The Supreme Court: Clarence & Ginni Thomas Jet Set Edition

[VoteForSocialists]

world needs a pelican brief real bad right now

[riverman]

There is literally nothing, absolutely nothing, that could come out about a conservative justice that would result in their removal from the court.

[pvn]

@riverman

There is literally nothing, absolutely nothing, that could come out about a conservative justice that would result in their removal from the court.

Maybe if we found out that Clarence Thomas is actually the CEO of tik tok

[VoteForSocialists]

remember the WW episode when bartlett had two seats open and decided to split them between a liberal and a conservative? lol that’s why we lose so goddamn always. we live like it’s a make believe 90s tv show.

[commonWealth]

They are that way because they are happy with the status quo. They’re a party of controlled opposition to make sure corporations are safe regardless of who wins. So we get no attempts from eDems to build a narrative that this SCOTUS is not legit. We get Merrick Garland doing ~nothing. We get Feinstein gumming up the works. We get the SineManchin show making sure all the bills are watered down, with very little arm twisting from the bully pulpit.

The arc of the political universe bends towards the wealthy, regardless of who is in charge.

Now, would Dems rather have a majority of pro choice justices? Of course, but they’re not willing to risk the rest of it to pursue it, so they’ll just ask John Roberts to look into the Clarence Thomas stuff.

[goofy]

@goofy

lmao I’m sure he paid market price too

I hadn’t read the full thing yet but, surprise!

https://twitter.com/propublica/status/1646582979374841875

I’m dying to know the address so I can do my best Ed Whelan impression on Zillow but they redacted it in the deed they posted. (it’s on E 32nd St, which is two miles long)

[commonWealth]

So it appears he paid 6.5x market value? Or was the $133K for multiple lots?

[goofy]

This is a great callback:

New York Times Pitchbot

Abe Fortas

Conservatives are big mad about people remembering Fortas and trying to make the case “no, no, he deserved it because that was different”:

National Review

Not that it will have any consequences, but seems like a mistake to choose this path? As a conservative you need to marry yourself to the idea that it is never acceptable to force one of your precious SCOTUS justices down; if you stake out an example like Fortas and argue that was fine, it’s just that Thomas’s stuff is different, I mean it’s only a matter of time before we learn more info that suddenly makes it the same or worse. They’re really not even that different as it stands!

[ViridianDreams]

@goofy

@goofy

lmao I’m sure he paid market price too

I hadn’t read the full thing yet but, surprise!

https://twitter.com/propublica/status/1646582979374841875

I’m dying to know the address so I can do my best Ed Whelan impression on Zillow but they redacted it in the deed they posted. (it’s on E 32nd St, which is two miles long)

Who here is good at that Google earth geography game? They could come up with the address based on the photo I bet.

[goofy]

Are people really good enough at geoguessr that they get exact locations?? I assumed the peak was, like, maybe getting within a few miles lol

[commonWealth]

Zillow lists sale dates/prices, so it should be possible to find it that way.

[ViridianDreams]

I dunno. I imagine that one guy who’s famous for it could do it.

[pvn]

@goofy

Are people really good enough at geoguessr that they get exact locations?? I assumed the peak was, like, maybe getting within a few miles lol

people have sent rainbolt pictures from their childhood at a lake or whatever and he’s found the exact spot where they were standing when the photo was taken

https://twitter.com/georainbolt/status/1644912794985455617

[goofy]

This needs to be dramatized into a television series where he solves mysteries by pulling all the details out of photos, like I would probably watch a CSI-style show about this

[LouisCyphre]

They caught the discord server intelligence leak guy by matching the pattern of the kitchen counter top in this steam profile pic to his childhood home.

[SensiblePerson]

Nice summary of the Thomas situation from local paper cartoonist David Horsey. (Let’s see if Discourse handles WEBP images.)

Justice Clarence Thomas’ champagne wishes and caviar dreams

Among the people who have contributed to Ginni Thomas’ efforts is right-wing billionaire Harlan Crow, who gave her $500,000. Crow’s generosity did not stop there, however. Over two decades, he also hosted Clarence Thomas on luxury trips around the globe, including rides on a private jet and cruises on a superyacht. It is estimated that one of those excursions would have cost Clarence and Ginni Thomas $500,000 if they had paid for it themselves.

Oddly enough, Justice Thomas never reported all this largess to anyone, and there is some debate about whether he is required to do so because the Supreme Court’s ethical rules are almost nonexistent. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., said the justice’s willingness to accept such lavish gifts from rich political donors is “simply inconsistent with the ethical standards the American people expect of any public servant, let alone a Justice on the Supreme Court.”

[d10]

@goofy

Not that it will have any consequences, but seems like a mistake to choose this path? As a conservative you need to marry yourself to the idea that it is never acceptable to force one of your precious SCOTUS justices down; if you stake out an example like Fortas and argue that was fine, it’s just that Thomas’s stuff is different, I mean it’s only a matter of time before we learn more info that suddenly makes it the same or worse. They’re really not even that different as it stands!

I remember when Republicans insisted Trump’s phone call with Ukraine was fine because there was no quid pro quo. Then after the transcript came out they transitioned seamlessly to “well, that’s his right.”

[goofy]

Kacsmaryk, contrary to Senate rules about disclosure during confirmation, got a law review to take his name off a mega anti-trans article he wrote before his hearings

https://twitter.com/cakitchener/status/1647258104101322753

https://twitter.com/CAKitchener/status/1647259323276447746

The Obama administration, the draft article argued, had discounted religious physicians who “cannot use their scalpels to make female what God created male” and “cannot use their pens to prescribe or dispense abortifacient drugs designed to kill unborn children.”

But a few months after the piece arrived, an editor at the law journal who had been working with Kacsmaryk received an unusual email: Citing “reasons I may discuss at a later date,” Kacsmaryk, who had originally been listed as the article’s sole author, said he would be removing his name and replacing it with those of two colleagues at his legal group, First Liberty Institute, according to emails and early drafts obtained by The Washington Post.

What Kacsmaryk did not say in the email was that he had already been interviewed for a judgeship by his state’s two senators and was awaiting an interview at the White House.

As part of that process, he was required to list all of his published work on a questionnaire submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, including “books, articles, reports, letters to the editor, editorial pieces, or other published material you have written or edited.”

The article, titled “The Jurisprudence of the Body,” was published in September 2017 by the Texas Review of Law and Politics, a right-leaning journal that Kacsmaryk had led as a law student at the University of Texas. But Kacsmaryk’s role in the article was not disclosed, nor did he list the article on the paperwork he submitted to the Senate in advance of confirmation hearings in which Kacsmaryk’s past statements on LGBT issues became a point of contention.

I’m sure Durbin is on top of asking the Fifth Circuit to investigate this

[pvn]

we got him

[pvn]

susan collins is troubled