Balloon Juice - Supreme Court Archives

Open Thread: Ginni Thomas, ‘the Wind in Their Sales’… & the Cash in Their Pockets

by Anne Laurie| September 5, 20247:55 pm| 32 Comments

This post is in: Republican Venality, Supreme Court Corruption

Ginni Thomas has received jobs, gifts, and vacations from special interests with business before her husband, Justice Clarence Thomas.

It’s no wonder she doesn’t want him to have to adhere to a binding code of ethics.

We can’t let this blatant corruption go on any longer. https://t.co/zvHKIjHLDt

— Rep. Dan Goldman (@RepDanGoldman) September 5, 2024

?? Ginni Thomas “privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses.”

“YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES.”https://t.co/28IX3IMygR

— Alex Aronson (@alexaronson) September 4, 2024

Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses.

Thomas expressed her appreciation in an email sent to Kelly Shackelford, an influential litigator whose clients have won cases at the Supreme Court. Shackelford runs the First Liberty Institute, a $25 million-a-year organization that describes itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.”

Shackelford read Thomas’ email aloud on a July 31 private call with his group’s top donors.

Thomas wrote that First Liberty’s opposition to court-reform proposals gave a boost to certain judges. According to Shackelford, Thomas wrote in all caps: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”

Shackelford said he saw Thomas’ support as evidence that judges, who “can’t go out into the political sphere and fight,” were thankful for First Liberty’s work to block Supreme Court reform. “It’s neat that, you know, those of you on the call are a part of protecing the future of our court, and they really appreciate it,” he said.

On the same call, Shackelford attacked Justice Elena Kagan as “treasonous” and “disloyal” after she endorsed an enforcement mechanism for the court’s newly adopted ethics code in a recent public appearance. He said that such an ethics code would “destroy the independence of the judiciary.” (This past weekend, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she too was open to an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court.)…

The July 31 call led by Shackelford came shortly after President Joe Biden had announced support for a slate of far-reaching Supreme Court changes. Biden endorsed term limits for justices, a constitutional amendment reversing the court’s recent presidential immunity decision and a binding ethics code for the court’s nine members. Kagan’s comments came before Biden’s. She did not mention any of the structural proposals Biden endorsed…

To recap: Bribing judges? Freedom! Enforcing ethics? Treason!

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Thanks to Clarence & Ginni Thomas we need a new law.

If your spouse forms a group to make it easy to hide dark money, and you vote in favor of it, and then she uses the $$ to conspire to overthrow the gov't, your resignation as a SCOTUS Justice is mandatory.#ProudBlue #VoteBlue pic.twitter.com/G1lNzgyOE5

— LA Blue Dot in GA ???? (@namwella1961) September 4, 2024

Opinion by Ruth Marcus: Just when you think Virginia “Ginni” Thomas can’t do any more to cast disrepute on the institution where her husband has served as a justice for more than three decades — there she goes again. https://t.co/R4L44v7fEc

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 5, 2024

Ruth Marcus is angry that Ginni is scaring the normies again — “One urgent reason the justices need a credible ethics code? Ginni Thomas”:

Just when you think Virginia “Ginni” Thomas can’t do any more to cast disrepute on the institution where her husband has served as a justice for more than three decades, just when you think that perhaps, just perhaps, the justices and their spouses have been chastened by the torrent of bad publicity — there she goes again.

The latest bombshell, from ProPublica and Documented, involves Thomas’s gushing, all-caps thank-you email to the conservative First Liberty Institute. This is not just any conservative organization — it’s one that litigates extensively before the Supreme Court, on some of its most contested cases involving religious liberty and LGBTQ+ rights.

And Thomas’s email was not just some generic note of appreciation. It was to praise First Liberty for its fierce, and deep-pocketed, fight against … wait for it … proposals to reform the Supreme Court and strengthen ethics enforcement against the justices…

The impropriety here is multilayered — and staggering.

Ginni Thomas is a political activist by vocation, and, as I’ve written before, that’s her prerogative. It’s her constitutional right. And justices’ spouses have every right to pursue separate careers, including in politics and advocacy. “We have our own separate careers and our own ideas and opinions too,” she told the Washington Free Beacon. “Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work.”

Now Ginni Thomas’s isn’t just lobbying to “Stop the Steal” — she’s trying to Stop the Reform of her husband’s own institution. So much for separate careers. Ginni Thomas’s own behavior around the 2020 election, and Clarence Thomas’s conduct in accepting, and failing to disclose, thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts from wealthy conservatives helped trigger the push for court reform in the first place. Now, we know, Ginni Thomas is a behind-the-scenes player seeking to frustrate any changes — and a grateful (“THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH”) beneficiary of First Liberty’s efforts on the Thomases’ behalf…

Remember the praying football coach? He’s a First Liberty client; Clarence Thomas voted that his constitutional rights had been violated when he lost his job. The Maine families who said they were entitled to state funding to send their children to religious schools? First Liberty clients, too, and also beneficiaries of Thomas’s vote.

It was clear, or so I thought, that Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from deciding Jan. 6-related cases after Ginni Thomas called the election a “heist.”

There isn’t merely an ethics code to which the justices have voluntarily subjected themselves, albeit under duress. There’s a federal law that requires justices, like all other judges, to recuse themselves in situations in which their impartiality might reasonably be questioned…

… As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell in remarks broadcast this week, “a binding code of ethics is pretty standard for judges. And so I guess the question is, ‘Is the Supreme Court any different?’ And I guess I have not seen a persuasive reason as to why the court is different than the other courts.”

But there is a persuasive reason the high court does need an enforcement mechanism. Her name is Ginni Thomas.

Open Thread: Ginni Thomas, ‘the Wind in Their Sales’… & the Cash in Their PocketsPost + Comments (32)

Gold Bar Bob Convicted

by Betty Cracker| July 16, 20241:24 pm| 143 Comments

This post is in: Elections 2024, Open Threads, Supreme Court Corruption

Breaking via The Post: (gift link)

The jury in Manhattan federal court found the once-powerful New Jersey lawmaker guilty on all 16 felony counts. They include bribery, extortion, wire fraud, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent for Egypt from 2018 to 2022, when Menendez was at the height of his influence in Washington, serving as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or as the panel’s top Democrat while his party was in the minority. ..

Menendez did not testify in his own defense. His team is expected to appeal, and legal experts say he could be helped by the Supreme Court’s rulings in recent years narrowing the scope of federal bribery laws.

But the 70-year-old senator’s political downfall is essentially complete. New Jersey Democrats abandoned him after his indictment. He declined to seek the party’s nomination for a fourth term and instead mounted a long-shot bid as an independent in a state where Democrats have held both U.S. Senate seats for more than 50 years.

Good. I hate public corruption in all circumstances, but it’s especially odious to me when perpetrated by a Democrat because it lends false credence to the “both sides” lie.

Here’s hoping Gold Bar is soon a guest at the Gray Bar Hotel and New Jersey is represented by a better man in Andy Kim.

Open thread!

PS: Figures that the corrupt SCOTUS is now Gold Bar’s only hope. It’s the last refuge not only of unaccountable wannabe dictators but also of malevolent scalawags of every stripe.

Gold Bar Bob ConvictedPost + Comments (143)

Friday Evening Open Thread: Full Credit to AOC

by Anne Laurie| July 12, 20246:51 pm| 77 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Supreme Court Corruption

Corruption, without consequence, infects all it touches. Congress must exercise its powers to impeach.

The corruption of Justices Thomas & Alito constitutes a clear danger to our democracy. I moved to impeach them because it is the right thing to do for the American people. pic.twitter.com/eOscx9avE1

— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@RepAOC) July 11, 2024

… And also Wonkette. (My thanks to commentor TBone for the reminder!) Per Wonkette, “AOC Gonna Impeach Justices Thomas And Alito, For Torts Of Shameless, Disgraceful VERGOGGGGNA”:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez yesterday filed articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito to call attention to their complete indifference to judicial ethics and their refusal to recuse themselves from hearing cases in which they either have friends with interests at stake or in which they (or their spouses) have clearly taken a political stance.

Both justices took oaths to be impartial, but then refused to take even the most basic action to comply with ethical norms by recusing themselves. Chief Justice John Roberts hasn’t seen fit to enforce those norms by taking the rogue justices by the ear and explaining why their behavior is unacceptable, either. And they certainly won’t resign. Therefore, Ocasio-Cortez argued, impeachment is the only option left to Congress, which is still allegedly an equal branch of government…

Yes, of course Ocasio-Cortez knows full well that as long as Republicans hold the House, the effort to bring some accountability to the Court will go nowhere. Hell, that’s half her point: The entire Republican Party is now happy to look away from the sleaziest behavior by its most powerful figures, both elected and not, even those who are officially supposed to be neutral arbiters of the law, as long as it means the GOP gets the political outcomes it wants. By any means necessary, as some guy said long ago.

Oh, right, the other half of her point: No one should be above the law. Even the most powerful judges have to follow the rules, and if they don’t, they must be held accountable if our Constitution is going to work…

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There are three articles of impeachment against Thomas; Article I, the lengthiest, covers Thomas’s failure to disclose all of the gifts lavished upon him by billionaire benefactors: the forgiven loan for a luxury RV, all the travel on yachts and private jets, the rent-free home for his mother, the private school tuition for the great nephew Thomas raised as a son — most of which Thomas failed to report as legally required, until after the largesse was revealed by journalists. Thomas failed to recuse himself from any of the cases involving his benefactors’ political groups, too.

The other articles involve Thomas’s failure to recuse himself from cases in which his wife Ginny had interests. Article II specifies her paid work for an outfit founded by the Thomases’ good personal friend, travel arranger, son-educator, and mother-houser Harlan Crow, and also “consulting” income from a group founded by Federalist Society honcho Leonard Leo. Article III focuses on Ginny Thomas’s legal entanglement with the January 6 coup attempt, for which Justice Thomas should have recused himself from all cases related to the foiled insurrection. Just to show how fair-minded she is, AOC didn’t even call for either Thomas to be imprisoned on a barge and tried in Gitmo.

Alito’s impeachment case has just two articles. The first involves his failure to recuse from “cases in which he had a personal bias or appearance of prejudice,” which is also about the January 6 cases. Like the Thomas articles, it notes Alito’s oath of office specifying that he promised to “faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon [him] as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court,” which isn’t especially consistent with hanging up treason flags at your homes in support of the insurrection.

Alito gets his own article of impeachment for failure to disclose gifts from rich donors, specifically that fun Alaska fishing trip that Alito claimed wasn’t unethical because the private jet he rode in would have just flown with an empty seat if he hadn’t gone along, you see. Alito too failed to recuse himself from cases involving the donor, in whose favor he ruled.

And here we are, with the letter from the senators and AOC’s impeachment articles, which may not go anywhere just yet. But both examples still matter, as unambiguous statements that the rule of law still matters, and that one party is willing to stand up and say so.

Bonus corruption, foreign enemy edition…

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas likely entered & exited Russia on an oligarch’s yacht in the Gulf of Finland so his US passport won’t have a record of visiting Russia. The Kremlin would’ve been ABSOLUTELY involved to bypass customs & immigration. Did he have a Russian visa? https://t.co/lK6zlBbc3c pic.twitter.com/eqKSPd3G5X

— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) July 11, 2024

Friday Evening Open Thread: Full Credit to AOCPost + Comments (77)

Late Night Open Thread: The SC(R)OTUS Immunity Theory, Illustrated

by Anne Laurie| July 4, 20243:55 am| 107 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Supreme Court Corruption

(Ann Telnaes via Washington Post)

Late Night Open Thread: The SC(R)OTUS Immunity Theory, Illustrated 1

(Lalo Alcaraz via GoComics.com)

Late Night Open Thread: The SC(R)OTUS Immunity Theory, Illustrated 3

(Nick Anderson via GoComics.com)

Late Night Open Thread: The SC(R)OTUS Immunity Theory, Illustrated 5

(Walt Handelsman via GoComics.com)

Late Night Open Thread: The SC(R)OTUS Immunity Theory, Illustrated 2

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)

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Late Night Open Thread: The SC(R)OTUS Immunity Theory, IllustratedPost + Comments (107)

Late Night Open Thread: The SC(R)OTUS Immunity Clause

by Anne Laurie| July 2, 20243:04 am| 140 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Venality, Supreme Court Corruption, Trump Crime Cartel

Some of you will appreciate just how wild it is to see this tweet from this man. https://t.co/c4kXvfvEE2

— Franklin Leonard (@franklinleonard) July 1, 2024

Since Chief Justice Roberts is said to be a strongly traditionalist Catholic and a reader of Constitutional history, I assume he has decided in favor of pursuing his studies at the feet of Justice Taney in the afterlife. Mr. Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire — “The Supreme Court’s Immunity Ruling Is a Recipe for Utter Chaos”:

Mr. Roberts has made his decision. Now let him enforce it. Goddamn this Supreme Court. It’s got me quoting the apocrypha of that genocidal madman Andrew Jackson. The carefully manufactured conservative majority on the Court, by a 6–3 margin, ruled that presidents—specifically, Donald J. Trump, because if you think this decision will apply to Democratic presidents, please tell me where you buy your mushrooms—have something called “presumptive immunity” for “official acts” they took while in office.

This is specifically designed to hamstring Jack Smith’s prosecutions regarding the insurrection of January 6, 2021, especially in combination with the Court’s earlier decision in Fischer v. U.S. that disallowed the use of an obstruction-of-justice statute under which a number of the rioters had already been charged and/or convicted. On top of that we have Chief Justice John Roberts’s ancillary ruling, which will make a complete hash of the discovery process in any prosecution of the former president*. Roberts wrote:

Testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial.

In the short run, of course, this whole case, on which the Court never should have granted cert in the first place, was directly aimed at delaying the prosecution of the former president* until after the November election and thence, likely, to the Twelfth of Never. It certainly has accomplished that goal. It’s going to take months, if not years, for lower courts to distinguish between “official” and “unnofficial” acts, and every attempt will be appealed, and then appealed again. The former president*’s go-to legal strategy, the one he used to put glaziers and gardeners on the rack until they ran out of money, now has the blessing of the country’s highest court. Jack Smith is just another New Jersey subcontractor who never sees a dime…

The carefully manufactured conservative majority on the Supreme Court is done with its work deforming democracy until October. One thing on which we can all agree is that it has been worth every dime that Leonard Leo, and Harlan Crow, and Paul Singer paid for it.

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Late Night Open Thread: The SC(R)OTUS Immunity ClausePost + Comments (140)

Supreme Court Decisions Again Today at 10 am (7/1 Edition)

by WaterGirl| July 1, 20249:30 am| 476 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Supreme Court, Supreme Court Corruption

If you want to follow along on SCOTUSblog.

I’ll copy the short summaries as each one shows up on their website.

Are we going to need another one of these this week?

Here we go!

In Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors, the court holds that a claim under the Administrative Procedure Act to challenge an agency action first comes into being when the plaintiff is injured by final agency action.

OPINION: 6-3 Result: NOT GOOD

The court vacates both decisions on Texas and Florida’s social media laws, in Moody v. NetChoice, LLC and NetChoice v. Paxton, explaining that neither of the lower courts properly considered the nature of the First Amendment challenges.

OPINION: Result:

In Trump v. United States, the court holds that a former president has absolute immunity for his core constitutional powers.

OPINION: Result:

Supreme Court Decisions Again Today at 10 am (7/1 Edition)Post + Comments (476)

Sunday Night Open Thread: Concerning the Supreme Court…

by Anne Laurie| June 23, 20249:32 pm| 111 Comments

This post is in: Elections 2024, Excellent Links, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Supreme Court

Essays like this help keep me sane. I’d save these two for prime time, but there’s so much news these days…

Here’s the great Charles P. Pierce, from his weekly Esquire subscription column — “The Waiting Is Killing Us”:

Nothing became the administration of President James Buchanan like his inaugural address did. Delivered on March 4, 1857, just after he’d been sworn in by Chief Justice Roger Taney, who had other things on his mind, it was a flat and lifeless attempt to hand-wave away the fact that the country was coming apart over slavery. Don’t worry, the new president said, the system was working; the issue of the expansion of slavery was before the Supreme Court. All was well. Or so President James Buchanan told the nation.

This is, happily, a matter of but little practical importance. Besides, it is a judicial question, which legitimately belongs to the Supreme Court of the United States, before whom it is now pending, and will, it is understood, be speedily and finally settled. To their decision, in common with all good citizens, I shall cheerfully submit, whatever this may be, though it has ever been my individual opinion that under the Nebraska-Kansas act the appropriate period will be when the number of actual residents in the Territory shall justify the formation of a constitution with a view to its admission as a State into the Union. But be this as it may, it is the imperative and indispensable duty of the Government of the United States to secure to every resident inhabitant the free and independent expression of his opinion by his vote. This sacred right of each individual must be preserved. That being accomplished, nothing can be fairer than to leave the people of a Territory free from all foreign interference to decide their own destiny for themselves, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.

… As he sat on the dais, Chief Justice Taney had a lot on his mind—specifically, the opinion he’d been writing in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford, which was the case through which, Buchanan assured the nation, “the long agitation on this subject would end.” Historian Jill Lepore writes that the word on Taney’s decision already was beginning to leak out.

No one tweeted from Washington that week, but reporters knew a decision was coming, and they knew what decision to expect. This news they sent out by telegraph. On Wednesday, March 5th, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Taney was at home, writing his opinion. “The decision in the Dred Scott case will be delivered tomorrow,” reported a correspondent for the New York Herald, adding that the Court was expected to “decide that the Missouri compromise is unconstitutional and that Congress has no power over the question of slavery in Territories.”

Lepore emphasizes that the decision in Dred Scott was delayed because Buchanan wanted it delayed. Moreover, Buchanan leaned on one of the justices to join the eventual majority. But it’s hard to imagine either man was completely oblivious to the ongoing turmoil in the country…

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The Scotts’ suit had taken 11 years to get to Taney’s desk. In that time, the moral volcano on which the Founders had built the Constitution repeatedly had erupted. Abolitionism intensified. The Compromise of 1850 made things infinitely worse. Its strengthening of the Fugitive Slave Act brought a slew of new converts to abolition’s cause. Then, two days after he’d sworn in President Buchanan, and two days after Buchanan had reassured the country that it would all work out, Chief Justice Taney delivered his infamous decision in which he ruled that a “Negro had no rights that a white man need respect.”

By the end of May, the city of Lawrence in Kansas had been sacked by pro-slavery mobs and, in retaliation, John Brown led a band of followers as they hacked five pro-slavery settlers to death. In the Senate, Charles Sumner delivered a jeremiad on Kansas that so enraged Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina that he walked onto the floor and nearly killed Sumner at his desk. President Buchanan’s inaugural address had proven less than clairvoyant.

So here we sit, waiting for another crucial decision unreasonably delayed by an arguably compromised Supreme Court. Trump v. U.S. has undeniable constitutional import. It is preposterous to argue that the president has absolute immunity to do any damn thing the president wants, but that’s where we are, waiting…

It looks as though the final decision will be of the ring-and-run persuasion. The Court will drop its decision at the last possible moment and then get the hell out of town. This would be the crowning act of cowardice of an era in which every institution of government and politics has shirked from their duty of self-defense against an onslaught of ignorance, rage, and accelerated authoritarianism. It has been a decade in which we all have lived through a re-enactment of James Buchanan’s inaugural placebo. Be at peace because the institutions of government will handle all this. Remain calm. All is well.

via GIPHY

Painful but true from me @BulwarkOnline:
The 6 conservative justices could be Biden’s ticket to a 2nd term. They’re a scandal-and-controversy machine, constantly renewing old furors and creating new ones. Ds couldn’t ask for better material, or more of it. https://t.co/b4iq7ooDoB

— Jill Lawrence (@JillDLawrence) June 19, 2024

Jill Lawrence, at the Bulwark, (snarkily) looks for the pony in the pile of manure:

THE SUPREME COURT IS CAUSING great pain and upset to tens of millions of people, and it isn’t done yet. But in the end, by which I mean the day after the presidential election, America might owe the Court’s conservative supermajority a gracious thank-you note—“We couldn’t have done it without you!”—or even dinner.

The high court’s six conservative justices,half of them named by Donald Trump, could well be Joe Biden’s ticket to a second term. Like Trump himself, they are a scandal-and-controversy machine, constantly renewing old furors and creating new ones.

Democrats couldn’t ask for better material, or more of it. Whether the issue is abortion, guns, or the rule of law, and pondering if presidents are like kings and, if so, how much, there’s a ruling for that. Sometimes two or three. And if there isn’t yet, there will be soon.

The dramatic case that will first come to mind for most people is the Court’s June 2022 Dobbs decision revoking the constitutional right to abortion access. But there is also its Bruen decision one day earlier gutting state regulation of firearms. There is the March 2024 decision neutering the Fourteenth Amendment that is supposed to bar insurrectionists and their enablers from running for or holding federal office. There is the opinion last month upholding racial gerrymandering. And there is the Court’s tortured reasoning in last week’s 6–3 decision to overturn a Trump-era ban on bump stocks…

That [EMTALA] decision will draw attention once again to the crises that can occur at any point in a pregnancy, regardless of what a state bans and when, and the judgment calls that doctors must make amid persistent legal threats and medical uncertainties. So will the second anniversary of the Dobbs decision on Monday. The Biden-Harris campaign is organizing over thirty-five events to mark the date, and planning what it calls “storyteller” training so people can share their personal experiences and “put a face to Donald Trump’s cruel policies.” They’ve already released two powerful ads doing just that…

All this in a diverse country, where nearly two-thirds of adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Where voters have chosen to protect abortion access in all six states that put it on the ballot in 2022 and 2023, and where measures to enshrine abortion rights could be on the ballot in up to ten more states this year.

Character matters, as the Biden campaign says in a new ad about Trump’s felony convictions. All of it matters—accountability, democracy, freedom, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty. All of it is at risk from Trump and the Court he made.

That’s got to help Joe Biden. So thanks in advance for the assist, and (fingers crossed) dinner’s on me.

Sunday Night Open Thread: Concerning the Supreme Court…Post + Comments (111)

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

The lights are all blinking red.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickel?”

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

We’re not going back!

Ah, the different things are different argument.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

The willow is too close to the house.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Open Thread: Ginni Thomas, ‘the Wind in Their Sales’… & the Cash in Their Pockets

Gold Bar Bob Convicted

Friday Evening Open Thread: Full Credit to AOC

Late Night Open Thread: The SC(R)OTUS Immunity Theory, Illustrated

Late Night Open Thread: The SC(R)OTUS Immunity Clause

Supreme Court Decisions Again Today at 10 am (7/1 Edition)

Sunday Night Open Thread: Concerning the Supreme Court…