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real-human
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 Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2023 2:01 pm Post subject: |
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https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/clarence-thomas-faces-new-ethics-controversy-difficult-questions-rcna78479
| Quote: | | In late June 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef. If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too. |
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real-human
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| Posted: Sun Apr 09, 2023 5:35 pm Post subject: |
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/justice-clarence-thomas-gop-megadonor-has-a-nazi-memorabilia-collection-reports/ar-AA19DjGh?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=4cffca98950941d68de32c54f444a89b&ei=44
Justice Clarence Thomas’ GOP Megadonor Has A Nazi Memorabilia Collection: Reports
| Quote: | Harlan Crow, the Republican billionaire and megadonor to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, allegedly has a collection of Adolf Hitler artifacts and Nazi memorabilia on display at his home, according to news reports.
Crow’s million-dollar estate in Dallas, Texas, houses Adolf Hitler artifacts, including two paintings by Hitler and a signed copy of his book “Mein Kampf,” along with a stockpile of other Nazi mementos such as a swastika medallion, statues of dictators of the 20th century in the backyard and more, according to the Washingtonian.
Inspired by his hatred for communism and fascism, the Washingtonian reports, Crow’s collection faced major backlash in 2015 after he hosted a fundraiser at his estate on the eve of Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday. An anonymous source who attended the fundraiser told the Washingtonian that the house felt like a museum, describing it as “strange” given the assortment of family photos in one room, World War II artifacts in another and a backyard full of dictators.
Researcher Danah Boyd tweeted on Saturday that she was “deeply shaken” by the displayed Nazi memorabilia when she attended a meeting at Crow’s house a few years ago.
“Years later, I still shudder thinking about the Nazi uniform decorations in Harlan Crow’s house. And the painting. And the book. And the statues. And the ‘antebellum’ (pro-slavery) artifacts. I’m glad others are questioning the acceptability of those materials,” Boyd said in a tweet, adding that she left the meeting after seeing the Nazi artifacts.
Boyd pointed out that this topic is not new and that Dallas reporters have been “covering this for years.” |
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real-human
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| Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 12:35 pm Post subject: |
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great point...
Business Insider
Business Insider
AOC says there's an easy solution if Clarence Thomas wants a life of luxury: 'Resign from the court'
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real-human
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| Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2023 9:10 am Post subject: |
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/clarence-thomas-s-billionaire-friend-did-have-business-before-the-supreme-court/ar-AA1ahfYE?cvid=86310752eb4449bbb770eddbdd128aa1&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&ei=8
Clarence Thomas’s Billionaire Friend Did Have Business Before the Supreme Court
| Quote: | (Bloomberg) -- Justice Clarence Thomas said he was advised he didn’t have to disclose private jet flights and luxury vacations paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow because, although a close friend, Crow “did not have business before the court.”
But in at least one case, Crow did.
Bloomberg reviewed dozens of state and federal cases involving companies that the Crow family has owned or had a financial stake in since Thomas’ 1991 confirmation. Nearly all of these disputes played out at the trial and appellate level and didn’t reach the Supreme Court.
In January 2005, though, the court declined to hear an appeal from an architecture firm that wanted more than $25 million from Trammell Crow Residential Co. for allegedly misusing copyrighted building designs. When the court issued a one-sentence order denying the petition, there were no noted recusals — indicating that Thomas participated — and no noted dissents. |
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real-human
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real-human
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| Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2023 10:42 pm Post subject: |
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well said...
any other federal judge or employee would be fired and or jailed.... if he is too stupid to understand why all other federal employees can not accept 500k trips and its reasoning he is to stupid to be on the supreme court...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/unsalvageable-senator-becomes-first-to-call-for-clarence-thomas-to-resign-over-corruption-allegations/ar-AA1akc3X?cvid=b040ee7a5b3c4c37cc6ee3012c542e0b&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&ei=8
'Unsalvageable': Senator becomes first to call for Clarence Thomas to resign over corruption allegations
| Quote: | U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) is calling on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign over allegations of corruption spanning more than two decades. He is the first sitting U.S. Senator to do so.
“I will say what needs to be said: Clarence Thomas should resign from the Supreme Court of the United States. His reputation is unsalvageable,” Sen. Markey, flanked by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA).
“It is evident that he cannot judge right from wrong, so why should he be judging the country’s most important cases on its highest court?” Sen. Markey asked.
The three Massachusetts Democrats spoke as they kicked off a 20-city bus tour Monday from Boston, focusing on strengthening ethics in the nation’s highest court, as the Boston Globe reports.
“The court must take action in order to rebuild its legitimacy by enforcing its own recusal rules, adopting a binding code of conduct, strengthening restrictions on gifts of privately funded travel, and increasing the transparency of justices’ financial dealings and interests,” Markey also said.
READ MORE: Gorsuch Sold Land to Law Firm Head With Cases Before SCOTUS 9 Days After Being Confirmed – He Didn’t Disclose Buyer’s Name
Senators Markey and Warren also called for expanding the Supreme Court by four seats, to 13, which would more accurately represent the nation and its current judicial system.
”I don’t want to mess with the Supreme Court,” Senator Warren told reporters. “But the Supreme Court is messing with our democracy. Make no mistake, the Supreme Court faces a crisis of legitimacy. The Constitution gives Congress the ability to check the Supreme Court’s power, including by changing its size, no constitutional amendment.”
Related video: Senator Calls For Clarence Thomas To Resign: 'Unsalvageable' (Newsweek)
We need to clean up the court as well.
Rep. Pressely added, ”I’m here with my partners in government and community to organize and mobilize to enact common sense reforms to our highest judicial court.”
reme Court representative of the people and capable of upholding the law.”
READ MORE: Top Senate Democrat Goes After Clarence Thomas’ Billionaire Benefactor
The tour is being organized by a coalition of more than 30 progressive groups called the Just Majority campaign, The New York Times reported, as more see the increasingly urgent need for judicial reform in the wake of the Roberts Court’s rulings on abortion and its now-infamous shadow docket.
“This is new to us,” Mini Timmaraju, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, told The Times.
Timmaraju “said her organization’s decision to join the campaign was driven in part by recent court decisions on abortion rights, gun control and other issues that run counter to well-documented public opinion.”
“We feel a special obligation to jump in now,” she also said. “It feels the time is right to start having this conversation about expansion. Everything has to be on the table.”
Watch a clip of Senator Markey’s remarks, and the full event video below or at this link. |
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real-human
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2023 9:35 am Post subject: |
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well put...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/beyond-reproach-former-federal-judge-calls-for-stronger-supreme-court-ethics-rules/ar-AA1aDf9b?cvid=92d601e85c4f453ff8d451bea320e724&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&ei=5
USA TODAY
'Beyond reproach.' Former federal judge calls for stronger Supreme Court ethics rules
| Quote: |
Story by John Fritze, USA TODAY • 16m ago
think we've seen before, an old Statute general Language Congress
WASHINGTON − A conservative former federal judge on Tuesday said the Supreme Court should "subject itself to the highest possible professional and ethical standards" in response to a series of ethics controversies and warned that, if it does not, Congress has the power to do so on its own.
J. Michael Luttig, a former appeals court judge nominated by President George H.W. Bush who has close ties to the high court, made the statement in written testimony to Senate Judiciary Committee, which is holding a hearing Tuesday on Supreme Court ethics.
"The nation should never have reason to question the ethical conduct of the Supreme Court. It is the responsibility of the Supreme Court, and of each justice who serves on the Court, to ensure that there never even be such a question raised," Luttig told the committee.
"For its part, the Supreme Court should want, without quibble, to subject itself to the highest possible professional and ethical standards that would render the Court beyond reproach, because such would ensureto the fullest extent possible that the Court is always beyond reproach in its nonjudicialconduct and activities," Luttig wrote.
Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge who was an adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, testifies as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021.
© Susan Walsh, AP
Bush enlisted Luttig to help Justice Clarence Thomas navigate his controversial Senate confirmation hearings. Luttig, who has broken with Republicans on several issues in recent years, made similar comments in an interview with Reuters last week.
"It’s the titular head of the judicial branch of government and I believe that the expectations for Supreme Court justices are rightly higher than for any other public official in the land," Luttig told Reuters.
Code: Would a code of ethics fix the Supreme Court? Some raise concerns about enforceability
The Senate hearing comes as the Supreme Court is facing a new round of scrutiny following a series of stories in ProPublica last month that revealed private jet trips and luxury yacht travel Thomas accepted from Harlan Crow. The GOP megadonor also purchased three properties from Thomas and his family – none of which were reported on the justice's annual disclosure forms. Thomas acknowledged the trips, describing the Crows as “among our dearest friends" and said he was "advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the court, was not reportable." |
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real-human
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| Posted: Thu May 04, 2023 1:27 pm Post subject: |
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https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/clarence-thomas-ethics-mess-gets-even-worse-yes-rcna82824
Clarence Thomas’ ethics mess gets even worse (yes, again)
| Quote: | | In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.” Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow. |
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real-human
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| Posted: Wed May 17, 2023 9:20 am Post subject: |
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/clarence-thomas-under-scrutiny-as-key-witness-speaks-out-in-ethics-probe/ar-AA1bj8Et?cvid=97e2b35a2c1d4c5ca3f64fa94ae65959&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&ei=8
Clarence Thomas Under Scrutiny as Key Witness Speaks Out in Ethics Probe
| Quote: |
Afederal judge who raised concerns about how ethics complaints against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas were handled will testify during a Senate hearing on Wednesday.
Senior U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf is scheduled to appear before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing chaired by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. It comes as a series of revelations about Thomas have fueled calls for stricter ethics rules for the Supreme Court.
Among them was the revelation by ProPublica that Thomas for years accepted luxury trips paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow, a Republican donor, without disclosing them. Thomas has said he was not required to disclose the trips.
Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, has sought information about how complaints against Thomas more than a decade ago were handled in light of the recent reports about Thomas.
Wolf, a former member of the U.S. Judicial Conference, the U.S. court system's leadership body, repeatedly questioned in 2012 why members were not receiving information about complaints filed against Thomas and how they had been resolved, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month.
Newsweek reached out to a Supreme Court spokesperson via email for comment from Thomas.
The year before, Democratic lawmakers and public interest groups had filed complaints with the Judicial Conference after reports that Thomas did not disclose years of income earned by his wife, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, a conservative activist.
The complaints were referred to the Committee on Financial Disclosure, which cleared Thomas of "willful" wrongdoing but did not report information about the complaints to the Conference.
"In other words, Justice Thomas's transgressions remained known only to the small group of judges on the committee—they were never reported out to the full conference," former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance noted in a Substack post. "Because only the full conference is permitted to make referrals to the Attorney General, nothing else happened. The process was cut off."
Vance said even if Thomas was not aware of his obligations back then, "he is most certainly aware of them now."
That "brings into sharp focus allegations that he continued to accept and failed to disclose significant benefits from people who were not entirely disinterested in the work of the Court," she added.
"If there's reasonable cause to believe Justice Thomas acted willfully or improperly when he failed to disclose information on his recent forms—and it's hard to see how there isn't—then a referral should be made by the Judicial Conference to DOJ for appropriate action under [Ethics in Government Act]."
As well as the revelation about luxury trips, ProPublica also reported Crow's purchase of property from Thomas and his family that was not disclosed.
The nonprofit investigative journalism site also reported that Crow paid for two years of private school tuition for Thomas' great-nephew, who Thomas and his wife raised from the age of 6.
Republicans have defended Thomas, but Senate Democrats promised to pursue stronger rules during a hearing on ethics reform held earlier in May. |
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real-human
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| Posted: Mon May 22, 2023 8:34 am Post subject: |
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Good morning. Democrats used to criticize the Supreme Court respectfully. Increasingly, they see the court as irredeemable.
‘A sea change’
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During periods of intense political debate in the U.S., the Supreme Court often becomes a target of harsh criticism.
Jefferson complained of “useless judges” and described the judiciary as “a despotic branch.” Lincoln suggested that allowing the Supreme Court to overrule public opinion could lead “to anarchy or to despotism.” A member of Franklin Roosevelt’s cabinet said that one court decision should “outrage the moral sense of the country.”
Across history, the goals of such criticism have tended to be similar. The critics hope to damage the court’s credibility with other political leaders and the public, making it uncomfortable for the justices to issue unpopular rulings.
Over the past few years, the cycle has started again. With Republican-appointed justices dominating the court — and pursuing an ambitious agenda that does sometimes conflict with public opinion — Democrats are denouncing the court in ways that would have been shocking not so long ago.
“There has been a sea change in the way Democrats view and talk about the Supreme Court,” Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, who has been covering Congress since the 1990s, told me. “Democrats used to respectfully disagree with the justices. Now they call them illegitimate and corrupt, partisan and extreme.”
A classic example of the old approach was Al Gore’s deference to the court, even while disagreeing with it, after the justices halted the counting of votes in the 2000 election and effectively made George W. Bush president. Examples of Democrats’ new approach include:
“The problem is not that the Supreme Court is just conservative,” Representative Katie Porter said on the House floor. “The problem is that it is corrupt.”
“Each scandal uncovered, each norm broken, each precedent-shattering ruling delivered is a reminder that we must restore justice and balance to the rogue, radical Supreme Court,” Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts said.
“The Supreme Court is a cesspool of corruption devastating our communities,” Representative Cori Bush of Missouri said.
“Creepy billionaires ran an ‘op’ to capture the court, just like 19th-century railroad barons would capture the railroad commission that set their rates,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said.
“This activist, extremist MAGA court faces a legitimacy crisis,” Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon said. “And a legitimacy crisis for the court is a crisis for our democratic republic.”
Hardball, two ways
The criticism has three main sources. One, Republicans refused to allow Barack Obama to fill a court opening in his final year in office, only to help Donald Trump rapidly fill three seats. Two, the court has been impatient and ambitious, as my colleague Adam Liptak has written, willing to overturn precedents (in the case of abortion and other matters) and bipartisan legislation (in the case of voting rights and campaign finance law). Three, most recently, revelations about Justice Clarence Thomas’s undisclosed receipt of gifts from a billionaire and Republican donor have highlighted the lack of accountability for the justices.
Partly for these reasons, the court’s public standing has slipped. Last year, only 25 percent of Americans said they had a lot of confidence in the court, down from 50 percent as recently as 2002, according to Gallup.
Source: Gallup
Adam Liptak put it this way: “Public confidence in the court has been shaken by two things: the breakneck pace of its conservative supermajority in moving the law to the right and its unwillingness to address questions about the justices’ ethical standards. That combination has left the court vulnerable to political attacks.”
Many Republicans view the recent criticism as unhinged and damaging to American democracy. (James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal has made this argument a theme of recent columns.) According to this view, the liberals criticizing the court are sore losers trying to subvert legitimate court decisions with which they disagree. And the language that some Democrats are using certainly can be severe.
In the context of American history, however, the fight is not so unusual. Republicans and the judges they appointed have decided to use hardball tactics to shape the law, including the stonewalling of Obama’s last court nominee and the aggressive rulings of the current court. Democrats are responding with their own hardball tactics, trying to damage the court’s credibility.
In doing so, the Democrats hope to lay the groundwork for laws that could constrain the court’s authority or change its makeup. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to take such actions, and John Adams, Jefferson and Roosevelt all tried to do so. Adams and Jefferson succeeded, changing the structure of the judiciary. Roosevelt failed to pass his so-called court packing bill, but his criticism of the court — and his popularity — nonetheless seemed to influence the justices: They reversed course in his second term and stopped overruling major New Deal programs.
The judiciary is not supposed to be the dominant branch of the federal government. It is supposed to be one of three equal branches. For now, Republicans have the upper hand because Democrats don’t have the votes in Congress to change the law. But the harsh recent criticism is intended to be an early step in a long campaign to constrain the court.
“When something is broken, we don’t agonize,” Senator Markey said, while castigating the court. “We organize to fix it.” |
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