More evidence for the need of an ethics board to govern the SC.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional, overturning decades of precedent.

“Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.

He was joined by the rest of the right-wing justices. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justice Kagan in full and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in part (Jackson had recused herself from Harvard’s case due to her ties to the school). Jackson also wrote in dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Kagan.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/supreme-court-affirmative-action

Recusal, a concept the conservatives seem unfamiliar with.

 

The investigators are obviously partisan, as already demonstrated. Fighting fire with fire is hardly "Trumpian."

 

Despite Left's Hysteria, Supreme Court Working As It Should
Washington Examiner

 

Impugning the motives of the investigators is what Trump does when he can't refute the allegations on a factual basis. Unless you count, "I did everything right and they indicted me anyway" as refutation.

 

So what? Trump also presumably brushes his teeth each morning. So do you and I. Is dental hygiene Trumpian?

 

No matter how many times the Right uses disparaging descriptors to attack journalists who publish damaging revelations about some conservatives on the Court the unavoidable reality of the justice's abuses remains untarnished.

 

The linked article has nothing to do with attacking journalists.

 

You should pay more attention to the links you provide. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...targeting-conservative-supreme-court-justices

 

ProPublica are not journalists. That is the point.

 

Cuz how could anyone exposing Clarence and Sam's abuses be journalists, right?

 

Perhaps this explains Clarence's desire to accept largesse from wealthy conservatives.

Where Clarence Thomas Entered an Elite Circle and Opened a Door to the Court
The exclusive Horatio Alger Association brought the justice access to wealthy members and unreported V.I.P. treatment. He, in turn, offered another kind of access.

On Oct. 15, 1991, Clarence Thomas secured his seat on the Supreme Court, a narrow victory after a bruising confirmation fight that left him isolated and disillusioned.

Within months, the new justice enjoyed a far-warmer acceptance to a second exclusive club: the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, named for the Gilded Age author whose rags-to-riches novels represented an aspirational version of Justice Thomas’s own bootstraps origin story.

If Justice Thomas’s life had unfolded as he had envisioned, his Horatio Alger induction might have been a celebration of his triumphs as a prosperous lawyer instead of a judge. But as he tells it, after graduating from Yale Law School, he was turned down by a series of top law firms, rejections he attributes to a perception that he was a token beneficiary of affirmative action. So began his grudging path to a judicial career that brought him great prestige but only modest material wealth after decades of financial struggle.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/09/...8745&user_id=fecdfdffdaaa11107b72f0f4f6e429cc

Excellent journalism, don't you think?

 

They are a political research organization.
'Moral force' ProPublica under fire for taking millions from ...

New York Post
https://nypost.com › 2023/06/09 › moral-force-propu...


Jun 9, 2023 — The donor-funded ProPublica news organization bills itself as an “independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism ...

 

"His friendships forged through Horatio Alger have brought him proximity to a lifestyle of unimaginable material privilege. Over the years, his Horatio Alger friends have welcomed him at their vacation retreats, arranged V.I.P. access to sporting events and invited him to their lavish parties. In 2004, he joined celebrities including Oprah Winfrey and Ed McMahon at a three-day 70th birthday bash in Montana for the industrialist Dennis Washington. Several Horatio Alger friends also helped finance the marketing of a hagiographic documentary about the justice in the wake of an HBO film that had resurfaced Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegations against him during his confirmation.

In recent months, Justice Thomas has faced scrutiny over new revelations by ProPublica of his relationship to Harlan Crow, the Texas billionaire, whose largess over more than two decades has included vacations on a superyacht, private school tuition for the great-nephew the justice was raising, and the purchase of his mother’s Savannah, Ga., home. None of this was reported by the justice, and the revelations have renewed calls for tighter Supreme Court ethics rules."

We all owe ProPublica a debt of gratitude. Except Ginni and Clarence of course. Their debts of gratitude are on the house courtesy of Crow and others.

 

". . . The piece smells of having been commissioned so the Times could join the left-wing assault on the high court’s legitimacy, following up on the ProPublica hit jobs paid for by lefty dark money.

None of it has amounted to a hill of beans, though the sheer number of empty “exposés” is grist for liberal opinionators and politicians to thunder about a supposed ethics crisis among the Supremes.

Big picture: The Supreme Court is working far better than any other branch of the federal government, and with much less partisan dysfunction.

Half its cases this year were decided 9-0. At least one liberal justice was in the majority for nine out of 10 rulings. Members of the “conservative” wing regularly joined the liberal bloc to rule for the Biden administration.

But progressives are furious that the high court’s not imposing their agenda, and sometimes blocks it.

So they’ve set out to destroy it, or maybe just intimidate it into obedience.

The folks who keep insisting they’re the “defenders of democracy” are the biggest threat to it."
NY Times' Latest (Failed) Hit on Clarence Thomas
New York Post



Yet another lefty attack on the Supreme Court's integrity. Read More

 

With the recent decisions by the Court's conservative majority one hardly needs to point out Thomas's and Alito's ethics/legal violations to achieve the goal of questioning the legitimacy of their rulings.

 

". . . Half its cases this year were decided 9-0. At least one liberal justice was in the majority for nine out of 10 rulings. Members of the “conservative” wing regularly joined the liberal bloc to rule for the Biden administration.

But progressives are furious that the high court’s not imposing their agenda, and sometimes blocks it.

So they’ve set out to destroy it, or maybe just intimidate it into obedience. . . ."

 

As evidenced by the scathing dissents from the Court's liberals it's not an agenda that's at issue, it's the law.

 

if there was a conflict of interest.... yes

 

Why should the minority view be "the law" and the majority view not?
"The Constitution is what the judges say it is." --Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes

 

It's not necessarily so. However, if the majority had considered the history of what was allowed under the 14th A, and the lack of standing in the debt relief and website cases, their record would not be further tarnished.

 

Would you have argued in defense of "the history of what was allowed" when Plessy v Ferguson was before the SCOTUS? Or Brown v Board of Education? "Lack of standing in the debt relief and website cases" was an argument the justices did not find persuasive.

 

"The history of what was allowed" was an inarticulate way to describe what I meant. As Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent.......
Simultaneously with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress enacted a number of race-conscious laws to fulfill the Amendment’s promise of equality, leaving no doubt that the Equal Protection Clause permits consideration of race to achieve its goal.

Saying the lack of standing "was an argument the justices did not find persuasive" is an admission they ignored the facts in order to complete the mission of why the case was funneled to the Court in the first place.

 

Sotomayor's argument in dissent is just that: her argument. She risks twisting herself in knots because the majority's understanding of the 14th Amendment is the essential underpinning of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which I doubt she wants to undermine.
Meanwhile:

Mitch McConnell: Neither party can count on the Supreme Court to be its ally
Opinion by Mitch McConnell

". . . . When Democrats complain about a crisis at the court, the crisis they see is its refusal to reliably advance their party’s priorities. They bemoan a conservative majority that puts jurisprudence above politics. Well, the evidence suggests that anyone who expects the court to function as a mere extension of legislative power is bound to be disappointed.

This latest term demonstrates that no party wins or loses before the Supreme Court every time. The court adheres to the Constitution and weighs each case on its merits. It should continue to do exactly that."

 

She risks nothing of the kind but rather delineates, in granular detail, the many instances in which the government has acted to enforce the equal protection clause of the 14th A while considering race. Thereby shattering the majority's rationale.

 

Well, no. That argument would invalidate the basis of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Department of Justice (.gov)
https://www.justice.gov › crt › fcs › TitleVI


It prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. As President ...