a reputation for proposing genocidal revenge in the Ukraine posts. People just assume you’re doing it again.
dmsilev
@Jackie: If the evidence list includes the interview he did with Fox a few days ago, that will officially be the funniest thing ever.
Jackie
@dmsilev: You know it will be!😂
Ivan X
@Martin: I was wondering where you’d been. Nice to see your nym.
NotMax
@dmsilev
Anything from his mouth or his fingers from now until a trial is concluded can be entered as additional evidence provided the prosecution properly informs the defense of its intent to do so as each and any instance occurs and provides any such additional evidence to them in a timely fashion.
Martin
@Jackie: Since Smith also needs to give up exculpatory evidence, I wonder how many of Trumps own public statements are being provided as a kind of roulette wheel of ‘this statement can be exculpatory or evidentiary depending on which defense argument you are looking to thread’.
Mallard Filmore
@Expatchad Putin has become Stalin, the destroyer of worlds:
I have been thinking similar, but for retirement. The problem with the Philippines is when global warming gets going with a vengance, Philippines is too small, too poor, and too crowded.
I agree with your sentiment but will aim for someplace on the continent.
NotMax
@Martin
Feel confident Smith and his staff have dotted the Is, crossed the Ts, tilded the Ns, accented the Es, cedillaed the Cs and unmlauted the Os to a fare-thee-well.
Mallard Filmore
@Martin:
(Not a lawyer …) A person with direct knowlege of the exculpatory evidence would have to testify to enter it into the court record. Anything that only Trump knows won’t make that cut. Who else is left?
mrmoshpotato
@Ksmiami:
No. Fuck YOU! Fuck you and your bullshit. I talk about throwing people into the Sun, which is understood as frustration if you have two functional brain cells.
You talk about burning people. Go! Fuck! Yourself!
And fuck off into the Sun!
HumboldtBlue
McCarthy’s clown show on the floor of the House gets the hecklers it deserves.
Roberto el oso
@steppy: as ‘Geoduck’ says, relating to the $200,000 worth of baseball tickets, if someone can uncover who paid for that then you’re well on the trail of who Kavanaugh’s minder is.
West of the Rockies
@mrmoshpotato:
Yup.
JaySinWA
@West of the Rockies: At least one yielded a reward:
https://maritime-executive.com/article/seized-russian-yacht-fetches-68m-bid-from-google-s-former-ceo
rikyrah
@dmsilev:
Two clowns fighting
NotMax
@Roberto el oso
What do they lob over the plate at a game with such dear admission price? Fabergé eggs?
//
JaySinWA
This basically looks like a criminal enterprise with Leo at the center. Very much like running a spy network. Handlers working the recruits, moving them along by increments. Keeping them close and comfortable with the corrupting influence peddlers.
NotMax
@rikyrah
♬ And a partridge in a pear tree ♬
:)
cain
So does Leo provide these SCOTUS judges an app and do they like swipe left on the billionaire they want to fall in love with and give them presents?
ETA #80? FUCK. YEAH. HELLS TO THE BELLS!
columbusqueen
@mrmoshpotato: Let’s calm down a bit, shall we?
Amir Khalid
@Kay:
I am disappointed at Kevin the Speaker’s inability to compel members of his caucus to show basic decorum in the House. Disappointed, mark you, not surprised.
eversor
Remeber a few years back when Kavanaugh had to flee the DC Morton’s (high end super pricey steak house) because of protestors?
I chuckled because OF COURSE IT WAS MORTON’S! What most people don’t know about that Morton’s is there is a magic trick you can pull at it. You can rent space in their wine area. You pay a monthly fee and then you tell them what wine, often thousands per bottle, whatever you want in it! They set you up. Then when you eat there while you may go through a phony or maybe real (depends, but they are going to show you the bill just to add the tip that you do pay for) card swipe it just gets thrown onto that account and you pay up when its time to deal with the wine storage.
The fun part here is that Leonard Leo eats at that Morton’s. He has one of those wine storage units. So all these Federalist Society and Trad Catholic types eat at that Morton’s. All the damn time. So it’s long been a local speculation that Leo is paying for all this through Federalist society money and all these assholes are eating there because it’s free for them.
cain
@Amir Khalid: I’m all for showing how Kevin has turned the House into grade school. Even high schoolers are more mature.
cain
@eversor: I wonder how many times Cannon shows up there.
For Cannon, that’s the goal – get to SCOTUS and go on fishing trips with billionaires.
Looking at the pics, it looks boring.
Mai Naem mobileI
@cain: nah, it’s got the swiping your credit card thingy with the pre calculated gratuities and custom gratuities if the justice really pleased you with his performance or if you really really need the justice to perform for you.
Mike G
Amy Coathanger Barrett and Rapey O’Kavanaugh wondering why they aren’t riding the corrupt Republican gravy train
eversor
@cain:
On the boring thing. Yeah that’s the mind boggling thing about all this. It’s all stupid. None of this comes off as fun. Hookers and blow this is not.
Like the Morton’s thing. It’s not the best, the nicest, or even the most expensive steak house in DC. Let alone the greater DC area. It’s not a place you need to get reservations at either. Like all high end steak houses it’s firmly for upper middle class people or the rich. The food is fine. But it’s not special occasion stuff or something you tell everyone you went to. It’s just simple, solid, reliable, and good. It’s the type of place the professional class goes out to eat at if they are working late. It’s also not a great place to corrupt people at because it’s a high traffic place that everyone is going to see you at.
It’s both infurating and laughable at the same time.
TriassicSands
In terms of restructuring the Court, impeaching justices does no good at all, since, as I hope we all know, there is absolutely no chance of getting a conviction until such time as the Democrats have 70 or more senators. (Not 67, because there will probably always be a few Democratic senators like Manchin and former Democrat Sinema. To get to a super-majority the Democrats will have to elect quite a few senators from Red and Purple states.)
There is no way to do anything to the Supreme Court that will survive the next Republican majority in the Senate. That will probably be January 2025 unless they continue to run lunatics and idiots (Lake and Walker, for example) for Senate seats.
Impeachment will never get a conviction and expanding the Court will simply be a temporary solution, but one, nevertheless that is still worth doing. If the Democrats had expanded the Court to 13 justices (matched to the number of Appeals circuits), Dobbs wouldn’t have happened, affirmative action wouldn’t have ended (or so it appears we will see that soon), and other outrageous extremist decisions (Citizens United, Shelby, and so on) could have been reversed. Then, when the Republicans retook the Senate, they could expand the number of justices to 17 or 21 and the credibility of the Court would be destroyed once and for all. It would be obvious at that point that justices don’t call balls and strikes, they pursue and accomplish agendas.
But there would be a difference between the democratic expansion and that of the GOP. A campaign to justify the initial expansion would have truth, history, and public opinion on its side. Unpopular and destructive decisions concerning corporations, guns, etc. would be reversed and most of the decisions would be acceptable, even popular with the majority of Americans.
When the GOP retaliated, the new Court would reverse all those decisions and that would be the final nail in the Court’s coffin. No serious person could believe any longer that justices were just following the dictates of the Constitution. It would be overwhelmingly obvious that the Court was completely politicized and something would have to be done to allow it to regain credibility. If that happened, and it might not, but if it did we could finally get a new take on the Court. Term limits, ethics, and the role of the Federalist Society would all have to be looked at closely. I’m not naive, it is possible, even likely, that this country is so broken that there will never be a restructuring of the SCOTUS that led to a responsible result. Much harder than fixing the Court is fixing the Republican Party, something I consider impossible at this point. The only thing that can fix the GOP is the electorate and its trajectory is down, not up.
A final note on impeachment. Bozoboert has just introduced a motion to impeach Biden. Unlike Trump, the grounds for impeaching Biden cited by the Colorado Clown are ridiculous. (Lots of presidents do things for which they could be legitimately impeached, but Biden’s immigration policies don’t qualify.) If Democrats impeached Thomas, the Republicans would undoubtedly impeach at least one, if not more, Dem-appointed justices. That isn’t a reason to not impeach someone like Thomas who objectively should be removed from the Court, just like the failure to convict Trump didn’t mean he shouldn’t have been impeached both times didn’t mean Democrats shouldn’t have impeached him. However, removing Thomas, if that were possible, wouldn’t be nearly as advantageous has removing someone younger, since Thomas, in all likelihood will be the next “retiring” (aka dead) justice. In some ways, I would prefer to get Alito off the bench even more than Thomas, whose early life went a long way toward making him the corrupt lunatic he is today. Alito has no such excuse. He didn’t have the broken family life Thomas suffered through and he never suffered racism. Thomas faced not only white on black racism, but black on black. If anything Alito is even more of a religious zealot than Thomas and that alone should disqualify him.
piratedan
@Mike G: would assume that Kegstand has already gotten his quid pro quo up front when his debts were mysteriously cleared from his ledger.
As for Ms. Barrett, will await further insight into her finances or it could be that she’s the GOP Dream Girl, smart of enough to be of use and brainwashed to be beholden to the whims of male authority figures.
mrmoshpotato
@columbusqueen: That pied assclown can go fuck himself. Oh yes?
Betty Cracker
Kudos to Durbin and Whitehouse for laying down a marker on SCOTUS ethics reform and for directly calling out Roberts. Back when ProPublica broke the story about Clarence Thomas’s sugar daddy, The Forward published a story about Justice Kagan turning down a bagel and lox care package offered by high school friends in New York because, as Kagan emailed a friend, “I have to take these ethics and reporting considerations very seriously.” For bagels and lox!
Chris T.
@linnen:
Walk and chew gum? Unpossible!
p.a.
Can’t wait for The Onion to run its “adopt a justice” article.
Seeing the way these p’toks whine just from bad publicity makes me wonder what their reaction might be to real sanctions. Not retirement unfortunately.
linnen
@Shalimar:
(Also @TriassicSands):
Expanding the SC to allow one Justice per appellate court sounds reasonable. To channel Groucho Marx, that will be the biggest reason it won’t happen.
Two issues that I can see, however. One is, how would one prevent the appellate court from becoming the fiefdom of the Senators from the region when deciding who to appoint, and from becoming the personal fiefdom of the presiding Justice?
And the second is, what mechanism can be implemented to keep a corrupt Justice from messing with their appellate court while allowing non-corrupt Justices to rein-in appellate courts. Such as those that are known for jurisdiction shopping, for example.
linnen
@TriassicSands:
Don’t impeach corrupt Justices because the conservatives will then impeach liberal Justices? And you think that they will need an excuse? (I still remember about the “Impeach Warren” movement being taught in High School, though it could be relegated to collegiate minority studies in today’s curriculum.)
BellyCat
@sdhays: And the way to remove a corrupt Senior judge is how exactly?
Barry
@Mike G:
“Amy Coathanger Barrett and Rapey O’Kavanaugh wondering why they aren’t riding the corrupt Republican gravy train”
I would bet $0 that they are not on the gravy train.
sdhays
@BellyCat: Well, this structure greatly reduces their influence, so it reduces the usefulness of corruption in the first place. But having this larger structure also makes it possible to have ethics guidelines/laws with teeth. You’re no longer an indispensable 1 of 9 – if you can’t follow the rules, your responsibility can be taken away/reduced without resorting to Congress intervening and the Court will continue on without your input.
evodevo
@Shalimar: Yes…why not both!
BellyCat
@sdhays: Hope springs eternal. Judicial solidarity at all levels means that the people most above the law are judges, starting at the level of Common Pleas in State courts.
linnen
Instead of being 1 of indispensable 9, Justices can be 1 of an indispensable 13, or 17, or 23, or …
Without impeachment, expansion means exactly bupkis.
SteverinoCT
@West of the Rockies:
USN Virginia-class submarines have fiber-optic periscopes, and some bright officer realized that rather than a $30K controller, a $30 game controller could be used. Even if it broke, just replace it and you are still ahead. Plus, every sailor these days already knows how to use it. I myself am still miffed at the lack of paper charts, to which I devoted my career, including sleeping with them under my mattress due to storage constraints.