Originally published at: Nothing will happen as ProPublica uncovers more evidence of Justice Thomas' profound ethical failures | Boing Boing
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As always, The Onion has the most accurate news:
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Let us imagine, for a moment, the political scenario if it were discovered that Justice Sotomayor was being funded by, and one of her kids’ tuition paid by, George Soros. How much longer past the discovery of this would her tenure on the court last? Seconds? Minutes? And Democrats would be right there helping her out the door. Because it would be the right thing to do, Soros, Crowe, or anyone, funding anyone.
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SCOTUS is severely compromised.
Like fucked.
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American democracy is not “one person = one vote” it’s “one dollar = one vote” and a billionaire can buy a lot of “democracy” and “justice”, including his own personal “Supreme Court Justice.”
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JFC, if I take more than like a water bottle or a shitty polo shirt from a vendor that’s considered uncool, FFS.
But a federal judge. WTF.
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Every year I have to take an anti-corruption training for work. It always goes into scenarios around working with government officials and how to avoid doing anything that could have even a hint of being construed as bribery or illegal influence. When I used to travel to visit customers we would usually take them out to dinner on the last night of the trip. Not for government or government-adjacent organizations, though. All to avoid any possible risk of it being construed as a bribe.
To see fucking Supreme Court justices who know better doing shit like this and hand waving it away is just ridiculous to me. It’s naked bribery and influence peddling.
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That’s what’s particularly outrageous about this: ANY other federal judge would be subject to full investigation, censure and disciplinary action if they did something remotely comparable. The Supreme Court is the only group of judges for whom the ethical standards are merely suggestions.
If Durbin lets this drop with his usual whimper of “what can we do, they won’t cooperate?” he can only be considered complicit. Democrats can’t let this go unaddressed, and a pinky swear from Thomas and Roberts to try to not do it again is not nearly good enough.
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What can be done and who can do it?
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Does the Senate have the power to investigate Justices?
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Yes they can, just like they can investigate the actions of the president. But due to separation of powers there’s very little that Congress can do about what they find, other than impeachment which definitely isn’t going to happen unless Democrats win a supermajority.
Not that that’s any excuse not to do an investigation though. Just publicizing what they find might shame the court into policing itself a bit better. Or at least make Chief Justice Roberts uncomfortable, which is always worth doing.
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You’re assuming Republicans have shame. If they haven’t been shamed by what’s revealed so far, the only thing that would end up shaming them would probably be enough to get impeachment votes anyway.
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I think demanding Thomas testify on TV over these gifts and things would do it.
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They don’t have shame, that’s true. But there’s some evidence that Justice Roberts in particular is made uncomfortable by the idea that the court is losing legitimacy in the eyes of the public. So maybe he could be stirred into taking some token action to help protect his own legitimacy.
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He already lost that battle with the “uh uh, we’re not doing any ethics stuff” letter. Anything he says about the legitimacy is purely performative.
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I think that is the very least that should happen!
My senator is Ted fucking Cruz.
This guy is going to run against him apparently: https://colinallred.com/
So that’s another way to try I guess…
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Republicans in Congress are too busy hand waving things away with some even saying (likely false or misleading) things about how the liberal members do the same shit. If that’s the case I say get rid of them all. As always it’s about looking at symptoms and not the problem with these people.
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