Trump barely had anything to do with stacking the judiciary. Mitch McConnell dragged his feet for years when it came to approving Obama’s judicial nominees, leaving hundreds of seats at various levels vacant by the time Trump was inaugurated. All Trump did was nominate judges off the list of Federalist Society members that was handed to him. McConnell’s the one who did all the work.
Kind of makes SC judges getting into drunken brawls rather small potatoes. 
As long as no-one’s putting money on the outcome !
And to add:
Boggles the mind.
And it just keeps going. At this point I think I should start a new thread (not sure). I think there is more here than I can quote:
When Justice Alito can get away with giving the aforementioned petulant, grievance-filled interview…
I would love to understand why none of the liberal justices can step forward and say – even in the most diplomatic way – “Yes, I can see why there is a problem with Supreme Court justices taking gifts.”
Is circling the wagons really the justices’ highest priority? Because in this case, doing so is the opposite of protecting the institution.
I am guessing the liberal justices don’t want scrutiny either. More paperwork and fuss. And who knows, maybe they will get a junket. They should all get a bite at the apple…right?
And, I am just guessing here, I think Supreme Court justices get a bit of infallibility on their minds. THEY can’t be wrong! How dare anyone suggest they are fallible!
In reality they are just lawyers and most (all?) are not noted for their jurisprudence. They were all put there to be a reliable rubber stamp.
“Supreme Court Upholds Corruption 9-0”
I don’t think I saw it in this thread:
Neil Gorsuch was finally able to sell a big plot of land about a week after he became a Justice.
The buyer? One of the principals of Greenberg Traurig, a nationally preeminent law firm with dozens of cases before the court.
(My emphasis)
Probably fodder for a different thread, but I’ve lately noticed a number of instances in which DCt judges issued pretty extreme rulings - such as the Texas “abortion pill” ruling. In many such cases, the reporting states that the judge was appointed by Trump, and describes past employment by religious or other far right clients/employment.
I wonder to what extent that reflects reporting bias, and that there have always been federal judges with such past employment both left and right. (I’m not even quite sure what would be analogous left-leaning organizations. The Sierra Club or NAACP maybe?) But it sure has given me the impression that we have a great number of federal judges who appear quite eager to reject well-established precedent and issue sweeping decisions consistent with a conservative religious ideology.
Just hope the idiots who failed to vote Dem because of “lesser of 2 evils/protest vote for Greens/independents” reasons is paying attention. Yes, ideology is very important. But one shouldn’t ignore the strategic impact of voting for certain candidates.
Already did, a week or so back if you want to use it -
Specifically because I was getting mixed between the multiple threads regarding abortion, Clarence, and oft the Schadenfreude thread.
Josh Blackman linked to a rebuttal article on the purchase of Thomas’s mother’s home:
Mr. Blackman finds this convincing. Personally, I’m not seeing it.
- None of this clears Thomas. Whether Crow is as clean as the winter snow isn’t particularly relevant. It doesn’t explain why Thomas failed to report anything.
- It doesn’t explain the subsidized vacations. Likewise, it doesn’t explain Thomas’ rationale for thinking that free luxury vacations are reasonable to accept, let alone not report.
- Crow’s argument that he just likes buying anything historical isn’t very well supported from the presented evidence. If he has only granted free rent to people around Thomas, that’s not very plausible. If he has only ever done it for his friends and young hotties, then that would seem to say that he has a fairly consistent pattern of trying to ingratiate himself through his personal finances. He would need to demonstrate that he’s got some sort of process for identifying locations of historic interest that isn’t connected to people he wants to impress. If he has a list of those, then he might have a defense.
You know, every time I hear the name “Harlan Crow”, I just get an image of some drug addled Kentucker redneck from an Elmore Leonard novel sitting back in a big grain barrel he filled with water and rigged up with a water heater as a janky hot tub, drinking Old Crow straight from the bottle and smoking a General Brisco while a couple of trashy prostitutes sit around painting their nails.
Stranger
Josh Blackmon is the Bret Kavanaugh of shitty law professors: a partisan hack fully owned and operated by donors to the Federalist Society and the Republican party. I wouldn’t trust him to offer anything close to objective legal analysis.
I was literally just thinking that! I’ve been rewatching Justified with my daughter–y’know, that show set in Harlan KY with a character named Dewey Crowe–and this is all I can think about when I read the name.
They keep talking about how the Supremes are different than other judges, and I am not an Article 3 judge. But it just boggles my mind that anyone could think these sorts of “gift” and transactions appropriate and not worthy of disclosure.
The Law. It’s a nice idea for those Other people. But not for me/us.
That attitude is really all we need to know about Thomas and certain of his cow-orkers.
The real sadness of the Thomas case is that he was known to be outre by the then-normal standards of ~35 years ago. And the system let him on anyhow despite that. And here we are. he is the tip of the corruption / impunity iceberg at the top of the federal judiciary.
Harlan Crow paid for years of private boarding school tuition for Clarence Thomas’s nephew at $6,000 a month.
A rather large question raised by the article:
If the family is getting free vacations, while bringing in $500k-$1m a year, and they have to sell a car to afford tuition at a school for one kid, then they’re living in debt.
Debt is a magnet for those who would want to influence someone.
I wonder if Thomas has or needs security clearance for some of his cases. There has to be the occasional one that deals with defense secrets.