SCOTUS

[zsn]

The Supreme Court basically needs to be packed or ignored. It has almost no legitimacy left after it became a fundamentalist rubber stamp. It exists as the bridge between church and state. It has become a bizarre mirror opposite of the Constitution's intended judicial reviewer.

One more piece of evidence that Mitch McConnell is a traitor. He has single handedly destroyed and poisoned the entire judiciary.

[dolomite]

LOL, head’s exploding over Thomas’s mother not paying rent. If the Dems could just get the majority on the court then everything would be hunky dory.
Find me a man I’ll find you a crime.

[zsn]

LOL. Law-and-order Party has no concerns with a justice on the SUPREME-f-ing-Court not knowing the requirements for legally required disclosures. Clarence Thomas is a crook and it has nothing to do with whether or not his mother paid rent.

[jfish26]

LOL. Law-and-order Party has no concerns with a justice on the SUPREME-f-ing-Court not knowing the requirements for legally required disclosures. Clarence Thomas is a crook and it has nothing to do with whether or not his mother paid rent.

“I didn’t understand the form instructions” is a hell of a thing for a Supreme Court justice to say.

[Shirley]

Yeah Lisa, we know how you feel. But please don't give us any more of that decades-long bullshit about how republicans loathe "activist judges", mkay?

What’s the over-under of when Susan Collins is going to be “very concerned”?

Is the tell when she starts clutching her pearls?

But then, other than Trump, who amongst us didn't agree with her, at the time?

[Shirley]

For nearly two years beginning in 2015, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sought a buyer for a 40-acre tract of property he co-owned in rural Granby, Colo.

Nine days after he was confirmed by the Senate for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, the then-circuit court judge got one: The chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, one of the nation’s biggest law firms with a robust practice before the high court. Gorsuch owned the property with two other individuals.

On April 16 of 2017, Greenberg’s Brian Duffy put under contract the 3,000-square foot log home on the Colorado River and nestled in the mountains northwest of Denver, according to real estate records.
He and his wife closed on the house a month later, paying $1.825 million, according to a deed in the county’s record system. Gorsuch, who held a 20 percent stake, reported making between $250,001 and $500,000 from the sale on his federal disclosure forms.

Gorsuch did not disclose the identity of the purchaser. That box was left blank.

Since then, Greenberg Traurig has been involved in at least 22 cases before or presented to the court, according to a POLITICO review of the court’s docket.

They include cases in which Greenberg either filed amicus briefs or represented parties. In the 12 cases where Gorsuch’s opinion is recorded, he sided with Greenberg Traurig clients eight times and against them four times.

In addition, a Denver-based lawyer for Greenberg represented North Dakota in what became one of the more highly publicized rulings in recent years, a multistate suit which reversed former President Barack Obama’s plan to fight climate change through the Clean Air Act.

[...]

[Shirley]

[ousdahl]

I may or may not have trespassed to fish Gorsuch’s private water…

[Shirley]

The new welfare Queen...

[ousdahl]

[japhy]

I may or may not have trespassed to fish Gorsuch’s private water…

It took two years to sell a property in Granby....hmmm, nothing unusual about that.

[Shirley]

How much does it cost to buy your very own house, I mean, Supreme Court justice?

[Shirley]

It turns out there's no need to wonder why Clarence Thomas feels like he and his seditionist wife are free to do anything they want, whether it's accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from a rich donor who just happens to have issues he feels strongly about appear before the SCOTUS, or participate in an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a presidential election in the United States, and thereby deny millions of voters their due:

Jane Roberts was paid more than $10 million by a host of elite law firms, a whistleblower alleges.

At least one of those firms argued a case before Chief Justice Roberts after paying his wife hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Details of Jane Roberts' work come as Congress struggles to reform the Court's self-policed ethics...

[KUTradition]

[some] people suck

[Shirley]

I can't believe what Chief Justice Roberts wrote to Durbin in his refusal to appear letter, (parts of which are not in the text below). It's truly shocking, and imo, presents a clear and present danger.

May 2, 2023
In opening remarks during a committee hearing on Supreme Court ethics reform, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said that the high court does not consider itself bound by the same ethics laws and standards that govern Congress and other parts of the judicial branch of the federal government.

The hearing came a few weeks after reporting from ProPublica revealed Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas’ personal relationship with billionaire Harlan Crow, which has involved luxury trips paid for by Crow and high-value real estate deals.

Durbin added that he had invited Chief Justice John Roberts to testify at the committee’s hearing, but Roberts declined, citing “separation of powers concerns” and “the importance of preserving the judicial independence” in a letter he sent to Durbin.

“Answering legitimate questions from the people's elected representatives is one of the checks and balances that helps preserve the separation of powers,” Durbin said, taking issue with Roberts’ argument. ("Sitting justices have appeared at congressional hearings 92 times since 1960.")

Durbin noted that Roberts attached a document to his letter that details the ethics, principles and practices that govern the Supreme Court, which Durbin said lays out why justices believe they should not be treated the same as other federal judges when it comes to ethics.

“Chief Justice Roberts’ letter and statement of principles are a defense of the status quo,” he added.

[Shirley]

[Shirley]

The conflict(s) of interest involving Clarence Thomas and his right-wing Sugar Daddy are even more extensive than we knew. "Friends with benefits, much?" He should resign, now:



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.

The payments extended beyond that month, according to Christopher Grimwood, a former administrator at the school. Crow paid Martin’s tuition the entire time he was a student there, which was about a year, Grimwood told ProPublica.

“Harlan picked up the tab,” said Grimwood, who got to know Crow and the Thomases and had access to school financial information through his work as an administrator.

Before and after his time at Hidden Lake, Martin attended a second boarding school, Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia. “Harlan said he was paying for the tuition at Randolph-Macon Academy as well,” Grimwood said, recalling a conversation he had with Crow during a visit to the billionaire’s Adirondacks estate...

[jfish26]

The conflict(s) of interest involving Clarence Thomas and his right-wing Sugar Daddy are even more extensive than we knew. "Friends with benefits, much?" He should resign, now:



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.

The payments extended beyond that month, according to Christopher Grimwood, a former administrator at the school. Crow paid Martin’s tuition the entire time he was a student there, which was about a year, Grimwood told ProPublica.

“Harlan picked up the tab,” said Grimwood, who got to know Crow and the Thomases and had access to school financial information through his work as an administrator.

Before and after his time at Hidden Lake, Martin attended a second boarding school, Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia. “Harlan said he was paying for the tuition at Randolph-Macon Academy as well,” Grimwood said, recalling a conversation he had with Crow during a visit to the billionaire’s Adirondacks estate...

This remains a good time to get some detail around how Kavanaugh’s debts went poof.

[Sparko]

What is the appropriate redress for corrupt rulings shown to have been ethically impermissible? We need to build a list and find some way to get relief. Extraordinary corruption.

[jfish26]

What is the appropriate redress for corrupt rulings shown to have been ethically impermissible? We need to build a list and find some way to get relief. Extraordinary corruption.

There is none. That’s exactly why all of this is so scary. There is no redress for the parties to the cases. There is no consequence to the justice or the patron(s).