I saw from your earlier comment that you once clerked for a federal judge, so I appreciate your perspective. However, I have a few comments. First, as I said before, if this is actually an example of ethical behavior by avoiding anyone receiving anything that could be said to be a gift by having everyone pay their way, why aren’t the parties involved saying that? It seems like that would be an effective way for them to kill the story. Hell, it might have prevented the story from even running in the first place. But no, instead, everyone involved said, “No comment,” making the whole situation look sketchy as hell.
Here’s the thing with the Supreme Court. Because there are few, if any, enforceable ethical standards for the Justices’ behavior, it is absolutely necessary that we trust them. And you are essentially saying, “Look, trust me, you can trust Clarence Thomas. You may disagree with him on issues, but he’s nice and friendly to people in person. Even Sonia Sotomayor says so. And you have no proof that any of these controversies has ever affected his decisions on cases.” And that’s just…I don’t know. I have no words. I’m sure you’re a competent attorney and a good person, but I don’t know that, and I can’t just take your word for that. Also, even if Thomas is a nice, personable, caring guy outside of Court, that doesn’t mean shit. Adolf Hitler, by every account I’ve ever read, loved children and animals, and was a nice, friendly guy to people in his personal life. He was still a bad person and a monster. For the Supreme Court more than any other institution in government, it is critically important that they avoid even the slightest appearance of impropriety, and Thomas has not done that. He seems to be flouting what few rules do apply to SCOTUS, daring someone to make him follow them. A mythos has developed over the decades around Supreme Court Justices. We had this idea that they were better than us. That we could trust them. That while they might make decisions we disagreed with, they were always sincere and above reproach. I don’t know why the fuck we believed that about them. Probably because that’s how the media largely portrayed them. But it was never true. They are human, and they are prone to the same mistakes and misbehaviors that the rest of us mere mortals are. If we are going to continue with this system where there is no mechanism to hold them accountable, then they have to be completely above reproach in their behavior, and they have not been lately, if they ever were. And not just Thomas. Sotomayor has also made some iffy ethics choices. And the worst part of all of this is that the response from all of the Justices, including Ketanji Brown Jackson, has been “Trust us. You can trust us.” No, sorry, that’s not good enough. You have given us no reason to trust you. You gotta earn that back by allowing yourselves to be held accountable now.
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