Clarence Thomas

Shiftless2 said:
"The once august court, which the public held in highest esteem" Dowd / TNYT
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Really?
I remember when they were called "the 9 old men". BUT !! Their plummet into the abyss is beyond dispute.
More than one associate justice (AJ) appears to have lied about Roe during Senate confirmation. Allowing that to go unpunished undermines the rational justification for Art.2 Sect.2.2 "Advice and Consent of the Senate".
Why even question candidates if the candidates can lie with impunity?
"Listen, we [the GOP] are the rule of law party." Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) on FOX News Sunday 24/06/02
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Speaker Johnson:
to what "law" do you refer sir? The law of the jungle? CERTAINLY not the United States Constitution.
 
From the Trump crimes thread

Law 'Requires' Samuel Alito to Disqualify Himself from Trump Case—Attorney​


Former federal prosecutor and legal analyst Glenn Kirschner told the co-hosts of MSNBC's The Weekend on Sunday that the law "requires" Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to disqualify himself from former President Donald Trump's federal election interference case.

Alito, one of six conservative justices on the Court, has faced recent criticism after The New York Times reported in May that an "Appeal to Heaven" flag was flown at his vacation home in New Jersey last summer and an upside-down American flag was flown outside his Virginia home 11 days after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden's 2020 election win on January 6, 2021. Both flags have been used as a symbol of ...

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Shiftless2 said:
" the SCOTUS is the law" S2 #24
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Creates the law while simultaneously not bound by law.
Subordinate law judges have ethics rules.
SCOTUS disregards them.

- what could possibly go wrong ... -

< < < > > >

Has the world gotten stinkier? Or am I merely suffering geriatric contempt for everything syndrome? Attention Earth! P You!
 
More on Alito

Joe Biden Puts Samuel Alito in a Jam​

Story by Sean O'Driscoll

President Joe Biden's executive order on asylum will put Justice Samuel Alito's strict interpretation of legislation to the test, a former prosecutor has said.

On her Cafe Insider podcast, Joyce Vance, who served as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017, discussed the Supreme Court's June 14 decision in Garland v. Cargill to strike down a Donald Trump–era ban on bump stocks, a device that essentially converts rifles into machine guns.

The ban was issued after a 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, during which a gunman used bump stocks to fire more than 1,000 rounds into a music festival audience in 11 minutes. Sixty people were killed, and hundreds more were injured.

In his opinion, Alito wrote that executive orders could not take the place of existing legislation. Trump's 2018 executive order essentially placed a new interpretation on existing legislation, something Alito said was unconstitutional.

President Biden is now seeking to use an executive order to place a cap on the number of asylum-seekers that can pass through the southern border.

Under Biden's order, once the number of weekly crossings by asylum-seekers passes 2,500, those applying for asylum must do so at the border rather than through the normal method of applying in U.S courts.

Alito wrote in his opinion: "The horrible shooting spree in Las Vegas in 2017 did not change the statutory text or its meaning. That event demonstrated that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock can have the same lethal effect as a machinegun, and it thus strengthened the case for amending [federal law]. But an event that highlights the need to amend a law does not itself change the law's meaning."

Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, and his party have made limiting immigration a central campaign issue. Alito, who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2005 by Republican President George W. Bush, has faced criticism recently after reports said a pro-Trump flag flew outside his house on January 17, 2021, days before Biden's inauguration.

On her podcast, Vance said Tuesday that Biden's asylum executive order, if challenged to the Supreme Court, would place Alito in a difficult situation.

"You have to wonder, What will Justice Alito do? You know, Justice Alito who just said a tragedy like Las Vegas can't ....

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Trump's plan-A:

By REBECCA SANTANA / Updated 3:00 PM GMT-5, April 30, 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump says he’d use the National Guard as part of efforts to deport millions of migrants across the country if he’s reelected ...

apnews.com

Trump says he'll use National Guard to deport migrants, doubling down on anti-immigration rhetoric

Donald Trump says he’d use the National Guard as part of efforts to deport millions of migrants across the country if he’s reelected.
apnews.com apnews.com

BUT !

Trump has a fall-back:
If mobilizing the National Guard isn't enough, Trump can always drive the economy so far into the ground migrants will flee from the U.S. to Mexico, for the prosperity South of the border.
 
Uncle Clarence rides again .....

Clarence Thomas Wants Supreme Court to 'Dispose' of Landmark Ruling​

Katherine Fung

Justice Clarence Thomas wants the U.S. Supreme Court to "dispose" of a landmark ruling from more than 60 years ago.

The Supreme Court issued a ruling Friday in City of Grants Pass, Oregon, v. Gloria Johnson, a major case involving homelessness that is likely to have significant impact on major U.S. cities on the West Coast. Johnson argued that the city of roughly 40,000 unlawfully punished homeless people for sleeping on the streets when no other shelter was available and unlawfully banned the use of sleeping bags, blankets, pillows and even cardboard boxes in public spaces.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court sided with the Oregon city over a homeless plaintiff, finding that penalizing homeless people for sleeping on the streets does not violate the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits ....

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Shiftless2 said:
"Uncle Clarence rides again ....." #29
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Am I too jaded?
It's as easy as shooting pickles from a barrel, to point the accusatory finger, and have a nice day.

Seems to me to offer insightful, & perhaps inciteful comment we're obliged to offer a viable alternative to the position we criticize.
This is a municipal dilemma that reeks of Sorites Paradox. Where do we draw the line?
One well dressed but over-tired businessman that missed the last bus to the airport, so naps a few hours until the next morning's transport becomes available?
A parade of heroin addicts each living out of a shopping cart, one stolen cart per addict, terrifying children and rendering their location unsafe for law-abiding tax payers?

Thomas?
- Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. - paraphrase of Lord Acton
The quotation is:

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
writes John Emerich Edward Dalbert-Acton, 53, April 5 to Cambridge University professor Mandell Creighton. Lord Acton is a liberal Roman Catholic and a leader of the opposition to the papal dogma of infallibility
Source:
The People's Chronology is licensed from Henry Holt and Company, Inc. Copyright © 1995, 1996 by James Trager. All rights reserved. (aka Bookshelf '98)

SCOTUS members including Thomas are appointed for life. Meaning, they either step down (like Breyer), or fall down (like Rehnquist). Got a better idea, that may actually pass the mustard politically?
 
Shiftless2 said:
"They can be impeached - not that it will happen but ..." S2 #31
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They can be run over by an overloaded garbage truck - not that it will happen but ...

"One of the differences between reality & fiction is, fiction has to make sense." fiction author Thomas Leo Clancy Jr.

The Trump era has stretched beyond plausibility, the bounds of plausibility.
Before the Trump administration that sentence might have seemed improbable.
Still does.
 
Before the Trump era it seemed unlikely that a Supreme Court Justice would be impeached because, until then, they seemed to be ruling based on law and the Constitution as opposed to politics and religion.

I admit that, while I was never impressed with Thomas and didn't find him to be "likeable" in any way shape or form, at least he seemed to be rational if overly conservative. But recently (in particular since Roe) he has gone completely off the rails. And that's before we found out about the amount of under the counter payouts he's been receiving.
 
EMPHATIC CAVEAT: The law must be obeyed!
This is a forum for intellectual inquiry, public discussion, NOT lawless conspiracy. It is a forum for lawful discussion, not criminal acts.
Shiftless2 said:
"Before the Trump era it seemed unlikely that a Supreme Court Justice would be impeached because, until then, they seemed to be ruling based on law and the Constitution as opposed to politics and religion.
I admit that, while I was never impressed with Thomas and didn't find him to be "likeable" in any way shape or form, at least he seemed to be rational if overly conservative. But recently (in particular since Roe) he has gone completely off the rails. And that's before we found out about the amount of under the counter payouts he's been receiving." S2 #33
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Preface:
"If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated.This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence;it can only be the maintenance of the legal order." Thomas Szasz MD (b. 1920), U.S. psychiatrist. The Second Sin, "Punishment" (1973)

Point #1:
"No right is absolute. Conversely, no government authority is absolute." lawyer, law Professor and former ACLU head Nadine Strossen

Point #2:
As an important tenet of United States law and culture, the criminal's violation of law does not justify victim's lawlessness. There's an obvious, well known exception for self-defense. All murder is homicide, but not all homicide is murder.
For important, essential reason murder is illegal. But homicide in self-defense when the victim's survival cannot be secured by any other means, not murder.

Point #3:
If a ruling member of the highest law court in the land turns lawless, thereby threatening severe harm of the hundreds of millions over whom he presides,
does it make sense when no other safeguards are available, such as a self-imposed SCOTUS code of ethics (such as that which applies to all subordinate law courts in the U.S.)
for a bureaucrat entrusted to and paid to serve the People, be free to violate the law and jeopardize the People with impunity?

Is there ANY point at which such judicial savagery exercised with ruthless impunity justifies adequate defense of, by, and for the People, via unconventional means?
If any at all, how close are we now?
If close, what should be done if / when we reach that point?

What are the People's options in this case of Associate Justice Thomas? If there are viable options available to the People within enumerated law, why is Thomas still running roughshod over the Constitution, and the People?
"If you have rights, you have to have a remedy." Wendy Patton: of Human Rights Watch, July 7, 2003
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[Former A.G.] "Bill Barr says that enforcing a code of ethics on the Supreme Court would purge conservative justices." #36

False.
The Constitution explicitly prohibits ex post facto laws.
And attempting to leverage that bogus argument as justification for rendering SCOTUS exempt from standards akin to those binding an all the lower courts is flagrant frontiersism.

Barr:
It's perfectly proper to introduce standards to SCOTUS so it will be in approximate parity with the rest of the judicial branch. It doesn't unring the bell. But it does provide means for penalizing any future violation, as is standard for the rest of our federal judiciary.
 
sear said:
It's perfectly proper to introduce standards to SCOTUS so it will be in approximate parity with the rest of the judicial branch. It doesn't unring the bell. But it does provide means for penalizing any future violation, as is standard for the rest of our federal judiciary.
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And this is the way I interpreted his original statement.
 
from Wikipedia

Clarence Thomas​

U.S. Supreme Court justice since 1991 (born 1948)
Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1991. After Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Supreme Court and has been its longest-serving member since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018. Since Stephen Breyer's retirement in 2022, he is also the Court's oldest member.

Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia. After his father abandoned the family, he was raised by his grandfather in a poor Gullah community near Savannah. Growing up as a devout Catholic, Thomas originally intended to be a priest in the Catholic Church but was frustrated over the church's insufficient attempts to combat racism. He abandoned his aspiration of becoming a clergyman to attend the College of the Holy Cross and Yale Law School, where he was influenced by a number of conservative authors, notably Thomas Sowell. Upon graduating, he was appointed as an assistant attorney general in Missouri and later entered private practice there. He became a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator John Danforth in 1979, and was made Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education in 1981. President Ronald Reagan appointed Thomas as Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) the next year.
President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1990. He served in that role for 19 months before filling Marshall's seat on the Supreme Court. Thomas's confirmation hearings were bitter and intensely fought, centering on an accusation that he had sexually harassed Anita Hill, a subordinate at the Department of Education and the EEOC. The Senate confirmed Thomas by a vote of 52–48, the narrowest margin in a century.

Since the death of Antonin Scalia, Thomas has been the Court's foremost originalist, stressing the original meaning in interpreting the Constitution. In contrast to Scalia—who had been the only other consistent originalist—he pursues a more classically liberal variety of originalism. Thomas was known for his silence during most oral arguments, though has since begun asking more questions to counsel. He is notable for his majority opinions in Good News Club v. Milford Central School (determining the freedom of religious speech in relation to the First Amendment) and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (affirming the individual right to bear arms outside the home), as well as his dissent in Gonzales v. Raich (arguing that Congress may not criminalize the private cultivation of medical marijuana). He is widely considered to be the Court's most conservative member. More from Wikipedia
 
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