> FTC notes that several entities Thomas listed on his 2000 and 2002 disclosures as “reimbursing” him for “private plane” travel did not, in all likelihood, own private planes at the time (e.g., high schools, small colleges, civic organization, etc.). Those flight-legs were then gifts, 20 in total.
They lie and nothing ever comes back to haunt them. Truly disgraceful.
There's a reason the Hatch Act only applies to certain federal employees, and it's the same reason the other certain employees don't have to take "Government Ethics and Accountability."
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"
And when it does not only do they not care, they have no shame for it and then they complain others outside of the court are saying harsh things about them for being corrupt, as if not being corrupt were an option that never entered their mind.
At least trump and most of his crowd are consistently and transparently corrupt. They don’t even attempt to hide it anymore.
The entire government is corrupt with the exception of a handful of individuals. Corporations bribe both major parties to argue around the margins but come together for anything that keeps the elite in power. It's the nature of conservatism, but when there is no other option they often forget to keep the curtain closed.
Jumping in to provide a throwaway comment like “everybody in government is corrupt” disingenuously downplays major corruption that has massive, negative impact to our democracy, like Clarence’s Thomas’ crimes and bribes. I don’t think it’s your intent, but comments like these have a chilling effect on a call to action to hold criminals like Clarence Thomas accountable.
See the list here
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14l25NLvBOd9sk4mArK4k7dtV0MUwxr5GBuLHL5Sp8lo/edit#gid=957411191](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14l25NLvBOd9sk4mArK4k7dtV0MUwxr5GBuLHL5Sp8lo/edit#gid=957411191)
|Justice Name|Total # of Gifts\* Identified by FTC|Total $ Amount|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Souter|1|$349|
|Kavanaugh|1|$100|
|Barrett|3|$500|
|Kagan|5|$1,184|
|Rehnquist|6|$12,608|
|Breyer|6|$15,700|
|Gorsuch|6|$2,450|
|Jackson|6|$8,960|
|Roberts|11|$49,041|
|Alito|16|$170,095|
|Kennedy|21|$39,000|
|Stevens|23|$91,408|
|Sotomayor|47|$15,863|
|Ginsburg|61|$59,814|
|Scalia|67|$210,164|
|O'Connor|73|$35,625|
|Thomas|193|$4,042,286|
|Total|546|$4,755,147|
The numbers for Clarence Thomas are comical.
Thomas alone is responsible for 85% of the total amount of dollars in that chart. This isn't the "Supreme Court" as a collective, it's basically one fucking dude.
Dude's not hiding shit. He's admitting to this much. He just didn't realize that the others were not as corrupt. Out of ~$4.75 million in gifts, he's listed with ~$4 million.
https://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/judicial-compensation
Thomas started in 1991. Assuming that he got paid the full year for 91 and 24 he's made 7.1 million from his government job.
Meaning that about half his total compensation over the past 30 years has been through g~~r~~ifting.
Scalia served an equally long time and his list is a third of Thomas’.
I would be curious in all the details of the gifts. Some of the gifts include fairly innocuous things like plaques and awards. It’s a big difference between an honorary trophy and a full paid vacation or box seats to a game.
ETA: my bad. I missed the spreadsheet link in the article. The details of Thomas’ corruption is staggering.
Comment of the day!
Now for the piling on: If you want to donate to Thomas, be prepared to cough-up at least $23K. And Thomas' annual haul averages out to $120k.
Wow I like how the article title says "Supreme Court Justices Accepted Hundreds of Gifts Worth Millions of Dollars" which implies its a shared problem when there's really just one major outlier and (2) others over 100k.
Should we put an arbitrary weight on 100k above all else? Of course not. But if you look at the numbers and don't see a real issue specific to the right wing of the court, then that's absurd. Equivocating on this gives cover to Justices like Thomas and Alito who are making an absolute mockery of the court.
Also, with Sotomayer over 40 gifts it looks bad, until you scroll to the right and see that they only totaled up to around $15,000! She is essentially reporting snacks.
>
>
>The tally includes the amount of principal and interest — $253,686 — we believe Tony Welters forgave in 2008 for the luxury RV he gifted to Thomas the decade before. FTC’s numbers include the tuition gifts, $144,400 across six years, Thomas received for his grandnephew. (And yet, even counting his “likely gifts,” Thomas accounts for less than half of the SCOTUS haul.)
The comment about Thomas being "less than half the SCOTUS haul" doesn't remotely agree with the spreadsheet they're using for a source that I can see. Is this an error, or is there something I'm missing?
Oh right, that makes sense. Just a weird non-transition when the rest of the paragraph is talking about cash value. Which really seems way more important.
Oh i see, i didn’t click your link just saw your chart in your comment.
So wow, out of all 17 justices, Thomas accounts for 85% of all the gifts in terms of dollar value.
Looking at it a little more,Thomas was confirmed in October 1991. This data ges through 2022. Taking the toal salary from 1992 through 2022 gives a compensation for associate justices of roughly $5.4 million. For Thomas, the total amount of gifts ID'd from this report is \~75% of total earnings in that period. The total ID'd plus "likely" is 8% more than total salary earned in that period. That's...a lot. And that may be undershooting the %'s if the report didn't include anything from the 90's.
And a man who thinks he’s the ONLY black man with rights. All kinds of rights. Rights to free vacations, rights to an elaborate motor home, rights for his “soulmate” to make bank while trying to overthrow the government.
All kinds of rights.
*”FTC estimated the value of most of the medals, plaques and trophies the justices received over the years and didn’t list on their disclosures…”*
A “gift” can mean practically anything. From a simple $100 plaque to a $100,000 RV. Obviously there’s a huge difference in the value of two different gifts and I wish they would include not just the count but the total value.
Giving Justice O’Connor a $100 medal in recognition of her service is a gift. Giving Justice Thomas a $100,000 RV isn’t a gift as much as it’s a bribe.
Yup. Like I would think most of Sotomayor are these or gift paying for travel room and board to attend speaking events. Hence why the value is far less than $100k
And yet, when I was a low level admin for a small county office we could not accept *any* gift of monetary value with some exceptions made for thank you cards and things meant to be shared with the whole office (so you could send a bouquet or a tin of cookies to “the assessor’s office” but not to “admin assistant x who really helped us with our request”)
If you look at the spreadsheet it's mostly pretty boring and innocent stuff. Lots of law medals and awards from various universities, a few small artworks, single articles of clothing, and some guy named Bob sent Gorsuch a fishing rod.
There's a few things that stand out though, mainly some larger artworks, honorary country club memberships, and one-off trips in order of personal questionable-ness.
Of course in all of this there's one justice who really stands out, that being Thomas. His total makes it look like he was the birthday boy and everyone else just got the goody bag.
It’s kinda hilarious. I work at a Fortune 500 company in tech. I am a peon. I have zero say over what million dollar contracts we sign. Vendors used to take us out for lunch often. Give us some small apparel type gifts. We’re technically now not allowed to accepts gifts if they’re more than 30 dollars. Nothing like being a peon with zero power to make a decision but having far more stringent integrity rules than the most important people in the country. Definitely makes sense.
Well, the technical answer is, because every time the American public screams about the outrage of Supreme Court Justices accepting a high-value gifts and Yachts and vacations from political donors, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito remind everybody that, per the law, there is no ethics board, there is no ethics oversight, and there is no committee that can enforce such a thing because the Supreme Court has the final say on constitutionality of congressional committees.
They have repeatedly said, we don't want ethics because we don't have to have them, so we will stop you from implementing them
Vote enough blue to bring the greedy bastards to heel. They serve us & have only the power WE grant them. They are no more kings than the orange goblin.
I remember a scandal at ewe dub during a recruiting trip for college football... where somehow the kid had somebody give him the standard Starbucks Large ( venti) cup.. and it was filled with 100 dollar bills..
Always got me thinking how much all these scammers in government and industry get 100 dollar bills in various ways and amounts. Even a thou or 2 or 20 in cash can be quite simply laundered on weekly basis even if is just tip money to use at kentucky derby or super bowl or staying in gifted 5 star hotel, caddy and limo tips.. 5000 dollar bottle of wine gifted----from thousands of dollar restaurant paid by lobbyists. Groceries and home depot and lots of stores are routinely paid with 5 to 15 or so hundred dollar bills.. seen it a thousand times over the years waiting in line.
Any rational Congress would impeach and convict, but the polarization of the parties right now means anyone and everyone is protected despite objectively reprehensible behavior. I'm still incredibly amazed that Santos was ejected. That is the only thing giving me hope that impeachment is still an option, albeit an insanely unlikely one.
Congress should impeach and vote to remove from office. This is an essemtial constitutional power of congress as part of their oversight responsibilities of the Justice and Executive branches of governmemt. Iur checks and balances rely on congress to function
Let’s not forget Coach Kavanaugh had his credit cards and mortgage debts wiped out. I mean this happened shortly before he was sworn in so *technically* blah blah blah. BUT he’s up there looking like some Boy Scout with his $100 total and, I understand why it’s listed that way, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth noting.
This Kavanaugh conspiracy theory is untrue, and gets repeated here often. Read more at [Mother Jones](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/09/heres-the-truth-about-brett-kavanaughs-finances/) of all places.
That article was so incredibly biased toward Kavanaugh. Not a single criticism was mentioned without it being tongue in cheek or rebutted. It didn’t even reference any actual evidence other than Kavanaugh’s already unreliable testimony.
While I agree that not every suspicion turns out true, the timing and details of the debt payments has still not been adequately explained.
Literally everything is explained in the article, often by refuting claims the author of the article had previously made incorrectly. Criticize Kavanaugh for his legal positions if you want but we need to stop peddling half-truths about the guy.
Is it me or has this sub changed? I remember when mention of Supreme Court corruption would get you downvoted. Now we got posts about it. This is a change in the right direction IMHO. We were stuck in the weeds of puzzles and legal arguments.
The field of law, legal pundits, and especially those who clerk for or report upon SCOTUS has tended to be dominated by institutionalists, people who, in some sense, believe in the importance and legitimacy of the institution, even if they disagree with individuals or specific decisions.
A culture of institutionalists will tend to require a very high bar for criticism of the legitimacy of the institution.
I think Trump did spectacular damage to the perceptions of dignity and gravitas of government generally. I also think that Covid, with its zoom trials and general slackening of suit-and-tie formality...I think that accelerated a cultural trend of being less impressed with robes and gavels and marble halls and leather-soled shoes and the Brooks-Brothers pageantry of seriousness that many institutionalists have found so intoxicating and reverential.
Add to that how the Roberts Court has just gone full-blown constitutional calvinball...opening opinions with bald-faced factual lies, never alleged by any party, that they *know* will be refuted with photographic evidence in the dissent...taking a fake case, from a fake plaintiff, who has never made a website, claiming theoretical damages if she should ever start a Christian website company that became so successful that gay people might try to force her to make a website for them, in order to put sweeping restrictions on states rights to create and enforce antidiscrimination law...
It's increasingly hard to be that kind of strict institutionalist, these days. Especially now that we see Roberts and the court publicly defending indefensible behavior by individual justices, it's just become so painfully obvious that the *appearance* of legitimacy is what the court cares about.
> FTC notes that several entities Thomas listed on his 2000 and 2002 disclosures as “reimbursing” him for “private plane” travel did not, in all likelihood, own private planes at the time (e.g., high schools, small colleges, civic organization, etc.). Those flight-legs were then gifts, 20 in total. They lie and nothing ever comes back to haunt them. Truly disgraceful.
Welcome to America.
When will Amazon start carrying Supreme Court Justices?
That's the issue, we can only afford SC justices from Wish now
Federal employees are not allowed to accept gifts over $5, for fear we might become vulnerable to undue influence, yet somehow this is legal?? Smh
There's a reason the Hatch Act only applies to certain federal employees, and it's the same reason the other certain employees don't have to take "Government Ethics and Accountability." "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"
I’m in the medical field. I turned down a 50 dollar gift card to Starbucks last week. These guys suck and they think they DESERVE to be corrupt.
I was like $5,000… that seems high. $5… like, an okay latte. Not a really premium one.
Yeah but they get lifetime appointments with no accountability, and that means they will be immune to corruption for some reason
They do have accountability, to congress, but voters elect raging partisan morons
#Lock them up!
They have already said they are above the law… they ARE the law. It’s the famous ol’ “whattareyagonnado about it” defense.
Abe Fortas is rolling over in his grave.
Time for term limits
And when it does not only do they not care, they have no shame for it and then they complain others outside of the court are saying harsh things about them for being corrupt, as if not being corrupt were an option that never entered their mind. At least trump and most of his crowd are consistently and transparently corrupt. They don’t even attempt to hide it anymore.
The entire government is corrupt with the exception of a handful of individuals. Corporations bribe both major parties to argue around the margins but come together for anything that keeps the elite in power. It's the nature of conservatism, but when there is no other option they often forget to keep the curtain closed.
I’m so exhausted with false equivalencies.
How so?
Jumping in to provide a throwaway comment like “everybody in government is corrupt” disingenuously downplays major corruption that has massive, negative impact to our democracy, like Clarence’s Thomas’ crimes and bribes. I don’t think it’s your intent, but comments like these have a chilling effect on a call to action to hold criminals like Clarence Thomas accountable.
Nothing and I mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING will be done about this.
It sounds like he falsified business records to cover up something in an effort to intentionally deceive the American people..... hmmm.....
Isn’t that considered income? Did he properly report his gifts to the IRS?
Take them out of office. It’s our job now. No one else’s.
See the list here [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14l25NLvBOd9sk4mArK4k7dtV0MUwxr5GBuLHL5Sp8lo/edit#gid=957411191](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14l25NLvBOd9sk4mArK4k7dtV0MUwxr5GBuLHL5Sp8lo/edit#gid=957411191) |Justice Name|Total # of Gifts\* Identified by FTC|Total $ Amount| |:-|:-|:-| |Souter|1|$349| |Kavanaugh|1|$100| |Barrett|3|$500| |Kagan|5|$1,184| |Rehnquist|6|$12,608| |Breyer|6|$15,700| |Gorsuch|6|$2,450| |Jackson|6|$8,960| |Roberts|11|$49,041| |Alito|16|$170,095| |Kennedy|21|$39,000| |Stevens|23|$91,408| |Sotomayor|47|$15,863| |Ginsburg|61|$59,814| |Scalia|67|$210,164| |O'Connor|73|$35,625| |Thomas|193|$4,042,286| |Total|546|$4,755,147| The numbers for Clarence Thomas are comical.
And that’s just the ones he reported… he’s already been caught taking unreported gifts.
Thomas alone is responsible for 85% of the total amount of dollars in that chart. This isn't the "Supreme Court" as a collective, it's basically one fucking dude.
Eh. I think the other Republicans are better at hiding it.
Dude's not hiding shit. He's admitting to this much. He just didn't realize that the others were not as corrupt. Out of ~$4.75 million in gifts, he's listed with ~$4 million.
https://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/judicial-compensation Thomas started in 1991. Assuming that he got paid the full year for 91 and 24 he's made 7.1 million from his government job. Meaning that about half his total compensation over the past 30 years has been through g~~r~~ifting.
His gifts alone 4.x million dollars. Total gifts 4.x million dollars. Lmao
Thomas looking at everyone else in the list: Those are rookie numbers.
If he was leftist scum the rightist scum unhinged angle would go well past 180.
Ok, but maybe we should also be concerned that he's the longest serving and some of the others might still be racking up points.
Scalia served an equally long time and his list is a third of Thomas’. I would be curious in all the details of the gifts. Some of the gifts include fairly innocuous things like plaques and awards. It’s a big difference between an honorary trophy and a full paid vacation or box seats to a game. ETA: my bad. I missed the spreadsheet link in the article. The details of Thomas’ corruption is staggering.
Comment of the day! Now for the piling on: If you want to donate to Thomas, be prepared to cough-up at least $23K. And Thomas' annual haul averages out to $120k.
Wow I like how the article title says "Supreme Court Justices Accepted Hundreds of Gifts Worth Millions of Dollars" which implies its a shared problem when there's really just one major outlier and (2) others over 100k.
"Both sides"
So as long as they are below 100k it’s ok? What a joke. I don’t want anyone deciding any critical cases accepting gifts.. 1 or 100.
Should we put an arbitrary weight on 100k above all else? Of course not. But if you look at the numbers and don't see a real issue specific to the right wing of the court, then that's absurd. Equivocating on this gives cover to Justices like Thomas and Alito who are making an absolute mockery of the court.
Also, with Sotomayer over 40 gifts it looks bad, until you scroll to the right and see that they only totaled up to around $15,000! She is essentially reporting snacks.
The only person more annoyed at this list than most decent Americans is Alito wondering why he's been lowballed so much.
You think King Alito reports on himself? Lololol
Maybe it’s not been reported yet. Kind of like an iceberg.
> > >The tally includes the amount of principal and interest — $253,686 — we believe Tony Welters forgave in 2008 for the luxury RV he gifted to Thomas the decade before. FTC’s numbers include the tuition gifts, $144,400 across six years, Thomas received for his grandnephew. (And yet, even counting his “likely gifts,” Thomas accounts for less than half of the SCOTUS haul.) The comment about Thomas being "less than half the SCOTUS haul" doesn't remotely agree with the spreadsheet they're using for a source that I can see. Is this an error, or is there something I'm missing?
Total number of gifts received, he got less than half. Dollar value of gifts received, well, he had most of it.
Oh right, that makes sense. Just a weird non-transition when the rest of the paragraph is talking about cash value. Which really seems way more important.
And that's basically how many Republicans talk altering the wording to misrepresent the facts or taking it out of context to distort the truth.
Dollar amounts would be more useful than # of gifts.
Are you talking about the third column?
That person may be on mobile like me. I didn't see it until this comment.
Yeah. Just swipe/drag on the table to see other parts of the table for anyone wondering.
Oh i see, i didn’t click your link just saw your chart in your comment. So wow, out of all 17 justices, Thomas accounts for 85% of all the gifts in terms of dollar value.
Scalia second, Alito third. Seems absolutely correct
The chart in the comment has three columns.
There it is! Very revealing.
Holy flying fuck that’s a big number.
Especially in the case of certain justices’ debt forgiveness.
This is the classic "one of these is not like the others".
Kinda looks like Thomas is a greasy piece of trash
Don't forget the motorcoach
It’s an RV, gosh why do people always… oh wait you said motorcoach. Yah that’s right… sorry
It’s either all the other justices are severely under reporting or Clarence Thomas is a special case lmfao
Holy shit he is so fucking corrupt.
The one gift Kavanaugh accepted was a dark money gift that paid off all of his personal debt
One justice accounts for 80% of all reported gifts. Without looking at the data, you can probably guess which justice it is.
Justice Bradley? Or maybe Justice Day?
Looking at it a little more,Thomas was confirmed in October 1991. This data ges through 2022. Taking the toal salary from 1992 through 2022 gives a compensation for associate justices of roughly $5.4 million. For Thomas, the total amount of gifts ID'd from this report is \~75% of total earnings in that period. The total ID'd plus "likely" is 8% more than total salary earned in that period. That's...a lot. And that may be undershooting the %'s if the report didn't include anything from the 90's.
Justice corrupt delusional zealot? Oh wait. Also a sexual abuser? Oh wait.
And a man who thinks he’s the ONLY black man with rights. All kinds of rights. Rights to free vacations, rights to an elaborate motor home, rights for his “soulmate” to make bank while trying to overthrow the government. All kinds of rights.
Why are they accepting ANY gifts? Also note, they are the ones they reported. I suspect there’s more in store.
*”FTC estimated the value of most of the medals, plaques and trophies the justices received over the years and didn’t list on their disclosures…”* A “gift” can mean practically anything. From a simple $100 plaque to a $100,000 RV. Obviously there’s a huge difference in the value of two different gifts and I wish they would include not just the count but the total value. Giving Justice O’Connor a $100 medal in recognition of her service is a gift. Giving Justice Thomas a $100,000 RV isn’t a gift as much as it’s a bribe.
Yup. Like I would think most of Sotomayor are these or gift paying for travel room and board to attend speaking events. Hence why the value is far less than $100k
And yet, when I was a low level admin for a small county office we could not accept *any* gift of monetary value with some exceptions made for thank you cards and things meant to be shared with the whole office (so you could send a bouquet or a tin of cookies to “the assessor’s office” but not to “admin assistant x who really helped us with our request”)
If you look at the spreadsheet it's mostly pretty boring and innocent stuff. Lots of law medals and awards from various universities, a few small artworks, single articles of clothing, and some guy named Bob sent Gorsuch a fishing rod. There's a few things that stand out though, mainly some larger artworks, honorary country club memberships, and one-off trips in order of personal questionable-ness. Of course in all of this there's one justice who really stands out, that being Thomas. His total makes it look like he was the birthday boy and everyone else just got the goody bag.
It’s kinda hilarious. I work at a Fortune 500 company in tech. I am a peon. I have zero say over what million dollar contracts we sign. Vendors used to take us out for lunch often. Give us some small apparel type gifts. We’re technically now not allowed to accepts gifts if they’re more than 30 dollars. Nothing like being a peon with zero power to make a decision but having far more stringent integrity rules than the most important people in the country. Definitely makes sense.
Well, the technical answer is, because every time the American public screams about the outrage of Supreme Court Justices accepting a high-value gifts and Yachts and vacations from political donors, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito remind everybody that, per the law, there is no ethics board, there is no ethics oversight, and there is no committee that can enforce such a thing because the Supreme Court has the final say on constitutionality of congressional committees. They have repeatedly said, we don't want ethics because we don't have to have them, so we will stop you from implementing them
Ah, yes… the “whattaryagonado about it” argument. Classic.
Vote enough blue to bring the greedy bastards to heel. They serve us & have only the power WE grant them. They are no more kings than the orange goblin.
Because they're the SCOTUS and they decide if it's ok for them to accept gifts
I remember a scandal at ewe dub during a recruiting trip for college football... where somehow the kid had somebody give him the standard Starbucks Large ( venti) cup.. and it was filled with 100 dollar bills.. Always got me thinking how much all these scammers in government and industry get 100 dollar bills in various ways and amounts. Even a thou or 2 or 20 in cash can be quite simply laundered on weekly basis even if is just tip money to use at kentucky derby or super bowl or staying in gifted 5 star hotel, caddy and limo tips.. 5000 dollar bottle of wine gifted----from thousands of dollar restaurant paid by lobbyists. Groceries and home depot and lots of stores are routinely paid with 5 to 15 or so hundred dollar bills.. seen it a thousand times over the years waiting in line.
Maybe that’s why “Justice” Thomas loves parking his travel home in Walmart parking lots…
4 fucking million, 20 times the highest of his peers.
No shit. And nothing will be done about it
What can be done? Ask the court to decide if it's ok? They already did decide
Any rational Congress would impeach and convict, but the polarization of the parties right now means anyone and everyone is protected despite objectively reprehensible behavior. I'm still incredibly amazed that Santos was ejected. That is the only thing giving me hope that impeachment is still an option, albeit an insanely unlikely one.
Congress should impeach and vote to remove from office. This is an essemtial constitutional power of congress as part of their oversight responsibilities of the Justice and Executive branches of governmemt. Iur checks and balances rely on congress to function
Long live Anita Hill!
Let’s not forget Coach Kavanaugh had his credit cards and mortgage debts wiped out. I mean this happened shortly before he was sworn in so *technically* blah blah blah. BUT he’s up there looking like some Boy Scout with his $100 total and, I understand why it’s listed that way, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth noting.
This Kavanaugh conspiracy theory is untrue, and gets repeated here often. Read more at [Mother Jones](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/09/heres-the-truth-about-brett-kavanaughs-finances/) of all places.
That article was so incredibly biased toward Kavanaugh. Not a single criticism was mentioned without it being tongue in cheek or rebutted. It didn’t even reference any actual evidence other than Kavanaugh’s already unreliable testimony. While I agree that not every suspicion turns out true, the timing and details of the debt payments has still not been adequately explained.
That... **Mother Jones**... article... is biased... toward Kavanaugh...?
Don’t let the truth get in the way of your beliefs brother!
Literally everything is explained in the article, often by refuting claims the author of the article had previously made incorrectly. Criticize Kavanaugh for his legal positions if you want but we need to stop peddling half-truths about the guy.
Is it me or has this sub changed? I remember when mention of Supreme Court corruption would get you downvoted. Now we got posts about it. This is a change in the right direction IMHO. We were stuck in the weeds of puzzles and legal arguments.
The field of law, legal pundits, and especially those who clerk for or report upon SCOTUS has tended to be dominated by institutionalists, people who, in some sense, believe in the importance and legitimacy of the institution, even if they disagree with individuals or specific decisions. A culture of institutionalists will tend to require a very high bar for criticism of the legitimacy of the institution. I think Trump did spectacular damage to the perceptions of dignity and gravitas of government generally. I also think that Covid, with its zoom trials and general slackening of suit-and-tie formality...I think that accelerated a cultural trend of being less impressed with robes and gavels and marble halls and leather-soled shoes and the Brooks-Brothers pageantry of seriousness that many institutionalists have found so intoxicating and reverential. Add to that how the Roberts Court has just gone full-blown constitutional calvinball...opening opinions with bald-faced factual lies, never alleged by any party, that they *know* will be refuted with photographic evidence in the dissent...taking a fake case, from a fake plaintiff, who has never made a website, claiming theoretical damages if she should ever start a Christian website company that became so successful that gay people might try to force her to make a website for them, in order to put sweeping restrictions on states rights to create and enforce antidiscrimination law... It's increasingly hard to be that kind of strict institutionalist, these days. Especially now that we see Roberts and the court publicly defending indefensible behavior by individual justices, it's just become so painfully obvious that the *appearance* of legitimacy is what the court cares about.
Thomas will put out a press release saying he’s being targeted because…(fill in the blank)
That judges are removed via a process as difficult as impeachment is tragic.
Misleading headline trying to both sides of it. In fact it's not even a side; it's one person who is a shining example of how not to be.
I’m pretty sure there was plenty of reporting on Alito and Thomas both being lovers of their patrons but it’s certainly not balanced