Reason 12,774 I need to perfect my time machine and give some folks in the olden days a good slapping and some firm suggestions regarding the future of the US.
For those interested I would recommend listening to the podcast “Behind the Bastards” episodes on Clarence Thomas. It walks through most of his life and shows the man is…not ethical (to put it lightly).
There are four parts to the series…here is part one (you can Google it to find the podcast on other platforms):
I wish I had bought an “I believe Anita Hill” T shirt back in the day.
dammit
Who disbars him? Does his state have Republicans running the store?
Wikipedia says Thomas passed the Bar in Missouri. I am guessing they are deeply conservative there but I do not know.
Here’s MeidasTouch coverage. 16 min total, but Thomas has done 16 min worth of shit.
That YouTuber alleges Thomas committed a crime.
Did he commit a crime?
Is there a reason he could not/would not be prosecuted for it if he did?
If he was sent to prison could he still be a Supreme Court justice?
The ProPublica article says this behavior violates a Watergate era law concerning reporting of gifts.
His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts, two ethics law experts said.
It looks like this is the law in question. (PDF)
The proposals I’ve seen to expand it would tie it to the number of federal circuit courts, which makes sense, and that number is currently 13.
That is promising. I think.
Thomas has released a statement saying he was advised (by whom he doesn’t say) that the trips did not need to be disclosed:
I had a brain fart and couldn’t figure out RvW. All I could come up with was Rip van Winkle.
Duh! The coffee kicks in…
That’d work.
Also, I’d change its procedures to match the other courts. So, first time a case comes to SCOTUS, it’d be heard by a three-judge panel. Only on appeal from that would it go to the full court.
And how much tolerance do we think Justice Thomas would give to a defendant who explained away his failure to comply with the law with “I was told I could do it”?
As I understand it, he’s not required to disclose “personal hospitality”, which would apply to being invited over to a friend’s house for food and drinks and maybe a game of charades. Justices are still presumed to have a social life, and not every friendly interaction with a good buddy is coercive. And this is true even if the friend is a billionaire and the food and drinks are being served at his swanky property.
But, hospitality does not include transportation to and from your friend’s house for food and drinks; you’re on your own for that one. That presumption of innocent friendly behavior includes the expectation you drive yourself around town.
And so, if your friend does happen to be a billionaire who offers you food and drinks at his swanky home, and gives you a ride on his private jet to get there, in lieu of you going commercial, then that part must be disclosed.
The legal definition of words - in this case “personal hospitality” - is the difference between legal and illegal.
From the cite provided earlier
Defunding them doesn’t just kill the judge’s salary, it kills the salary of all their support workers as well. Have fun being a Supreme court Judge who has to do all the typing, filing, research, and getting coffee all by yourself.
Boy - stupid me - I had forgotten the damn Form 278 I have to submit every year. That I HATE that I need to submit it, and the unnecessary complexity of it, is grounds for another thread. But I DO have to submit it, and it makes clear that there are significant penalties for not doing so correctly. And every gov’t dept has an “Ethics Office” to advise on such things and - IMO - the advice is ALWAYS to disclose. I would like to see if the “advice” he received bears the signature of his ethics official…
Hell, I have to report my wife’s piddly part-time income, and EVERY investment transaction over $1k, and this fucker thinks he doesn’t have to report all expense-paid first class worldwide travel? As far as gifts, IIRC the rule is you have to report/decline anything over $10. One time a contractor brought in a sack of beans they had harvested from their garden and my boss told me I should put them in the break room for any employee to share, and should tell that contractor to not do so again.
I really have a hard time imagining what sorts of investments would create a conflict of interest for me in my position. But I can EASILY imagine no end to situations that would be problematic for a Supreme. And then - of course - there is always that quaint, apparently vanishing, concept of avoiding even the appearance of a conflict.
What a fucking asshole. Yet nothing will happen to him. Hell, it is far more likely that I and my colleagues will face some stricter scrutiny.
Meh, I could/should have typed it out, but I was just shy of seething with rage between this, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, so I didn’t bother. Don’t type angry.
Thanks to @Moriarty for the detailed review of the appropriate law! Although his defense seems to be that these guideline changes are recent, and that he believed that his prior actions were fine, despite being blazing obviously to anyone who isn’t on the take. But it makes me wonder if the same advice (“did not need to be disclosed” as Flurb said) was followed on CT’s other documentation, and if again, they could end up having to make some embarrassing IRS corrections as I hoped earlier.
Sure, won’t get rid of them, but thinking of him having to go over who knows how many years (by the article, QUITE a few) with a fine toothed comb and counsel to pay the corrections with penalties is a non-zero amount of schadenfreude. Oh, and I’d looooove to know who gave that advice.
FTR when I originally brought it up, I wasn’t talking about defunding the Supreme court, just providing NONE of the additional funding they had asked for. But yes, it’s unfair to the staffers and those justices that aren’t abusing their position. Still, I think as strict Constitutionalists, they should be fine. After all, nothing there says they need to be protected at all, right? (yes, I’m being snarky, but CT and others absolutely have it coming).
I’m still pissed at George HW Bush for nominating him to replace Thurgood Marshall in the first place. “You want another black man on the Supreme Court, America? Well, here you go. Take it or leave it.”
Two of the most activist conservative members of the Supreme Court—Alito and Thomas—are 72 and 74 respectively, with highly conservative but less prone to making radical reversions to precedent Roberts being 67. Statistically, odds are good that at least two of these three members will retire or die in the next decade. Of the liberal contingent, only Sotomayor (68) has a reasonable chance of retiring in that period. On the other hand, ‘packing’ the Supreme Court would require adding four new seats and then electing to them four reasonably young non-conservative justices in order to prevent there from being a conservative majority or permanent split.
The likelihood of ‘packing the court’ with the current Congress is negligible, whereas if even two of those four new hypothetical seats is another highly conservative justice—say, Amul Thapar, Noel Francisco, or Paul Clement—the conservative majority may remain for decades regardless of other changes in composition. The argument for expanding the Supreme Court and attempting to “pack” it with liberal justices is one of those things that seems expedient in the heat of the moment but is almost certain to have dire consequences in the long term if the plan doesn’t go exactly how advocates anticipate, and thus far, nothing has gone to plan for Democrats since the beginning of this century. When you are at the bottom of a hole, the first lesson is to stop digging.
The Supreme Court has never been “non partisan”, and we need to stop assuming that this is some kind of theoretical default. Justices are selected by a political executive and confirmed by a political body, and thus will always be subject to the winds of political thought even if you do occasionally get a justice who will stand on principle even if it is against his or her personal beliefs.
Stranger
I’ll have you know that Thomas personally asked a Justice of the Supreme Court if his behavior was acceptable, and the Justice told him it was. You can’t get any better authority for legal advice than that!