See, now this is actual overt corruption. No matter my skepticism of some of Thomas’s dealings, I firmly believe he should be impeached. The weight of evidence is so ridiculously strong. He has no business wielding that much power over all of America.
Yeah I love how the payment was for Shelby vs. Holder. I give Judd Legum money. One reason is after that ridiculous bullshit dustup about young black men not knowing their place in Tennessee, Legum decided to shake the tree and see what fell out. So far we've got one resignation for sexual harassment and the speaker of the house defending himself against allegations of fraud. So far it seems like after ProPublica pointed out what a shady asshole Clarence Thomas has always been, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the WSJ have all fallen all over themselves to bake the Supreme Court's alaska. How badly do you think those fuckers don't want a special counsel up in their business?
Pff, I hope they appoint a special counsel to sniff out the entire SCOTUS bench. Were I a SCOTUS judge (ha!), I also would have refused to sign onto Roberts' ridiculous declaration of self-regulated SCOTUS ethics that he included last week in his polite refusal to testify before the Senate judicial oversight committee.
"They" will never be both the executive and a 2/3rds supermajority House vote to impeach, obviously, at this moment in time. So there goes a joint executive and legislative check and balance. The Senate's hearing last week was a circus, so much for that. Whether DoJ chooses to do anything substantial independently? Kinda doubt it. Checks and balances warfare is almost totally neutered. Two-party warfare is the dominate dynamic. Again, statement made for posterity, I know you know this.
I’m looking forward to seeing how the wsj editorial page spins this one. They’ve been throwing heavy weight behind defending the Harlan Crow business—as recently as this morning before this news broke. This one is a lot harder to deflect, but they’ll find a way. Of that I’m sure.
What flummoxes me is: Why is all of this reporting happening within the span of like three weeks? Either someone near them decided the Thomases have grafted his last grift, or... were reporters like "oh, maybe we should dig into the financial records of the most outwardly-corrupt-appearing member of the most powerful court in the world after all". It's pretty wild that Clarence, Ginni, et al. were probably like "And if they catch us? It won't even matter, right? Is there any legal recourse? Regardless, the party will close ranks around us", and their calculus was correct.
You don't usually see a single pigeon jump at a loud bang. You see a whole powerline's worth. Journalism happens in flocks, too. Especially if it's something where you can just log into a bunch of websites and make the interns dig around. Syrians were dying by the dozens crossing the med - then one dead boy washes up in a photogenic way and all of a sudden every news bureau in the world is rooting through shipping statistics.