SCOTUS

[p0rtia]

Ian Millhiser says that thanks to Citizens United, what Thomas did was legal.

Not sure I get that. Anybody?

[keith]

Ian Millhiser says that thanks to Citizens United, what Thomas did was legal.

Not sure I get that. Anybody?

Thanks to CU, money is speach and you cannot deny free speech.

I'm waiting for some to claim that prosecuting someone for shooting someone is a violation of their free speach rights.

[p0rtia]

Ian Millhiser says that thanks to Citizens United, what Thomas did was legal.

Not sure I get that. Anybody?

Thanks to CU, money is speach and you cannot deny free speech.

I'm waiting for some to claim that prosecuting someone for shooting someone is a violation of their free speach rights.

Thanks! It's the bridge between "money" and "sending your godson to prep school/scads of free trips to fancy vacation spots" that I'm having trouble with. Thinking back to the Nixon era when in kind gifts were outlawed. So "anything" is "money" and "anything" is "free speech?"

Too also, I thought the point of contention was that he didn't report it. 'Cause unnamed people told him it was okay to accept casual* stuff from friends*.

[Shizzle Popped]

You know, my last two employers wouldn't allow us to accept anything from a vendor in excess of $25 value. You would think a supreme court justice would be held to at least the same ethical standards as a mid-level tech leader in a car or insurance company. I don't care if they're liberal, conservative or somewhere in between. They all say they don't discuss business that's before the court but you can't tell me that hanging around with billionaires, flying on private jets, and taking lavish vacations with them doesn't color their judgement.

[Volkonski]

Yes. The $25 limit was in place when I was working for tangible items.

The rule for being taken out for a meal was that we had to be able to reciprocate. This was not always so easy with vendors we only met occasionally. But our company was big so even if you could not reciprocate it was likely that someone did.

[RTH10260]

Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel

by Brett Murphy and Alex Mierjeski
Aug. 10, 5:45 a.m. EDT

The fullest accounting yet shows how Thomas has secretly reaped the benefits from a network of wealthy and well-connected patrons that is far more extensive than previously understood.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ decadeslong friendship with real estate tycoon Harlan Crow and Samuel Alito’s luxury travel with billionaire Paul Singer have raised questions about influence and ethics at the nation's highest court.

During his three decades on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas has enjoyed steady access to a lifestyle most Americans can only imagine. A cadre of industry titans and ultrawealthy executives have treated him to far-flung vacations aboard their yachts, ushered him into the premium suites at sporting events and sent their private jets to fetch him — including, on more than one occasion, an entire 737. It’s a stream of luxury that is both more extensive and from a wider circle than has been previously understood.

Like clockwork, Thomas’ leisure activities have been underwritten by benefactors who share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence. Their gifts include:

At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.

This accounting of Thomas’ travel, revealed for the first time here from an array of previously unavailable information, is the fullest to date of the generosity that has regularly afforded Thomas a lifestyle far beyond what his income could provide. And it is almost certainly an undercount.

While some of the hospitality, such as stays in personal homes, may not have required disclosure, Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics experts.

Perhaps even more significant, the pattern exposes consistent violations of judicial norms, experts, including seven current and former federal judges appointed by both parties, told ProPublica. “In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures. “I think it’s unprecedented.”



https://www.propublica.org/article/clar ... reme-court

[RTH10260]

related

[pipistrelle]

George Takei
@GeorgeTakei
·
5h
The Justice Department is now investigating billionaire judge maker, Leonard Leo. He’s a pal of Clarence Thomas. What’s the over / under that they find a whole mess of corruption when they lift that rock?

[RTH10260]

[p0rtia]

I Sheldon Whitehouse.

[RTH10260]

Justices Thomas, Alito file 2022 financial disclosure forms with new trips and gifts

August 31, 202312:04 PM ET
By Washington Desk

Justice Clarence Thomas, who has been the subject of scrutiny over vacations and other gifts he received from conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, reported additional trips paid for by Crow in 2022 in newly released financial disclosure forms.

Here's what's new in the disclosure:

• Thomas had gone to Dallas in February 2022 to be the keynote speaker at a talk sponsored by three conservative organizations, but flew back on Crow's private jet "due to an unexpected ice storm."
• The talk was rescheduled for May, and Thomas took a roundtrip on Crow's private jet "because of increased security risk following the Dobbs opinion leak," which overturned Roe v. Wade.
• In July, Thomas traveled to Crow's resort in the Adirondacks for vacation.
• Thomas also said he "inadvertently omitted" information in previous disclosure reports, including a life insurance policy for his wife worth $100,000, and a bank account that had less than $70,000 in 2018.
• Thomas also offered details of a real estate deal involving Crow and members of Thomas and his family. Crow paid $133,000 for three homes in Georgia, including one where Thomas's mother lives. The justice "and his wife had put between $50,000 to $75,000 into his mother's home in capital improvements over the years, and therefore, the transaction amounted to a capital loss." It said Thomas had been advised by committee staff to remove the properties from his disclosure forms because they "no longer generated any rental income." But he "inadvertently failed to realize that the 'sales transaction' for the final disposition of the three properties triggered a new reportable transaction in 2014, even though this sale resulted in a capital loss," the disclosure said.

Separately, Justice Samuel Alito also released his 2022 disclosure form Thursday. In it, he said he traveled to Rome in in 2022 to give a speech at the Religious Liberty Summit. Notre Dame Law School's Religious Liberty Initiative paid for the trip, including Alito's transportation, lodging and meals. Alito noted that he was paid $9,000 to teach at Regent University School of Law and $20,250 to teach at Duke Law School.

The disclosure follows scrutiny of Supreme Court justices and their ethics filings. ProPublica reported this year that for probably two decades, Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas, went on lavish trips around the globe paid for by Crow and that Crow paid the private school tuition for Thomas' grandnephew and bought properties owned by Thomas and his family. Thomas never disclosed any of this, as he was required to do under the disclosure provisions of the federal Ethics in Government Act, which applies to all federal judges, including Supreme Court justices. ProPublica also reported that Alito failed to disclose that he had enjoyed an all-expenses-paid, high-end fishing trip to Alaska, complete with private jet travel, courtesy of hedge fund titan Paul Singer, a major Republican donor, who has been involved in 10 appeals to the Supreme Court.



https://www.npr.org/2023/08/31/11969931 ... isclosures

[raison de arizona]

F$%k Alito.

I’ve lodged a formal ethics complaint against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

If the Court claims it can police its own members, now is the time to prove it.

The complaint: https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/imo/m ... losure.pdf

[Frater I*I]

F$%k Alito.

I’ve lodged a formal ethics complaint against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

If the Court claims it can police its own members, now is the time to prove it.

The complaint: https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/imo/m ... losure.pdf

That and 2 bucks will get you a cup of coffee Senator...

[raison de arizona]

Well worth the read.

Brett Kavanaugh’s Whoopsie Forces Groundhog Day at the Supreme Court

The third full term in thrall to the 6–3 supermajority is now upon us, and it brings yet another crisis of the court’s own making: The Alabama Legislature has defied meticulous instructions to create a second congressional district in the state where Black residents could effectuate their voting power. In last June’s Allen v. Milligan, the court explicitly upheld a lower court ruling ordering that a second such district be created. Alabama—led by Republicans in the statehouse—spent the last few months declining the court’s explicit instructions. The new maps were drawn with a single majority-Black district. The district court issued a furious rebuke. Now Alabama has come back to the Supreme Court in an emergency posture requesting a green light to use their still-illegal maps, claiming that the decision in Milligan didn’t in fact mean what it said it meant.

Why? Because in his concurrence in Milligan, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the determinative fifth vote in the case, signaled to the lawmakers that he’d be open to deciding the matter in their favor on a different theory that was neither briefed nor argued: Things might come out differently, he wrote, winkingly, if they came back armed with the argument that “even if Congress in 1982 could constitutionally authorize race-based redistricting” under the Voting Rights Act “for some period of time, the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.” (He called the Voting Rights Act a form of “race-conscious redistricting” because it forbids states from diluting the votes of racial minorities, and measuring dilution requires consideration of race.) Alabama legislators reasonably think Kavanaugh’s in the bag based on “intelligence” that’s either an inside source or a straightforward reading of his Milligan concurrence. So they refused to follow the directives of the court in the hopes that in this go-round, they win.

There’s a lot to hate about starting off a third term of the Supreme Court under the shadow of both ethical scandals and a state’s decision to simply ignore an express opinion of the court while the ink on that decision is still wet. It calls to mind the era in which Southern states disregarded the holding of Brown v. Board of Education because, well, who was gonna make them do otherwise? And indeed, even if one was on the losing side of Milligan, it’s hard to imagine that to any justice on the current court the fact of state nullification feels awesome. No matter where you come down on the issue of judicial legitimacy, states flipping the bird at the highest court of the land is a bad look.

But there’s something else happening here, and it’s worth a mention. It’s not just that state legislators and lower court judges have become so certain that they have six justices to rubber stamp anything that they are now prepared to try anything. It’s also that they no longer believe in the legal process at all; as the Nation’s Elie Mystal noted, drug dealers display more transactional deftness than Alabama lawmakers. Years ago, there was an elaborate ritual dance: Justice Clarence Thomas would drop a line in an opinion or a dissent that someone should bring a challenge to X or Y, and in the fullness of time, some group would bring the challenge. It would take a few years, sure, but the case would be tried, a record would be developed, an appeal would be filed, and the case would duly arrive at the court, awaiting its resolution. The nondelegation doctrine. The individual right to bear arms. The end of preclearance under the Voting Rights Act. The return of state-sponsored prayer. The gutting of the Eighth Amendment. Thomas precipitated all of these developments by putting out a call for a case that was answered by conservative litigators plotting their next challenge.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... g-day.html

[Gregg]

Justice Kegstand:

"I'm totally cool with ditching the whole democracy thing, but y'all need to use different pronouns.
In 100 years you piddling yokals are gonna be a footnote and the answer on a quiz show with a really annoying host.
I'm a Supreme Court Justice and have a legacy to attend to, so throw me a bone to hang "State's Rights' on.

[raison de arizona]

Newsflash: "one federal judge" has not been paying attention.
https://twitter.com/propublica/status/1 ... 64970?s=20

NEW: A ProPublica investigation has found that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas secretly participated in Koch network donor events – a breach of judicial norms that one federal judge said “takes my breath away.”

2/ In 2018, Thomas flew to Palm Springs on a private jet and attended a dinner for the network’s donors.

The justice was brought in, former network staffers said, in the hopes that such access would encourage donors to continue giving.

► Show Spoiler

That's Ken Burns with Thomas and Koch.

https://www.propublica.org/article/clar ... nts-scotus

[RTH10260]

I had to look up who Ken Burns is --- and look what happened:

Ken Burns Distances Himself From Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas After Photo
The documentary filmmaker says he has not had contact with Thomas beyond taking a photo.


BY CAITLIN HUSTON
SEPTEMBER 22, 2023 10:25AM

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns began trending on social media Friday for appearing in a photo with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and billionaire David Koch.

However, Burns said he does not have a relationship with Thomas, other than taking the photo. Koch has funded one of Burns’ documentaries.

“Around ten years ago, Ken was stopped and asked to take a photograph with a Supreme Court Justice and David Koch, who was a supporter of public television and would later provide some funding for his film, The Vietnam War. So he took the photo, as he has done with many, many others. Other than the taking of that photograph and innocuous pleasantries, that’s the extent of his contact with Justice Thomas,” a spokesperson for Burns wrote in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.




https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... 235597073/

[RTH10260]

US Supreme Court temporarily blocks order curbing Biden social media contact

By Andrew Chung
October 13, 20236:27 PM GMT+2 Updated 3 days ago

Oct 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday maintained a block on restrictions imposed by lower courts on the ability of President Joe Biden's administration to encourage social media companies to remove content deemed misinformation, including about elections and COVID-19.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito temporarily put on hold a preliminary injunction constraining how the White House and certain other federal officials communicate with social media platforms pending the administration's appeal to the Supreme Court.




https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-sup ... 023-10-13/

[RVInit]

I would love to think he did this for the right reason. The Biden administration, or any administration, has a right to reach out to social media companies when massive amounts of misinformation are threatening the general health and welfare of the country. There was nothing in the so called "Twitter Files" that showed anything more than attempts to provide Twitter with the most authoritative information and simply ask them to check posts to see if those posts were within Twitter's own guidelines.

Considering it's Alito it seems more likely he is looking forward to a possible Trumplican administration forcing White Supremacist conservative Evangelical horseshit on every last one of us.

[bob]

I would love to think he did this for the right reason..

It was for a right reason, basically bureaucratic.

Stays favor the status quo, and Alito extended the stay so there could be more briefing, for the full court's benefit.

And, if he denied, there would have a hurried application to the full court, which almost certainly would have been granted.

So the grant now saved unnecessary work and embarrassment.

[RVInit]

I would love to think he did this for the right reason..

It was for a right reason, basically bureaucratic.

Stays favor the status quo, and Alito extended the stay so there could be more briefing, for the full court's benefit.

And, if he denied, there would have a hurried application to the full court, which almost certainly would have been granted.

So the grant now saved unnecessary work and embarrassment.

I'm sure you are more right about that.

(I also think Alito would be perfectly fine for a Trumplican administration to force White supremacist nationalist evangelical BS on all of us. )

But yeah, I'm sure you are right about why he did this and about what would have happened if he hadn't.

[raison de arizona]

Today, @SenBooker, @SenBlumenthal, @SenAlexPadilla and I introduced the Supreme Court Biennial Appointments and Term Limits Act to establish 18-year term limits and regularized appointments for justices.

[AndyinPA]

[Foggy]

Requires an amendment to the Constitution. How do you think the Supreme Court would rule on this law?

[pipistrelle]

Requires an amendment to the Constitution. How do you think the Supreme Court would rule on this law?

I suspect it’s to raise consciousness.