U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

Dick Durbin is Gil from The Simpsons.

Alito sold his Bud Light stocks just as right wingers were calling for a boycott of Bud due to association with trans person

https://x.com/chrisgeidner/status/1792353122440065113?s=46&t=u2ZSlsY3trRV36IPP6jNDQ

More details on the RV that Clarence Thomas got , but still unclear whether Thomas has paid required taxes on the acquisition

https://newrepublic.com/article/181627/clarence-thomas-rv-loan-democrats-letter

Bud Light has its own stock??

Anhueser - Busch owns Bud Lite and that is whose stocks Alito had

I see again that when Justice Jackson recuses from a case she explains why and cites a particular Judicial code section, but Kavanaugh and the other conservative appointees never explain or cite to anything.

x-post back to Dick Durbin- he was asked if he was going to have a hearing regarding what Alito did, and he said no, and that the only 2 options were asking Alito to recuse or impeaching him. Dude doesn't get that keeping a story in the news even when you don't have the votes or courage to impeach is a good thing. I also blame Schumer for not encouraging Durbin to do something, and not speaking out more regularly himself.

Durbin understands the way the system works, warts and all. All the evidence points to Alito just being an ideological hack, an arrogant and shallow legal thinker, and someone who never should have been nominated or confirmed in the first place. But he was confirmed.

Now, to use the lingo of Watergate, there is no "smoking gun" showing conclusively that Alito corruptly uses his lofty position of public trust in return for direct personal benefit (iow, bribery). Unfortunately, just being a shallow legal thinker and ideologically-driven puppet of the right wing doesn't really cut the mustard when it comes to impeachment of a SCOTUS justice.

Much as we hate him, he's not impeachable for refusing to recuse himself on political cases involving Trump. He'll be allowed to embarrass himself and the court through his blind fealty to his masters, so long as he hasn't committed a verifiable crime.

Durbin is an old fart stuck in the past when bipartisan politeness was an important thing

You saw how well it worked out for the House to try to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas over nothing but political differences didn't you? This would be similar. It's a weak case, because the terms are too nebulous. It's a losing political gambit that would satisfy the base but make the Democrats seem petulant and ineffective to average voters.

I did not say they should try to impeach Alito now or that it would succeed, I said Durbin should hold a hearing to keep this in the news, and should keep pushing for subpoenas (and then try to impeach later if Dems get a majority in House and Senate). The Mayorkas thing was using impeachment where there was just a difference in policy. Here we have Alito supporting an insurrection, and engaging in lots of personal corruption. Let Republicans try to both sides this, but this seems way way beyond Mayorkas simply executing a policy that one party doesn't like.

Average voters don't even know about Alito's actions. The Dems need to feed this to old-school and social media. Throwing up hands now and saying there's nothing we can do now because we don't control the House and that it would look like the Mayorkas thing to some, will just bury this story quickly.

I would keep pushing for investigation or impeachment of Thomas and use the media spotlight that creates to talk about Alito and how the court has been infected by extremism.

curmudgeon otm, keep the spotlight on

Jennifer Rubin, a never Trumper onetime conservative Washington Post columnist spoke to some Law professor ethics types and she said re Alito and the court

Durbin, who has dawdled long enough, should put on the floor a mandatory ethics reform bill, which Painter suggests should include an inspector general for the court

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/20/alito-flag-ethics-supreme-court/

A good, detailed article on what a piece of shit hack Alito is.

a mandatory ethics reform bill, which Painter suggests should include an inspector general for the court

This is broadly a good idea. Congress could certainly pass a bill to impose a mandatory code of ethics on the supreme court justices and fund an inspector general to oversee compliance. If it ever came about, the existence of such a code would be helpful, in that it would provide a neutral yardstick by which to determine a justice's fitness to serve and somewhat de-politicize the act of making that determination.

But the separation of powers ensures that the only mechanism for enforcement of that mandatory code of ethics would still be impeachment and in real terms a successful impeachment and removal would be no easier to accomplish than under present conditions. Do I have to cite Trump's two impeachments, or McConnell's stonewalling Garland while ramming through Coney Barrett to prove this point?

In Trump's case the Senate's vote to acquit can be indirectly redressed by Trump's term ending and the electorate voting to reject rather than reinstate him. In Alito's case, there ain't no redress. He's in until he resigns, dies, or is impeached.

If Trump wins, it’s because of deliberate decisions by those in power to refuse to act because of “norms” or “comity” or whatever.

Last summer, two years after an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another provocative symbol was displayed at his vacation house in New Jersey, according to interviews and photographs.

This time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the “Stop the Steal” campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.

ugh, a Christian Nationalist flag

Doesn't he realize that a plurality of his fellow insurrectionists don't think Catholics are Christians? Does he think he'll survive the cull if they get the America they want?

Ellie Mystal , Justice correspondent for the Nation says that Dem Senator Durbin will soon be explaining why his own wife put up a white flag of surrender over their house

Chris Geidner in his Substack is hoping Justice Roberts will pressure Alito to recuse from J6 and Immunity decisions.

In 6-3 decision, written by Alito, Supreme Court upholds South Carolina's congressional map, reversing a lower court decision that struck down the map for racial gerrymandering . Conservative justices raise the bar to prove racial gerrymandering claims

not sure you want Alito writing these opinions right now

https://x.com/mjs_DC/status/1793647147994513760

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/23/politics/supreme-court-south-carolina-district-black-voting-power/index.html

so Slobbo's cool with overturning Brown

https://x.com/mjs_DC/status/1793650522916102283

Thomas still under the delusion that he will ever be anything but a useful racial slur to the gaggle of racist neanderthals who aid and abet this kind of fascism

Thomas still under the delusion that he will ever be anything but a useful racial slur to the gaggle of racist neanderthals who aid and abet this kind of fascism

If you read Corey Robin's book on him, Thomas is under no delusions at all. He's a black nationalist who will take what he can get out of white people, but doesn't trust them at all.

he believes in the Second Amendment because after their experiences during Reconstruction he thought Black men need to arm themselves.

all that just makes his whole thing make LESS sense

well i imagine it makes him feel that he is the laughing at them tbh

Robin's thesis may be descriptive of young Clarence Thomas but for the past thirty years or so his decisions seem much more based on "Will this make rich people give me free stuff?"

He mentions that too.

He seems to rewrite US history based on how he perceives the criticism he has personally received . Plus by ignoring all the assistance he has gotten.

If you read Corey Robin's book on him, Thomas is under no delusions at all. He's a black nationalist who will take what he can get out of white people, but doesn't trust them at all.

He has no interest in Black people. We're all alone, to quote Boz Scaggs, except when billionaires pay for your trailer.

The Alitos had a big ol’ freak session in their driveway in front of a Washington Post reporter on the day of Biden’s inauguration, and the paper inscrutably decided not to run it

In 2021 the Washington Post's then Supreme Court reporter was there but didn't run a story because he accepted Mrs Alito's take that this was just about her and a dispute with neighbors! Oy veh, that's terrible. So now the Washington Post tells on themselves about it in 2024.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/25/alito-flag-martha-ann-washington-post/

Democracy dies in "The Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because..."

Chris Geidner in his Substack is hoping Justice Roberts will pressure Alito to recuse from J6 and Immunity decisions.

Hope in one hand . . .

Gift link in tweet

NEW

The Washington Post found out about the inverted flag flying over Justice Alito’s home back in 2021.

A WaPo reporter went to the Alito residence on Inauguration Day and had a tense encounter with Justice Alito and his wife Martha-Ann.

The Post says it didn’t report on… pic.twitter.com/Pf2z3lV602

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) May 25, 2024

I dunno I feel a Supreme Court justice and wife flipping out at neighbors should have been news.

I feel like people should maybe regularly drop in at the Alito abode.

Perhaps every night

Indefinitely

I love the scene from Alito’s confirmation hearing when his wife came down with white fragility:

The distraught wife of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito broke down in tears and fled his confirmation hearings yesterday after Sen. Ted Kennedy led Democrats in a furious bid to tar her husband as a bigot.

Martha-Ann Bomgardner was overcome with emotion after Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) lambasted Kennedy for trying to smear the nominee as “a closet bigot.”

“I am sorry that you have had to go through this,” Graham said.

As she sat right behind her husband, Bomgardner’s lips trembled and she wiped away tears. Her sister-in-law Rosemary – herself a top lawyer – put a reassuring arm around her, but Bomgardner hastily fled the room.

The hearing exploded in anger when Kennedy tried to link Alito to a racist and anti-feminist article written by a member of a group to which he belonged over 30 years ago, the Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP).

His voicing rising, Kennedy demanded to know if Alito shared the belief that blacks and Latinos “just don’t seem to know their place.”

And the kicker:

In another flap, Biden showed up in a white baseball cap blaring “PRINCETON” to question Alito about CAP. “I want to, kind of, set the record straight on Princeton,” said Biden. A day earlier, he’d claimed “I didn’t even like Princeton,” only to have old news reports show he’d once said he wanted all his kids to go there.

More:

The police in Fairfax County, Va., received an unusual phone call on Feb. 15, 2021. A young couple claimed they were being harassed by the wife of a Supreme Court justice.

“Somebody in a position of authority needs to talk to her and make her stop,” said the 36-year-old man making the complaint, according to a recording of the call reviewed by The New York Times. The officer on the line responded that there was little the police could do: Yelling was not a crime.

The couple placed the call after a series of encounters with Martha-Ann Alito, wife of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., that had gone from uneasy to ugly. That day, Emily Baden, whose boyfriend (now husband) contacted the police, had traded accusations with Mrs. Alito, who lived down the street. In a recent interview, Ms. Baden admitted to calling her a lewd epithet.

The clash between the wife of a conservative Supreme Court justice and the couple, who were in their 30s, liberal and proud of it, played out over months on a bucolic block in Alexandria. It was the kind of shouting match among private citizens, at the height of tensions over the 2020 election, that might have happened in any mixed political community in America. But three years later, that neighborhood spat — which both sides said began over an anti-Trump sign — has taken on far greater proportions.

Mrs. Alito ran toward their car and yelled something they did not understand. The couple continued driving, they said, and as they passed the Alito home again to exit the cul-de-sac, Mrs. Alito appeared to spit toward the vehicle.

Ms. Baden admitted to calling her a lewd epithet.

Hmmmm. I'm betting it was spelled C-U-N-T.

See You First Monday

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/24/biden-alito-controversy-silent-00159968

Biden has publicly warned that Republicans are undermining democratic norms and threatening its institutions. But he is reluctant to extend that argument to the judicial branch, aides say, fearful it could be cast as politically motivated and undermine his broader effort to portray himself as a champion for strengthening democratic institutions. They believe it’s crucial to maintain a clear contrast with Donald Trump, who has readily attacked an independent judiciary for political gain.

“The central pushback should come from the legislative branch, and not the executive branch,” said Anthony Coley, a former senior official in the Biden Justice Department, arguing that Congress has wide-ranging investigatory authority. “That’s the right place where we should be seeing aggressive oversight, and right now they are not meeting the moment.”

On the Hill, however, Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin has resisted calls to hold a hearing into the matter. “I don’t think that’s going to achieve anything,” the Illinois Democrat told POLITICO of calling for Alito to appear, indicating a preference instead for the chamber to consider ethics legislation for the Supreme Court that has already passed his committee. Durbin on Friday sought a meeting with Chief Justice John Roberts to discuss the matter.