politics

This person, masquerading as a judge, serves as a clear illustration of a tainted justice system.

It is impossible to believe statements from our government that they take bribery and corruption seriously while this man remains a member of the Supreme Court.

Does it even matter at this point? Nothing will be done. He'll be there until he croaks, being as corrupt as he feels like.

On the other hand, Alabama showed that you don't have to do what SCOTUS says if you don't want to anyway, so even that may not matter.

What a fucking piece of shit. How bad does it have to get before someone finds a way to remove him from the court and put him in jail?

It was honestly incredibly stupid of the American founders to assume making these guys practically untouchable would make them above corruption rather than the perfect targets for it. Childishly naive.

I've been watching Fall of Civilizations and it is incredible how often civilizations rot, decay, and then wither away into nothing due to corruption. Humans never learn the freaking lesson. Carthage lasted ~800 years—the USA is definitely not going to last that long.

Why isn't this guy on the ground in the street?

America don't stand for shit.

You're not even allowed to receive any of this stuff as a basic account executive at most companies, and in radio & TV it is explicitly forbidden by law. How the fuck is it legal for a Supreme Court Justice?

“We don’t need a code of ethics.”

🎵On the first day of Christmas, a billionaire gave to me, a road trip in an RV 🎵

“The Supreme Court follows some of the financial disclosure rules mandated for lower courts judges, but in a statement earlier this year, the justices indicated that they believed they were doing so voluntarily. The justices are also not subject to other procedures used in lower courts to address potential conflicts of interest.”

I don’t see what could possibly go wrong.

“Chief Justice John Roberts and other members of the court – as well as many Republicans on the Hill – have signaled that they believe that the justices can be trusted to police themselves on ethical issues.”

As is clearly supported by the evidence.

“The new report is the broadest look yet at how Thomas’ social circle has funded – with limited disclosure to the public – a regular stream of extravagant excursions and events since he became a Supreme Court justice. These costly trips and travel perks often went unreported on the justice’s financial disclosure forms, ProPublica said in its investigation.”

Wait, wut?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The new report is the broadest look yet at how Thomas’ social circle has funded – with limited disclosure to the public – a regular stream of extravagant excursions and events since he became a Supreme Court justice.

The latest investigation unearths a pattern of gifts to Thomas from Crow and three other billionaires who have been major contributors to Republican causes: David Sokol, the former heir apparent of Berkshire Hathaway; the late H. Wayne Huizenga, who made his vast fortune in his ownership of Blockbuster, Waste Management Inc. and other major companies; and Paul “Tony” Novelly, who formerly owned an oil company.

Both the lack of transparency about his financial relationships with Republican megadonors, and the jet-setting lifestyle he’s enjoyed because of those friendships, put Thomas out of step with how lower court judges and other government officials approach their ethical obligations, legal experts told ProPublica.

However, their donations to political causes on the right put them in sync with the justice’s far-right jurisprudence, and the friendships that were the source of the gifts and hospitality confirmed by ProPublica all seem to have begun after Thomas joined the most powerful court in the country.

Thomas has also recently been scrutinized for an undisclosed loan he received, reported by The New York Times last week, from a wealthy friend to pay for a $267,230 RV he purchased in 1999.

The friend, Anthony Welters, who has been a major Democratic fundraiser and whose wife served as an ambassador in the Obama administration, told the Times the loan had been “satisfied” but declined to detail on what terms.

I'm a bot and I'm open source!

As someone from a small, irrelevant European country, I remember looking up to the US as this land of freedom and justice when I was a kid. Growing up is realizing that it simply isn't true.

Good reporting, ProPublica

I wonder how the whole thing works on a practical level, and is Thomas the only one in on it? Do these people just constantly lavish Thomas (others) with gifts with a sort of unspoken expectation that he'll rule the way they want whenever things come up? Maybe somebody just gives an opinion to Thomas during one of these outings and that's his direction he's supposed to take.

"That thing is so silly, don't you think? I can't imagine why anybody would go along with that." Maybe something small like that, but the implication is there, "You need to go against that thing", whatever the thing happens to be for that court case. And it's just the understood arrangement that if Thomas wants to keep these benefits coming and not disappoint his friends, he should rule the way he'd expect they'd want him to rule.

Or is it more explicit than that and they have a list of all the cases coming up and they just tell Thomas how they'd like him to rule, then just leave the specifics of how he's supposed interpret the law up to Thomas to figure out? He's told out to rule first, then sort of works backwards from there to figure out his actual legal arguments for it.