The SCOTUS Chronicles

[The Grand Nudger]

^How could that not work? Thomas never met a dollar he didn’t like.

Boru

We can assume he got a better competing offer.

[Fireball]

How do you tell an honest supreme court justice?
They stay bought.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig issued a searing rebuke of the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision that Colorado could not disqualify former President Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection ban, which preserved his ability to seek a second term.

In a piece published Thursday in The Atlantic, Luttig, a longtime conservative jurist on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said all nine justices “dangerously betrayed” democracy in making their decision.

[...]

Luttig, who had been vocal in support of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar Trump from the ballot, described Section 3 of the 14th Amendment as the Constitution’s “safety net for America’s democracy, promising to automatically disqualify from public office all oath-breaking insurrectionists against the Constitution, deeming them too dangerous to entrust with power unless supermajorities of both houses of Congress formally remove their disability.”

“Our highest court dramatically and dangerously betrayed its obligation to enforce what once was the Constitution’s safety net for America’s democracy. The Supreme Court has now rendered that safety net a dead letter, effectively rescinding it as if it had never been enacted,” Luttig wrote.

[...]

“Desperate to assuage the growing sense that it is but a political instrument, the Court instead cemented that image into history. It did so at what could be the most perilous constitutional and political moment in our country’s history, when the nation and the Constitution needed the Court most—to adjudicate not the politics of law, but the law of the politics that is poisoning the lifeblood of America.”

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-bat...-decision/

[Mister Agenda]

It does seem like this court is originalist or consequentialist depending on whose ox is being gored.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued a subpoena to a conservative legal advocate as a part of an ethics probe driven by reports of undisclosed gifts to some conservative Supreme Court justices, multiple outlets reported Thursday.

The committee sent the subpoena Thursday to Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the Federalist Society who was paramount in deciding former President Trump’s potential nominees for the nation’s highest court.

“Since July 2023, Leonard Leo has responded to the legitimate oversight requests of the Senate Judiciary Committee with a blanket refusal to cooperate,” Durbin said in a statement to Reuters. “His outright defiance left the Committee with no other choice but to move forward with compulsory process.”

The subpoena comes months after the committee voted along party lines to authorize subpoenas for both Leo and GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow after reports that Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito accepted, but did not disclose, luxury gifts and travel trips. It is unclear why multiple months passed between the November vote and the subpoena being sent.

Leo confirmed he received the subpoena, telling CNN it is “politically motivated” and “unlawful.”

He described it as the “left’s dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition,” while stating that he is “not capitulating.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4589...ics-probe/

[Thumpalumpacus]

Clarence Thomas should go back to being silent:

FAIRHOPE, Ala. (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told attendees at a judicial conference Friday that he and his wife have faced “nastiness” and “lies” over the last several years and decried Washington, D.C., as a “hideous place.”

Thomas spoke at a conference attended by judges, attorneys and other court personnel in the 11th Circuit Judicial Conference, which hears federal cases from Alabama, Florida and Georgia. He made the comments pushing back on his critics in response to a question about working in a world that seems meanspirited.

“I think there’s challenges to that. We’re in a world and we — certainly my wife and I the last two or three years it’s been — just the nastiness and the lies, it’s just incredible,” Thomas said.

“But you have some choices. You don’t get to prevent people from doing horrible things or saying horrible things. But one you have to understand and accept the fact that they can’t change you unless you permit that,” Thomas said.

Gee, I wonder why they're all being meanies? Oh yeah, I almost forgot --

Thomas has faced criticisms that he took accepted luxury trips from a GOP donor without reporting them. Thomas last year maintained that he didn’t have to report the trips paid for by one of “our dearest friends.” His wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas has faced criticism for using her Facebook page to amplify unsubstantiated claims of corruption by President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

If you can't stand the heat, stop being such a goddamned crook.

[brewer]

My next t-shirt.

[Thumpalumpacus]

My next t-shirt.

Think of the billionaires!

[arewethereyet]

Every time this thread rolls around, I read it as "The Scrotum Chronicles".

[Rev. Rye]

And every time I read the word "Scrotum", I imagine this Mr. Show sketch: