Clarence Thomas corruption

[lpetrich]

25/ And when we asked Leo about arranging the meeting for the Singer-affiliated donors with Justice Thomas at the Supreme Court, he sent this response:
(Singer declined to comment. Thomas didn't respond.)

with

Leo told ProPublica that while not all of the alliance's donors give money to his causes: "They are thought leaders who should know more about the Constitution and the rule of law. I was happy I to arrange for them to hear about these topics from one of the best teachers on that I know, Clarence Thomas." Singer declined to comment. The Supreme Court didn't respond to a request for comment.

Finally,

26/end
OK, that’s plenty of tweeting — X-ing? — for now.
Thanks for following along.
One final plea:
If you liked this
Please listen to our three-part podcast with @onthemedia about Leo, his life, and his power.
Listen here:

We Don’t Talk About Leonard — ProPublica - "The conservative legal movement in the United States is more powerful than ever. One largely unknown man has played a significant role in pushing the American judiciary to the right: Leonard Leo. "

 

[blastula]

SCOTUS privilege is insane.

Justice Thomas’s R.V. Loan Was Forgiven, Senate Inquiry Finds - The New York Times

The terms of the private loan were as generous as they were clear: With no money down, Justice Clarence Thomas could borrow more than a quarter of a million dollars from a wealthy friend to buy a 40-foot luxury motor coach, making annual interest-only payments for five years. Only then would the principal come due.

But despite the favorable nature of the 1999 loan and a lengthy extension to make good on his obligations, Justice Thomas failed to repay a “significant portion” — or perhaps any — of the $267,230 principal, according to a new report by Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee. Nearly nine years later, after Justice Thomas had made an unclear number of the interest payments, the outstanding debt was forgiven, an outcome with ethical and potential tax consequences for the justice.

“This was, in short, a sweetheart deal” that made no logical sense from a business perspective, Michael Hamersley, a tax lawyer who has served as a congressional expert witness, told The New York Times.

 

[ZiprHead]

Wondering if he declared the forgiven loan on his taxes as required by law. I kinda' doubt it.

 

[TomC]

Wondering if he declared the forgiven loan on his taxes as required by law. I kinda' doubt it.

To quote Donald J Trump, "Because I'm smart."
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I was wondering, should we all pitch in and help buy Thomas a large boat to convince him to retire?

 

[Gospel]

Funny but yes.

 

[TomC]

I was wondering, should we all pitch in and help buy Thomas a large boat to convince him to retire?

Best thing about a ship load of lawyers on the bottom of the sea?

A good start.
Tom

 

[Toni]

I was wondering, should we all pitch in and help buy Thomas a large boat to convince him to retire?

Well, we kinda are, right. We pay his salary.

 

[Shadowy Man]

I was wondering, should we all pitch in and help buy Thomas a large boat to convince him to retire?

Well, we kinda are, right. We pay his salary.

Sure. But he’s not getting boats, trips, motor homes, and houses with his salary.

 

[Copernicus]

I was wondering, should we all pitch in and help buy Thomas a large boat to convince him to retire?

Well, we kinda are, right. We pay his salary.

Sure. But he’s not getting boats, trips, motor homes, and houses with his salary.

And that's the problem. We don't pay for his lifestyle. His salary isn't sufficient to his needs and appetites, but his lifetime government job still gets him the lifestyle he craves, and there is almost no chance that anyone can deprive him of that. Congress will never have the votes sufficient to impeach him while he is still alive.

 

[ZiprHead]

I was wondering, should we all pitch in and help buy Thomas a large boat to convince him to retire?

Well, we kinda are, right. We pay his salary.

Sure. But he’s not getting boats, trips, motor homes, and houses with his salary.

And that's the problem. We don't pay for his lifestyle. His salary isn't sufficient to his needs and appetites, but his lifetime government job still gets him the lifestyle he craves, and there is almost no chance that anyone can deprive him of that. Congress will never have the votes sufficient to impeach him while he is still alive.

I keep hearing republicans say there is a solution to that sort of thing.

 

[Patooka]

There's now a timeline with regards to Clarence Thomas. Yes, the quiet part is being said out loud.

Clarence Thomas’ Private Complaints About Money Sparked Fears He Would Resign

Interviews and newly unearthed documents reveal that Thomas, facing financial strain, privately pushed for a higher salary and to allow Supreme Court justices to take speaking fees.

www.propublica.org

Thomas’ comments in 2000 were to Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns, a vocal conservative who’d been in Congress for 11 years and occasionally socialized with the justice. They set off a flurry of activity across the judiciary and Capitol Hill. “His importance as a conservative was paramount,” Stearns said in a recent interview. “We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly.”

The best justice money can buy.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

As we knew, his opinions weren't being bought and paid for. What we are learning is that his sitting on SCOTUS was... so his opinions would be part of Constitutional Law. This is resignation territory.

 

[The Colourful Jester]

‘Last Week Tonight’: John Oliver Returns To HBO & Offers To Pay Clarence Thomas $1M A Year To “Get The F*** Off The Supreme Court”

John Oliver started a new season of Last Week Tonight on HBO with a million-dollar offer to Clarence Thomas.

deadline.com

 

[lpetrich]

Washington Post: Justice Samuel Alito’s wife said upside-down American flag was ‘an international signal of distress’ in 2021 | CNN Politics

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s wife previously said the inverted American flag flown at the couple’s house in January 2021 was “an international signal of distress,” The Washington Post reported Saturday, detailing an encounter during that time between the Alitos and a Post reporter outside the couple’s home.

...
The New York Times last week published a photograph of the inverted American flag raised at the Alitos’ home in Virginia in 2021. Alito said the upside-down US flag was raised by his wife and was a response to a spat with neighbors. The dispute involved a neighbor who posted a sign saying “F**k Trump” near a school bus stop and then a sign attacking his wife, Alito said. The justice told Fox News the Alitos got into an argument with the neighbor, who used the term “c**t” at one point. His wife then flew the inverted flag.

The upside-down flag was a symbol for former President Donald Trump’s supporters who falsely claimed widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

The Times then reported Wednesday that a flag that was on display during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was seen flying outside the Alitos’ vacation home in New Jersey last summer. The “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which dates to the Revolutionary War, has become a symbol for supporters of Trump.

Alito tells lawmakers he will not recuse from Supreme Court cases despite flag controversy | CNN Politics

“I had no involvement in the decision to fly that flag,” Alito wrote. “I was not aware of any connection between that historic flag and the ‘Stop the Steal Movement,’ and neither was my wife. She did not fly it to associate herself with that or any other group, and the use of an old historic flag by a new group does not necessarily drain that flag of all other meanings.”

...
“A reasonable person who is not motivated by political or ideological considerations or a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases would conclude that this event does not meet the applicable standard for recusal,” Alito wrote. “I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request.”

...
“Any unbiased and reasonable person would find laughable Justice Alito’s ‘the dog ate my homework, and I didn’t even know I had homework’ defense,” Johnson said.

Rep. Hank Johnson D-GA, in the House Judiciary Committee.

 

[Copernicus]

Jamie Raskin proposes a unique solution to the problem of arrogant above-the-law Supreme Court justices that refuse to recuse themselves:

Jamie Raskin: How to Force Justices Alito and Thomas to Recuse Themselves in the Jan. 6 Cases**​

Unfortunately, it would require Secretary Merrick Garland to allow his department to do something controversial and stand up to a Supreme Court that has run amok. He would not dare try to force Supreme Court justices to obey the law. Not in an election year. And not in any year between elections.

**edited to add gifted link

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Jamie Raskin proposes a unique solution to the problem of arrogant above-the-law Supreme Court justices that refuse to recuse themselves:

Jamie Raskin: How to Force Justices Alito and Thomas to Recuse Themselves in the Jan. 6 Cases**​

Unfortunately, it would require Secretary Merrick Garland to allow his department to do something controversial and stand up to a Supreme Court that has run amok. He would not dare try to force Supreme Court justices to obey the law. Not in an election year. And not in any year between elections.

**edited to add gifted link

I hope not. The Republicans would use it to take out any justice that didn't agree with them.

 

[lpetrich]

Opinion | Using Math to Analyze the Supreme Court Reveals an Intriguing Pattern - POLITICO

Though 6-3 votes are a common pattern of votes, with the 6 conservative Justices and the 3 liberal ones on opposite sides, there was a case where the 6 was of 3 conservative Justices joining the 3 liberal ones, with the other 3 conservative Justices opposed.

But our new mathematical analysis of the court’s decisions from the 2022-2023 session shows just how much it makes sense to think of this Supreme Court as a 3-3-3 court — one whose divides are driven not just by ideology, but a range of other legal considerations as well.

The article showed a table of what percent of the time each Justices voted like each other Justice.

I used phylogeny software to try to find a family tree of the Justices by voting record. I found all three of the clusters:

• Liberal: S Sotomayor, E Kagan, KB Jackson
• Conservative 1: J Roberts, B Kavanaugh, AC Barrett
• Conservative 2: N Gorsuch, C Thomas, S Alito

The liberal cluster and the first conservative cluster are strong, and the second conservative one a little bit weak.

Statisticians use a numerical algorithm called a singular value decomposition to look for the strongest relationships between rows and columns in a table of numbers like the one above. A singular value decomposition simplifies datasets to find the broadest mathematical relationships across the data and plots them on two axes.

However, I couldn't find any data-exploration algorithm that uses SVD - the closest I could find are PCA - principal components analysis (find directions of variation) - and MDS - multidimensional scaling (find data-point locations that make a distance matrix).

The results, as values of coordinates x and y:

• Lib: x = -0.43, y = 0.19
• Con 1: x = 0.05, y = -0.45
• Con 2: x = 0.38, y = 0.27

x: conservative, y: consequentialist

The x axis corresponds to what we believe are the justices’ ideological preferences, so we consider it the ideology axis. Justices on the right are more conservative; justices on the left more liberal. (Although it’s worth noting that legally conservative is not always the same as politically conservative — Neil Gorsuch, for example, is well known for his rulings in favor of criminal defendants and Native American tribes.)

The y-axis, which places Barrett, Kavanaugh and Roberts on one end and the other six justices on the other, appears to be measuring something else. We believe the dispersion along this axis can be explained by the justices’ institutional or “consequentialist” concerns — in other words, how much a justice considers questions outside the facts and the law of a specific case in reaching their positions. This might include things like how much weight to give the court’s previous decisions, how easy it will be for lower courts to apply the new rule, or whether to decide a case more narrowly or more broadly. For close court watchers, this makes sense as we think about why justices like Gorsuch and Barrett — who are next to each other on the ideological axis — are only about as likely to agree as Barrett and Kagan, who are much further apart ideologically but closer on institutional concerns.

 

[ZiprHead]

Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle for America 'Can't Be Compromised'

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in a new recording says the battle for America "can't be compromised," and that one political party will "win."

www.rollingstone.com

Justice Samuel Alito spoke candidly about the ideological battle between the left and the right — discussing the difficulty of living “peacefully” with ideological opponents in the face of “fundamental” differences that “can’t be compromised.” He endorsed what his interlocutor described as a necessary fight to “return our country to a place of godliness.” And Alito offered a blunt assessment of how America’s polarization will ultimately be resolved: “One side or the other is going to win.”
Alito made these remarks in conversation at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner on June 3, a function that is known to right-wing activists as an opportunity to buttonhole Supreme Court justices. His comments were recorded by Lauren Windsor, a liberal documentary filmmaker. Windsor attended the dinner as a dues-paying member of the society under her real name, along with a colleague. She asked questions of the justice as though she were a religious conservative.

The justice’s unguarded comments highlight the degree to which Alito makes little effort to present himself as a neutral umpire calling judicial balls and strikes, but rather as a partisan member of a hard-right judicial faction that’s empowered to make life-altering decisions for every American.

The recording, which was provided exclusively to Rolling Stone, captures Windsor approaching Alito at the event and reminding him that they spoke at the same function the year before, when she asked him a question about political polarization. In the intervening year, she tells the justice, her views on the matter had changed. “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end,” Windsor says. “I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.”

“I think you’re probably right,” Alito replies. “On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”

Windsor goes on to tell Alito: “People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that — to return our country to a place of godliness.”

“I agree with you. I agree with you,” replies Alito, who authored the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which reversed five decades of settled law and ended a constitutional right to abortion.

The Reader View worked to get by the paywall.

 

[ZiprHead]

Samuel Alito’s Wife Goes Full MAGA in Secret Recording

The audio was posted hours after similarly shocking comments by the Supreme Court justice were published.

www.thedailybeast.com

Shortly after the tape of Samuel Alito was posted, Windsor promised, “We aren’t done breaking news just yet…” That vow was fulfilled Monday night, with Windsor posting audio of Martha-Ann “unfurled.” According to the tape, Alito addressed the controversy over Jan. 6-linked flags spotted at her and her husband’s homes in Virginia and New Jersey, for which Samuel Alito said his wife was responsible.

“The feminazis believe that he should control me,” Alito said. “So they’ll go to hell. He never controls me.”

Toward the end of the six-minute recording, Alito circled back to the subject.

After stating her need for a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag, Alito described her husband’s reaction.

“He’s like, ‘Oh please don’t put up a flag.’ I said, ‘I won’t do it because I’m deferring to you. But when you are free of this nonsense, I’m putting it up and I’m going to send them a message every day. Maybe every week, I’ll be changing the flags.”

Alito then divulged to Windsor that she’s actually been spending her time creating flag designs in her head.

“They’ll be all kinds. I made a flag in my head. This is how I satisfy myself,” she continued. “It’s white and it has yellow and orange flames around it, and in the middle in the word ‘Vergogna.’”

That Italian word, she explained, means shame.

After Windsor, who said in character that she was upset by the attention that “the media” has devoted to the significance of the flags and whether Samuel Alito ought to recuse himself from Jan. 6-related cases, Alito gave her some advice.

“Don’t get angry,” she said. “Get even.”

A bit later, when Windsor lamented how “they’re persecuting you, and you’re like a convenient stand-in for anybody who is religious,” Alito reiterated her aforementioned mantra.

“Look at me. I’m German, from Germany. My heritage is German. You come after me, I’m going to give it back to you. And there will be a way—it doesn’t have to be now—but there will be a way they will know. Don’t worry about it,” she said, before quoting the Bible.

“Psalm 27 is my psalm,” she told Windsor. “‘The Lord is my God and my rock. Of whom shall I be afraid?’ Nobody.”

Alito, when Windsor recalled the conversation she had just had with her husband, emphatically agreed with the statement that there is “no negotiating with the radical left.”

“They feel,” she said. “They don’t think.”

She seems nice.