Sheldon Whitehouse rips the so-called supreme court

ann coulter and d'nesh d'stupor are publishing books, making movies, and interviewed everywhere. after 50 years there are not many smothers brothers sightings.

 

I guess that is your best effort to pretend that the woke flakes are not trying to drown out intellectually superior speakers

 

d'souza could speak at kindergarten and not be "intellectually superior" to his listeners.

 

yeah I am sure all those woke types have degrees from Dartmouth, or in the case of Coulter-Phi Beta Kappa at Cornell and order of the coif at Michigan law school (which back then was tougher from an out of state applicant to get into than Columbia or Stanford)

 

he also produced "obama's america 2012" and "2000 mules." a pair of farcically comedic propaganda mockumentaries. i'm not impressed.

 

Custody and adoption are two different things, I have read nothing of an formal adoption.

What is the difference between child custody and adoption?

Custody does not sever either parent’s parental rights to the child. If a father filed to seek custody, primary or physical custody, of the child, the mother or other parent would still have custody rights to the child such as visitation, etc.

Adoption actually severs the parents ties to a child altogether. It terminates the parent’s rights. No longer will a parent have ANY rights such as custody or visitation.
https://brodielawgroup.com/difference-child-custody-adoption/#:~:text=Custody does not sever either,ties to a child altogether.


Just amazing Thomas and Crow are being attacked for helping people in desperate situations.............

Have you heard the latest bombshell evidence of this corruption??

BREAKING: Harlan Crow and Clarence Thomas Once Conspired to Aid a Penniless Widow

A ProPublica investigation has revealed that billionaire real-estate developer Harlan Crow paid the bills of a personal acquaintance of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas in an arrangement that has set off alarm bells for experts in government ethics.

In an undisclosed meeting between Crow and Thomas on Easter weekend in 2005, Thomas mentioned that, through family friends, he had learned of a widowed elderly woman living near Pin Point, Ga., in a leaky tar-paper shack.

Claiming that he was moved by her plight from his own experience with childhood poverty, Thomas had begun sending her food deliveries and paying a home health aide to check in on her. Then, Crow wielded his massive fortune to take the arrangement to another level.

At Crow’s own suggestion, people familiar with the deal say, they moved the woman to an apartment for three months until a local charity could be found to help her get better, more permanent housing.

Crow paid the rent for all three months....
https://www.nationalreview.com/corn...omas-once-conspired-to-aid-a-penniless-widow/

Dick Durbin is announcing hearings into this corruption which MUST BE STOPPED!!!

 

And did he make the connection between these incidents and cases before the court? And demonstrate the cause and effect? Did he point to any vote or opinion that was effected?

Be interesting to do the same kinds of investigations on Sen Whitehouse and his colleagues who deal with hundreds of issues annually vs SCOTUS that deals with 60-80 cases.

 

Aren't you clever?

 

Give the Republicans an inch and they'll take a mile - or 1000 miles.

Pssst! Wanna Buy a Supreme Court Justice?
If you think Republican politicians in Congress are corrupt, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Check out how little it costs to purchase access to a Supreme Court justice! Conservatives on the Supreme Court famously legalized billionaires and corporations bribing politicians back in 1976 and 1978, respectively (Buckley v Valeo and First National Bank v Bellotti), doubling down on and expanding the doctrine in 2010 (Citizens United). ... A “donation” of as little as $25,000 can get you “face time” over dinner with a sitting justice of the US Supreme Court
https://hartmannreport.com/p/pssst-..._id=98987664&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

(video) ANOTHER Supreme Court Justice CAUGHT in MASSIVE Corruption Scandal
One month after becoming a Supreme Court Justice, Gorsuch sold property to the CEO of a law firm that frequently appears before the Court. His failure to disclose the buyer amplifies calls that the Supreme Court must be held to a code of ethics just like the rest of the federal judiciary. Contributor Dina Sayegh Doll reports.
https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zw_Kysaidxo

(video) Whistleblower reveals MASSIVE SCANDAL of Chief Supreme Court Justice
Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on the brewing ethical scandals on the US Supreme Court embroiling right wing Justices Gorsuch, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Roberts, as the Chief Justice thumbs his nose at the Senate Judiciary and issues a watered down “ethical statement “ that most of them have already violated. [Note the following viewer comment which I see time and time again expressed by Europeans viewing these American exposes. From "Hans Erik Kratholm Rasmussen": I´m totally stunned. In Europe a judge would be fired for far less than what these mobsters have done.]
https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=70QnST6xx9U

 

Interesting that you didn't mention the total largesse.

I guess Thomas couldn't afford to scrape up enough dough to pay his needy acquaintance 3 months of rent totaling $1,426, but Crow was able to muster that amount from his piggy bank. Crow didn't just help out some random needy elderly widow, but an actual acquaintance of Thomas. Crow even happened to pay the tuition of not some random student to attend Randolph-Macon Academy, but the great-nephew of Thomas. Thomas wouldn't even buy his dear mom a house - but guess who did?

Billionaire Harlan Crow Bought Clarence Thomas’s Mother a House
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/04/harlan-crow-bought-clarence-thomass-mothers-house.html

Why do so many of Crow's roads lead to Thomas?

 

The woman in my story was a complete stranger to Thomas but let's string him up for him and his good friend helping out poor people in need.

 

So helping out a single person in a small way because it triggered his memory heart strings absolves him of his multiple violations of oaths of office? Does that make him fit for SCOTUS? Every person in the world has probably helped out at least one acquaintance or stranger at some time in their lives. That doesn't make them a great person - let alone fit for a position of leadership/influence for the public good.

 

What books educators are allowed, mandated, and prohibited usage of is now, and always has been the purview of government. This is not a new thing. What is new is telling people who object to porn for minors that they are the crazy ones!

 

Book banning is the work of Nazis.

When did you schedule the first burning?

 

Certain books have been banned in the USA school system for a long as there has been a USA school system. Nothing is banned, or burned however, and an adult with the means can buy, sell, trade, own and possess virtually every publication that exists, and probably quite a few that don't.

 

I asked the same a page before and it's been crickets. Apparently they have no idea.

I think we should ask the same question every page until someone actually can explain how corruption is supposed to work here.

 

GOP activist directed fees to Clarence Thomas’ wife

(NewsNation) — A judicial activist directed tens of thousands of dollars be paid to the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for consulting work with “no mention” of her name, according to a new report from the Washington Post.

In January 2012, Leonard Leo instructed Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use the money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, according to documents reviewed by the Post. The nonprofit, Judicial Education Project, filed a brief in a landmark Supreme Court case that same year.

Leo told Conway he wanted her to “give” Thomas “another “$25K” and make sure the paperwork have “No mention of Ginni, of course,” according to the Post. In all, Conway’s polling firm paid Ginni Thomas’ consulting firm $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/gop-activist-fees-clarence-thomas-wife-ginni-thomas/

Repubs will follow the George Santos strategy. Refuse to acknowledge Santos' lies, refuse to do anything about his lies, refuse to call for him to resign, wait for the turmoil to blow over, thereby aiding and abetting the corruption. But make no mistake, this is all deeply corrupt.

 

Is this you specious attempt to justify attacking him for helping people in desperate situations?

 

So what? Point to a case that Thomas's vote wasn't consistent with his decades long history.

 

More on this from Thom Hartmann - revealing the probable agenda behind the scheme.

Did Clarence Thomas take a bribe via his wife to gut the Voting Rights Act? Leonard Leo, when head of the Federalist Society, appears to have laundered at least $80,000 from the Judicial Education Project (JEP) (he was an “advisor” to the group) via Kellyanne Conway’s polling company. In the correspondence with Conway, Leo asked that there be no documentation or fingerprints connecting the money going to Thomas back to the JEP, which then had an Amicus brief before the Supreme Court arguing in favor of gutting the Voting Rights Act in the then-upcoming 2013 Shelby County v Holder decision. Thomas’ wife received the money and, sure enough, Thomas became the tie-breaking vote in favor of gutting the voting protections that had been law since 1965, kicking off a massive nationwide voter suppression effort by Republican politicians that lasts to this day. This sure looks like bribery, which definitely doesn’t fall under the rubric of “good behavior,” the constitutional definition of the standard justices must follow to remain on the Court. Will Merrick Garland and his Department of Justice investigate, the way Nixon and Mitchell’s DOJ did with the Abe Fortas case back in the 1960s, leading to Fortas’ resignation? To do any less would be a gross failure of duty on Garland’s part. At the same time, the Senate Judiciary Committee should be issuing a subpoena to Thomas about this, although Republicans are blocking any efforts by the committee right now because Senator Feinstein, 89, is too infirm to show up. (She should resign and Governor Newsom should replace her with a placeholder like Barbara Boxer until the election in November, 2024.)

 

Thomas is being attacked for his history of blatant corruption, and needs to be removed (along with his 5 other comrades). The Right is attempting to whitewash the corruption with irrelevant material.

 

Helping people in desperate need is not corruption, you are attempting to blackwash very honorable acts in which he engaged.

 

The voting rights act was not gutted. The only change was those states that were under a pre-approval mandate for changes in voting process that was supposed to expire back in the 1970's was finally halted. The laws as to voting rights were not changed. And he was not a singular tie breaker he was one of the majority and he had long proposed that those requirements should have been dropped it had nothing to do with his wife who happened to agree with him.

 

SNIP At Bottom, Is For ALL.

There are two arguments, among this group of replies. First, is basically that Democrats in Congress are exceeding their Constitutionally circumscribed authority. That is categorically false, and I defy anyone to produce a quote from that document, to support this argument.

The second, fall-back argument, below, is that even if it is true, that Justice Thomas took exorbitant gifts from his sponsor-- er-- friend, and even if he seemingly tried to conceal this largesse, that it cannot be proven that this affected Thomas's judgement. This is not how it works with a Supreme Court, which is not elected. Their authority is contingent upon having the trust of the public, to be attempting to impartially read the law as it is, not the way that they would personally prefer it to be. And, certainly, not the way that some big money patrons of the Justices, personally desire, or see to their financial advantage.

IOW, we should not even get to the point, at which we are looking to see if we can "prove" the quid pro quo: there should not be even the APPEARANCE of a compromised Justice. Whenever there is any possibility that anyone might reasonably question a bias, the Justice should recuse him or herself, to prevent any doubts of corruption, from arising in the first place-- as this damages the standing of the Court's reputation and, as the SCOTUS is central, in the fair balance of our government, harms also, the whole of our country.

This is not some liberal fantasy, I am proposing: it is the philosophy that governs all the rest of the courts, in our land. These Justices were all bound by ethics rules, until they were promoted to the High Court. So it is preposterous to argue, that for Justices to continue to follow ethics guidelines, is some power grab, by Congressional Democrats. Anyone voicing this argument, is saying that the sensible response, to vastly increasing their personal power, by lifting them to our Highest Court, is to remove ethics restrictions from them. Anyone capable of a rational assessment, must see that this view is utterly counter-intuitive. Power corrupts-- remember-- it doesn't purify the wielder's honor.


"Conservative" point, #1:

The integrity of our Court, and ultimately of our entire government, is a very "good argument"-- in the opinion of most. Your own argument, in fact, begs the question, as to why you see the existence of strict guidelines of ethical behavior, for those in power, as a poor excuse of an argument.

Wrong, on both counts. The SCOTUS has no binding rules, of its own, and no mechanism of holding to account, or even challenging, any who fail to follow the Court's suggestions. Ironic, huh, that everyone else must abide by SCOTUS opinions-- except for the members of the SCOTUS?

Secondly, Congress has every right to enforce a code of ethics. See the article at the bottom, by a highly respected, conservative judge, with well-established bona fides.



"Conservative point, #2:

Let's start with this creative, if bizarre variation, on the "no quid pro quo" line. This poster argues that there is nothing of value-- or even of significance, is his implication-- in getting a Justice to vote the way you want.

A couple of people, for starters, who would likely disagree with that proposition, are George W. Bush, and Al Gore.

That is the most blatant of straw man arguments, I have ever encountered. I almost feel I should applaud your audacity, of even proceeding into it, as if it could work, acting as if none of the SCOTUS's decisions, have any serious, real world repercussions.

The answer to your helpless question, is that the ramifications of Supreme Court decisions, unlike those in a criminal trial, are not limited to only the litigants. When it makes a ruling on abortion, for instance, it affects women across the entire nation and, potentially, could criminalize behavior. Its decisions on gun rights, is also an issue about which people, on both sides, hold their opinions near and dear-- especially the gun industry. Decisions affecting gay marriage, for another example, are of keen interest to many people, beyond those who actually might wish to make use of that option, were it so permitted. Lastly-- due to space considerations-- it is hard to imagine that anyone in our country does not understand that Court decisions have huge impacts on the bottom lines, of many companies and corporations, regarding everything from liability issues, to worker organizing rights, to even a push from these interests, according to Senator Whitehouse's detailed research, to do away with jury trials, for corporate criminals-- and many more issues, impacting businesses as well: environmental standards/obligations, dismissal practices, working conditions, employee speech, etc.

Addressed both at top, and in Snip, below:


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/shows/deadlinewhitehouse/blog/rcna82725


<Snip>
On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Republicans tried to frame the push for Supreme Court ethics reform as a Democratic ploy. Complicating that already desperate narrative is J. Michael Luttig, the vaunted former judge who’s pushing the justices to abide by the highest ethical standards possible.

Luttig’s role is remarkable not only because he’s a respected conservative legal figure generally, but also because he helped Justice Clarence Thomas during his contentious confirmation in the early 1990s. Thomas, of course, is the impetus for the latest wave of ethical scrutiny, following ProPublica’s reporting on years of his undisclosed lavish gifts from GOP billionaire Harlan Crow

Luttig wrote to the Senate committee in connection with Tuesday’s hearing, at which Chief Justice John Roberts couldn’t even be bothered to show up. Striking a much different tone than Roberts, the former federal judge wrote that the court “should want, without quibble, to subject itself to the highest possible professional and ethical standards that would render the Court beyond reproach.”

On Wednesday, Luttig continued his ethics push on Twitter. He made clear his view, contrary to the position of Republican witnesses at the hearing, that Congress “indisputably” can legislate ethical standards for the justices:







Recall that Luttig also advised then-Vice President Mike Pence that he couldn’t throw the 2020 election to Donald Trump. Clearly, the former judge sees himself as having the country’s institutional interests in mind.

 

Lots of words. Nothing new.