Quote:On Thursday, with Labor Day weekend approaching, news broke the way it can when political insiders want to get out an unflattering story when most people aren’t paying attention. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had filed multiple corrections of his repeated errors in the financial reporting forms that the 1978 Ethics in Government Act requires.

There’s something curious about the amended form. It features substantial explanation of Thomas’s private flights, but nothing about yacht trips and other exotic vacations. It seems likely that this story doesn’t end with last Thursday’s amended financial disclosure form from Thomas.

For now, Thomas’s amended report disclosed three 2022 private plane trips paid for by conservative billionaire Harlan Crow and a stay in 2022 at Crow’s Adirondack mega-lodge. Thomas also amended prior years’ reports. He has now confirmed the 2014 sale to Crow of Thomas’s mother’s home, where she continues to live, first reported on Aug. 10 by ProPublica. In addition, there were amendments for a previously unreported life insurance policy and bank account.

(September 6, 2023 at 3:03 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: I had a this with this title over at AD because I like discussing the decisions and matters in front of the court. I didn't see a similar thread here, so started this one. If I simply missed an extant thread, staff, please merge.

Onto business (quite literally in this case), here's an op-ed about Clarence Thomas's ongoing drip of revelations of corruption:

Quote:On Thursday, with Labor Day weekend approaching, news broke the way it can when political insiders want to get out an unflattering story when most people aren’t paying attention. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had filed multiple corrections of his repeated errors in the financial reporting forms that the 1978 Ethics in Government Act requires.

There’s something curious about the amended form. It features substantial explanation of Thomas’s private flights, but nothing about yacht trips and other exotic vacations. It seems likely that this story doesn’t end with last Thursday’s amended financial disclosure form from Thomas.

For now, Thomas’s amended report disclosed three 2022 private plane trips paid for by conservative billionaire Harlan Crow and a stay in 2022 at Crow’s Adirondack mega-lodge. Thomas also amended prior years’ reports. He has now confirmed the 2014 sale to Crow of Thomas’s mother’s home, where she continues to live, first reported on Aug. 10 by ProPublica. In addition, there were amendments for a previously unreported life insurance policy and bank account.

It's worth reading the rest of the article, which can be found here. That sort of gifting never comes without strings attached.

(September 6, 2023 at 3:37 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: I didn’t realize SC justices were so expensive. I read that you can buy a US representative for around 300K.

Boru

Quote:Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas attended at least two donor events for the Koch network, according to a ProPublica report published Friday.

Thomas in 2018 went to a private dinner for donors at the group’s annual summit in California and was brought in to speak with the hopes that the access would encourage donations, according to the report.

Charles and David Koch over the years built an influence network that poured millions into conservative and libertarian causes. David Koch died in 2019.

Thomas did not disclose the trip to the summit on his annual financial disclosure, though ProPublica did not identify who paid for the private jet flight.

A Koch network spokesperson told the outlet that the network, known as Stand Together, did not pay for the flight. The spokesperson also attacked the report as “advocacy journalism intended to discredit and undermine the Supreme Court.”

(September 6, 2023 at 3:37 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(September 6, 2023 at 3:03 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: I had a this with this title over at AD because I like discussing the decisions and matters in front of the court. I didn't see a similar thread here, so started this one. If I simply missed an extant thread, staff, please merge.

Onto business (quite literally in this case), here's an op-ed about Clarence Thomas's ongoing drip of revelations of corruption:


It's worth reading the rest of the article, which can be found here. That sort of gifting never comes without strings attached.

I didn’t realize SC justices were so expensive. I read that you can buy a US representative for around 300K.

Boru

(September 22, 2023 at 12:36 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(September 6, 2023 at 3:37 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: I didn’t realize SC justices were so expensive. I read that you can buy a US representative for around 300K.

Boru

You can buy the whole Republican party for the price of one Trump. Just ask Putin.

Quote:Fifty House Democrats on Wednesday called on Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from a major upcoming Supreme Court case after a report detailed the justice’s visits to Koch network events.

ProPublica reported Friday that Thomas attended a private dinner for donors at the network’s annual summit in California in 2018 and participated in at least one other event.

In their letter, the lawmakers take aim at how attorneys linked to the Koch network are representing the plaintiffs in a major Supreme Court case this upcoming term with major impacts on the future of executive agencies’ power.

“But there is no question that your lengthy relationship with the Kochs, including your participation in donor retreats for the Koch network, requires recusal in the upcoming case that the Koch network has teed up in an attempt to overturn Chevron,” the lawmakers wrote.

The case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, asks the justices to overturn the so-called Chevron deference, which for nearly four decades has given agencies wide authority to implement regulations.

Under the Chevron deference, if Congress is ambiguous or silent on an issue, courts must uphold an agency’s action if it was “based on a permissible construction of the statute.”

Overturning Chevron would take a sledgehammer to agency power and their ability to issue environment, health and other types of regulations without clearer authorization from Congress.

“Here, the Kochs — political activists that you have personally helped fundraise for and personally financially benefited from while their crusade to overturn Chevron was public and well-known — are a party to this case,” the lawmakers wrote.

“If you do not recognize that your behavior disqualifies you from ruling on such a consequential case and you do not recuse yourself, it will do irreparable harm to the Court’s credibility and to the public’s faith in the impartial rulings of the entire federal judiciary,” they continued.