Ed. Note: Nicole Lafond will be back to helming Where Things Stand soon.
After a parade of stories centered on Justice Samuel Alito’s demonstrations of his right-wing partisanship, Senate Democrats have executed their big response: a show vote on a bill that would impose an ethics code on the Supreme Court.
Yes, courts need to have meaningful changes but that requires a Democratic trifecta. Vote!
Digby spelling out what all of us know (even the cult knows it).
“Just as Donald Trump realized that as long as he had the Republican Party backing him he could not be convicted in an impeachment trial, so too have the Supreme Court right wing extremists. They essentially have full immunity from consequences for their corruption. I’ll be surprised if they don’t grant it for Trump for all of his legal problems as well. They have shown their true colors. Immunity from accountability is their new superpower.”
The would-be requirements in the bill themselves are fairly modest: a binding ethics code, “improving” transparency when a justice is connected to a party or amicus before the Court, requiring justices to explain why if they recuse themselves.
Is this a typo?? They need to answer why they are NOT recusing themselves, not the otherway around.
Comon fellas, put on your big boy governing pants and do your jobs. Republicans go to the mat, every time, over nothing. Meanwhile, the dems look like a bunch of drooling idiots pretending to govern and failing to hold CLEARLY corrupt and guilty people accountable for crimes committed out in broad day light.
I gotta light a fire under the asses of the do nothing democrats who claim to represent and work for me. Earn your paychecks.
What good are they if THIS is what they do with oversight power??? All my reps are getting hot calls tomorrow.
Fascism is coming to America unless they/we do something to stop it. These lazy hucksters are earning their own place in the 8th layer of hell, reserved for Frauds.
They are fixing the wrong problem.
Here is a list of all recusals by the specified Supreme Court justices, summarized by chatGPT.
(Fun side note: Kavanaugh, and Barrett were correctly identified even though I described them in the request as “Handmaiden and Rapey McBeerface”.)
I was just reading an article in the new Republic that was based on an article on business insider that was an interview with Mark Martin, the man Clarence Thomas and his wife wife raised as a son. The Thomases have essentially cut him off, he hasn’t really seen them since he got in some trouble over 14 years ago with drugs in college. They don’t have a relationship with Martin’s children. Martin is currently in trouble again, serving time for drug-related offenses.
This articles jumped out at me because of yesterday’s news, the big headline being that Hunter Biden was found guilty, and his father still loves him.
My son is also been in trouble lately, although in my opinion he isn’t to blame. I find myself advocating for him strongly, fiercely and ethically and within the guidelines of the law and custom. I am inspired by Joe Biden. He’s literally an example to me in my life. I don’t know how to stress this enough. He literally is giving me strength with his example.
And then there’s the Thomases.
You’re a good parent.
Hadn’t heard about their abandonment of their son and grandchildren. Im betting this won’t make it into the museum archives.
The House voted to hold Merrick Garland in contempt because he would not hand over voice recordings of an interview with Biden. Apparently a written transcript was not good enough because it’s hard to get selective and to show Biden in the worst possible light from just a transcript.
Senate Democrats need to hold hearings and subpoena Alito Roberts and Thomas. So what if they decline to honor the subpoena the point is to make them uncomfortable and exposed. Can’t anybody here play this game?
If Donnie has full immunity then couldn’t Biden force the SC to follow an ethics code that he provides?
Conservatives gave Bill Clinton a hard time during the Lewinski scandal because, they argued, Clinton was making it hard for them to teach their own children virtue.1
Now Biden is doing the exact thing conservatives implied that they wanted: he’s demonstrating virtue. He loves the sinner while hating the sin (i.e. refusing to intervene or pardon the crime).
So where is the chorus of conservative voices applauding President Biden for doing the hard but necessary thing?
Oh, right. It was never about virtue. They worship power, and they hate everyone else for having it and not surrendering it to them.
1 That is not a completely crazy argument, but it is wrong, because it demonstrates an utter lack of parental imagination: parents can and should use the failures of other people as teaching moments; it’s actually easier, hence the truism, “we learn more from failure than success.”
Dick Durbin is USELESS!! At the bare minimum, the Senate needs to have hearings on this and they need to subpoena Alito and Thomas!!
Durbin needs to go! He needs to be primaried in 26!
When Alito and Thomas don’t show treat them as the house rs are doing to Garland.
This is a two way street.
Word here in Illinois is that Durbin isn’t running again.
Only by adding 6 Dem appointees to the Supreme Court can the GOP treasons be overcome.
Now the GOP appointees have a 3 seat advantage. The Dems deserve the same now, given the GOP’s repeated violations of law.
BTW, last week one of the survivors groups for school shootings called for a ban on semi-automatic guns.
Gee, where did they get that idea from?
I’m betting there ain’t gonna be a museum.
Merrick Garland advised Biden to use Executive Privilige to privatize the audio files of his interview with HUR and he did so. Congressional committees have not been able to get the copy they want to use in their ‘weak old man’ campaigning. Oh, dear.
I would’ve thoight the transcripts to be sufficient. And it’s not like Garland has asked for all evidence and papers to be kept from the committee. They have gotten shit loads of stuff to play with
Biden has a speech impediment. He stutters. Since childhood. It does not indicate stupidity or some brain disease as in trump’s case. Imagine the guts it takes to be a politician with a stutter.
Why rock the boat before the signing bonus?