Only in the sense that Robers doesn’t get compensated personally for automatically ruling in favour of any corporate “person” that comes before his bench.
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Is this undisclosed potential conflict of interest sufficient grounds to bring any of the cases decided while Thomas was on the bench back to the Supreme Court, especially if the difference between the majority and minority was 1 vote or fewer (5-4 or 4-4 with one recusal)?
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clarences, i think.
eta: at the very least i think both parties could agree to impeach him for bad taste
While sailing around New Zealand with Crow, Thomas autographed a copy of his memoir as a gift for a crew member.
“Thank you so much for all your hard work on our New Zealand adventure,” reads the inscription
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And they’ve known all along that he was doing it.
(Still laughing: “Hm, Bohemian Grove or Walmart parking lot? Tough call.”)
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Us too; despite people asking for recommendations on computer classes, I am forbidden to mention DH’s computer repair and teaching shop because ethics.
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I keep (involuntarily? unconsciously?) replacing the words “Bohemian Grove” with “Playboy Grotto.” Both are unsavory playgrounds for rich men, but one of them has less public hair on display.
At least until Clarence asks for a soda.
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This is another one of those things where we hope the people who originally came up with this stuff were merely overly optimistic about the quality of people who would become SC Justices (and Presidents, Governors, etc.) since they didn’t seem to think that ethics rules for these positions would even be necessary, isn’t it?
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This little bit from the whole ProPublica report also caught my eye:
In 2011, The New York Times reported on Crow’s generosity toward the justice. That same year, Politico revealed that Crow had given half a million dollars to a Tea Party group founded by Ginni Thomas, which also paid her a $120,000 salary. But the full scale of Crow’s benefactions has never been revealed.
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If that group was Liberty Central, then that’s not quite accurate. It was co-founded by Ginni Thomas… and Leonard Leo.
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Harlan Crow is the son of the late Trammel Crow - one of the largest commercial real estate developers in Texas. They live in a mega-mansion in Highland Park - essentially the Beverly Hills of Dallas. This about as old money as there can be. A true bastion of old school Republican conservatives.
For newcomers to the Park Cities, the Crow property is the largest in Highland Park extending from Preston Road to Exall Lake, covering nearly eight acres. The original home was built in 1918. Its history is a rich one, having been the home of the legendary cattleman W.T. Waggoner‘s daughter Electra Waggoner, after whom the Buick Electra was named. Even back in that day, the estate had been a showplace for entertaining.
I know this area well having grown up there and I think I even went to high school with one of his kids. This estate is just down the road from my grandmother’s house about 1/2 mile away (It even has a 77 car underground garage). Let’s just say Harlan made his fortune the old fashioned way…he inherited it!
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Trammell Crow had quite a large presence in NC, and I seem to remember It has been a subsidiary of CBRE Group since 2006.
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I was going to ask if the House Ways and Means committee could request the IRS provide Thomas’s tax returns to see if he’d reported these gifts (much like committee chair Neal requested Trump’s returns.)
But then I remembered the chair is a Republican. So yeah, not gonna happen.
Maybe the IRS can conduct an investigation of its own?
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Giver reports, not recipient.
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Or just not take gifts. Holy shit.
BTW, their current salaries are just shy of 300K/year. Not lighting the world on fire, particularly if they maintain two residences (home and DC) though hardly scraping by. JFC, this guy…
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One thing about this is that there can be no valid counter argument. If he says “it’s not against the rules”, there’s a whole rule book of contradictory evidence. If he admits to it, he’s proving himself as corrupt as the day is long. And if he says “I didn’t think/know it was wrong”, then we have someone admitting he is utterly unfit to hold that particular chair, where his f*cking day job is to judge right from wrong.
I’d love to see him impeached, and every decision that he had a deciding vote on should get an asterisk next to it in the law books, and be eligible for judicial review. Can you imagine Citizens United being overturned because of his long-standing but now-evident corruption?
(And I should wish for a genie in a lamp, too, because as long as I’m wishing for something, I should include at least one wish with a realistic chance of happening.)
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Well, apparently, he asked for, “Coke”.
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