Our crooked court. At a time when our country is in so great need of the rule of law we learn that we cannot count on our Crooked Court. ABC NEWS reports:
First Liberty frequently petitions the high court and is behind a number of landmark conservative victories, including those protecting the ability of public school teachers to pray on the job; helping families obtain state funding to attend religious schools; and, forcing private employers to be more accommodating of religious observance.
On a late July conference call with supporters, according to a recording obtained by ProPublica, First Liberty CEO Kelly Shackelford is heard reading aloud an email from Ginni Thomas cheering on the group's efforts to oppose a White House push to legislate Supreme Court term limits and an enforceable ethics code, prompted in part by controversy last year over her husband's previously undisclosed financial ties and luxury travel with a GOP billionaire.
"YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES," Ginni Thomas apparently wrote to First Liberty head Kelly Shackelford, according to ProPublica. "CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH."
Critics said the message suggests Clarence and Ginni Thomas are beholden to First Liberty and benefit directly from its advocacy.
"The reported comments by Ginni Thomas are deeply problematic," said Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., in a statement Monday. "She's testified before Congress that she and Justice Thomas do not discuss each other's work. That defense now rings hollow. Whether she's inflating her knowledge of judges' views on ethics reform or telling the truth, her apparent comments on behalf of judicial officers create a clear appearance of impropriety for Justice Thomas."
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today spoke on the Senate floor on the need for Supreme Court ethics reform, including a clear, enforceable code of conduct for Supreme Court justices. The floor speech comes after Durbin called for Justice Clarence Thomas’s recusal from any case involving First Liberty Institute followingProPublica reporting that Ginni Thomas praised the conservative legal organization for “fill[ing] the sails of many judges” by working against commonsense ethics reform.
“For more than a year, story after story has broken about ethical misconduct by sitting Supreme Court justices. We’re talking about the highest Court in the land—the nine men and women who are sitting on the Supreme Court—who are not governed by the same rules of conduct and ethical standard as every other federal judge in America… Justice Clarence Thomas has been at the center of many of those stories. For decades, he has accepted lavish gifts and luxury trips from a gaggle of fawning billionaires. The total dollar value of those gifts is estimated to be more than $4 million… Justice Thomas has failed to disclose the vast majority of these gifts—in clear violation of financial disclosure requirements under federal law,” said Durbin.
Durbin then spoke about the ProPublica article, in which the publication reported that Ginni Thomas praised First Liberty Institute’s efforts to fight commonsense ethics reform in an email to conservative litigator Kelly Shackelford, writing “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.” Shackelford read Thomas’s email aloud on a call with the group’s top donors.
Durbin continued, “When asked about her efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Ginni Thomas told Congress that she and Justice Thomas do not discuss each other’s work. That’s a little hard to believe when you see this message she sent to this organization. Her comments on behalf of judges create a clear appearance of impropriety for Justice Thomas. Accordingly, I have called for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from any future case involving First Liberty Institute.”
Durbin then spoke about Ginni Thomas’s repeated actions that have raised serious concerns about Justice Thomas’s ability to fairly hear cases that come before the Supreme Court.
“Ginni Thomas is a political operative who regularly works with right-wing groups on issues being litigated before the Court. Federal law requires the disqualification of a Supreme Court justice in any proceeding in which the justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned. And the Supreme Court’s own code of conduct reiterates that Supreme Court justices should disqualify themselves in cases when there is reasonable doubt about their impartiality,” Durbin said.
Despite serious questions about Justice Thomas’s impartiality in numerous cases, Justice Thomas has repeatedly refused to recuse himself. During the Court’s most recent term, Justice Thomas continued to hear cases related to the January 6th insurrection—despite his wife’s involvement with efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Durbin continued, “And Justice Thomas’s failure to recuse is not his only ethical failure related to his wife’s activities. For years, Justice Thomas omitted his wife’s income from the right-wing Heritage Foundation from his annual financial disclosures, despite having disclosed her income in previous years… And as I mentioned earlier, Justice Thomas’s ethical issues extend far beyond his wife’s employment and advocacy. He has repeatedly violated federal law by failing to report gifts and income from a wide range of sources in his financial disclosures… And he [Justice Thomas] has compounded that failure by repeatedly failing to recuse himself in cases involving the very individuals and groups lavishing those gifts upon him.”
Durbin concluded his speech by calling on Chief Justice Roberts to adopt a binding code of conduct for all Supreme Court justices.
Durbin concluded, “Since then, repeated ethical misconduct by Supreme Court justices has proven that an enforceable code of conduct is absolutely essential to restoring public confidence in the Court. However, Chief Justice Roberts refuses to use his power to do so. What is he waiting for? I call on each and every Supreme Court Justice: if you agree with Clarence Thomas, declare it… If you think you're fed up with the reputation of the Court that lacks integrity, and you want to do something about it—speak up publicly on behalf of the Court and the nation. We'll continue in Congress to do our part, but some leadership from Chief Justice Roberts and members of the Court could sure make a difference.”
Video of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is available here.
Audio of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is available here.
Footage of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is available here for TV Stations.
Durbin has repeatedly called for the passage of the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act, legislation that the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced in July 2023. The bill would require Supreme Court justices to adopt a binding code of conduct, create a mechanism to investigate alleged violations of the code of conduct and other laws, improve disclosure and transparency when a justice has a connection to a party or amicus before the Court, and require justices to explain their recusal decisions to the public.
Durbin has been calling on the Supreme Court to adopt an enforceable code of conduct for more than a decade. He first sent a letter to the Chief Justice on this issue more than 12 years ago.
For full background on Durbin and the Senate Judiciary Committee’s efforts to deliver Supreme Court ethics reform for the American people and their ongoing investigation into the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis, visit this page that includes a timeline, releases, correspondence, and information on the SCERT Act.
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"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
A coin flip determined where Trump and Harris will stand on stage and the order of closing statements. Trump won the coin toss and chose to give the last closing statement. Harris selected the lectern on the left of the stage, meaning viewers will see her on the right side of their screens.
Candidates will have two minutes each for their closing statements. There are no opening statements. They will have two minutes to answer moderators' questions, two minutes for rebuttals and an extra minute for follow-ups or clarifications.
Harris and Trump will not be allowed to bring prewritten notes on stage, but will have a pen, notepad and bottle of water at their lecterns.
Campaign staff cannot interact with candidates during the commercial breaks, and there will be no live audience.
So what's the answer? MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell has rightly noted that, the way TV works, a running fact check could be done onscreen during the actual debate. We have no problem with that.
In
addition, however, we're aware that there will be two breaks in the
debate. Instead of wasting those on commercials, they should be used
for fact checks. Three or four journalists should immediately begin
letting viewers know what just happened. They should do that during
both breaks and as well as right after the debate ends when a third fact
check should take place -- no lingering over the candidates on stage,
go into the third fact check immediately.
Tomorrow night, ABC will most likely fail at any kind of accountability or fact check during the debate itself. If that is what happens, we all need to grasp that journalism was not practiced. Asking questions is not enough. Your job also includes informing the audience when someone lies and holding them accountable.
Former President Donald Trump repeated his false claim that children are undergoing transition-related surgery during their school day, worsening fears among some conservatives that educators are pushing children to become transgender and aiding transitions without parental awareness.
“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state.
Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.
Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”
A widely derided election crimes dragnet from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appears to be targeting voters who signed a petition to get an abortion rights amendment on state ballots this fall, a measure that the Republican governor and his anti-abortion allies strongly oppose.
DeSantis’s administration has previously deployed law enforcement officers to the homes of formerly incarcerated people who were accused of illegally voting. Most of those charges were eventually dropped.
Now, officers appear to be visiting the homes of citizens who signed a petition that successfully put Amendment 4 on November’s ballots, which would enshrine the right to abortion care in the state’s constitution — and overturn state law signed by DeSantis that bans abortion at six weeks of pregnancy, before most people know they are pregnant.
As feminists, we wondered six weeks ago, what do we do?
Roseanne had already imploded. (Cindy Sheehan has a story to tell and then some.) She couldn't and wouldn't campaign, she apparently wouldn't pay workers she hired for her campaign, she was an embarrassment.
And so was Jill Stein.
As feminists, do we call it as it is?
We debated that for three days. Jill wasn't going to win the presidency. In fact, it was obvious she was running off the limited votes she did have a shot at.
But did we tell the truth on that? Did we call her out?
We crossed the line on gender with the decision -- a feminist one (not "the" feminist one) -- that she was running for public office and therefore had to be treated the same as anyone else would even if, in the closing weeks, we were going to tear her apart.
But . . .
Having dealt with the feminist issue, we still had the issue of third parties.
Was it really fair to beat up on a third party candidate?
Adding to the problems, one of us (Ava) is involved with a lifelong Green (Jess), has a child by him, has made a home with him.
And Jess was very clear that Jill Stein was "a f**king idiot but the Greens need to be on ballots." And they were. Texas, for example. We heard from Billie who early voted for Jill Stein. She was so excited because Jill Stein was on the ballot. She didn't have to write her in. Right there on the Texas ballot was the Green Party.
What do we do?
In the end, we decided, "We don't promote her. We don't mention her. That's true here, that's true at Third."
So we bit our tongues.
As she ran a stupid campaign. As she made a fool of herself and the Green Party. (Granted, it's a party that loves to make a fool of itself.)
She -- and others -- did a debate with Larry King. A debate that did not include all. A new hurdle was invented.
Green Party members, you know what a hurdle is, right? It's what keeps your candidate out of the so-called presidential debates every four years. Why the hell would you take part in a debate that did not invite everyone who made it onto a state's ballot as a presidential candidate?
Because hypocrisy is a charge you live to embrace?
Maybe so.
Supposedly the Green Party is opposed to war.
So when Tim Arango reported the White House was negotiating with Nouri to send more troops back into Iraq, Jill Stein should have led on that.
But she's a politician which is just a whore without the desire to please a customer.
So Jill ignored it.
She ignored a lot.
Six weeks ago, in fact, after Barack cratered in the first debate, she and her campaign began going after Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
Huh?
You're a Green. You're on the left. The high profile left vote getter just imploded on national TV. It's the perfect time for you to pick up some of his voters.
But you refuse to try. You rush to go after Romney and Ryan instead.
Why is that?
Because you are not a real party.
Because you will forever be the little sister of the Democratic Party.
Because every four years, you start off with promise and end up revealing just how craven and disgusting you are.
If we are offering commentary four years from now, please note, being a Green will not save you. Being third party will not save you.
We will call you out in real time.
From the Harris-Walz campaign site:
Trump’s plan to take your power, your control, and your money.
What is the Project 2025 Agenda?
Donald Trump’s plans for total control over our daily lives have been exposed. Scroll down to see what’s in it for yourself — and tell your friends.
His Project 2025 agenda would strip away our freedoms – by forcing states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions, cutting Social Security and Medicare, and eliminating the Department of Education.
It includes a plan hatched by people who used to work for Donald Trump that focuses on the first 180 days.
(Project 2025 Website)
The plan begins with a sweeping takeover of the federal government to consolidate power under Donald Trump. Inside pages of dense policy proposals, their intentions become clear.
“Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.”
(New York Times, July 17, 2023)
Project 2025 is a plan to seize power within the federal government.
First: They’d make it easier to fire non-partisan government employees, like they attempted to do at the end of Trump’s administration.
Reissue Trump’s schedule F executive order to permit discharge of nonperforming employees. (Project 2025, a Mandate for Leadership, p. 535)
Then, they’d replace them with politically appointed Trump Loyalists.
“The modern conservative President’s task is to limit, control, and direct the executive branch….The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch.… Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and self-denial: boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will”. (p. 43-44)
They’d end the independence of the Department of Justice and FBI…
“Conservatives have long believed in either ending law enforcement activities of independent agencies or ending their independent status. (p. 873)
…and turn them into enforcement arms of the White House.
The next conservative Administration must make every effort to obtain the resources to support a vast expansion of the number of appointees in every office and component across the department—especially in the Civil Rights Division, the FBI, and the EOIR.” (p. 569)
“[This] would also place the FBI under a politically accountable leader.” (p. 549)
Some of Donald Trump’s allies are assembling proposals to curtail the Justice Department’s independence and turn the nation’s top law enforcement body into an attack dog for conservative causes, nine people involved in the effort told Reuters.
(Reuters, May 17, 2024)
All while Trump has immunity from crimes committed in office thanks to a ruling from his Supreme Court picks.
Project 2025 is a plan to give MAGA extremists control over your life.
Trump and his Project 2025 allies overturned Roe v. Wade and unleashed extreme abortion bans across the country. Now, they’ll go even further.
They’ll implement a 50-state “backdoor ban” on abortion — without Congress — and jail health care providers.
“Announcing a Campaign to Enforce the Criminal Prohibitions in 18 U.S. Code §§ 1461 and 1462.” (p. 562)
Project 2025 would resurrect a law from the 1800s called the Comstock Act to ban abortion nationwide and jail health care providers. (p. 459)
Don’t take our word for it. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation: A literal interpretation of the [Comstock] Act could potentially also apply to materials used to produce all abortions, not just medication abortions; would not have exceptions; and could affect other medical care, such as miscarriage management.
(Kaiser Family Foundation, 4/15/24)
And they’ll ban abortion medication, which is also used in a range of ways to protect women’s health.
“Abortion pills pose the single greatest threat to unborn children in a post-Roe world…. The FDA should reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs.” (p. 457)
They’ll force states to report women’s miscarriages and abortions to Trump’s Federal Government.
Project 2025 would “use every available tool, including the cutting of funds” to force states to report miscarriages and “exactly how many abortions take place within its borders,” including the “reason” for every abortion. (p. 455)
They’ll put limits on contraception access.
The President should “[e]liminate the week-after-pill from the contraceptive mandate as a potential abortifacient.” (p. 485)
Allows employers to deny workers access to birth control coverage. (p. 483-85)
It also calls for defunding Planned Parenthood, which provides access to contraception for over 2 million women each year. (p. 471)
And then rip away President Biden’s protections for a woman’s right to life-saving medical care.
The President should “reverse distorted pro-abortion ‘interpretations’ added to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. (p. 473)
They’ll enable discrimination against LGBTQ+ Americans.
Rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics. The President should direct agencies to rescind regulations interpreting sex discrimination provisions as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics, etc. (p. 584)
Project 2025 is a plan to make Trump and his rich friends even richer.
It will cut taxes for Trump and his rich friends and pad their profits.
“The corporate income tax should be reduced to 18 percent.” (p. 696)
And cut taxes for wealthy families — offset by tax hikes on middle class families.
Project 2025 would restructure the tax code to benefit wealthy families. (p. 696)
Millions of low- and middle-class households would likely face significantly higher taxes under the Project 2025’s proposals. [Center for American Progress senior director for economic policy Brendan Duke] estimated that a middle-class family with two children and an annual income of $100,000 would pay $2,600 in additional federal income tax if they faced a 15% flat tax on their income due to the loss of the 10% and 12% tax brackets. If the Child Tax Credit were also eliminated, they would pay an additional $6,600 compared with today’s tax system, Duke said. By comparison, a married couple with two children and earnings of $5 million a year would enjoy a $325,000 tax cut, he estimated.
(CBS News, 7/12/24)
They’d line Big Pharma’s pockets by ending prescription drug price caps for seniors, and banning Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices.
“Repeal harmful health policies enacted under the Obama and Biden Administrations such as… the Inflation Reduction Act.” (p. 465)
“This ‘negotiation’ program should be repealed.” (p. 465)
All while Trump’s administration guts Medicare and Social Security.
When asked about cuts to entitlements like Medicare and Social Security, Trump said: “Oh we’ll be cutting,” and later doubled down, saying, “There’s a lot you can do…in terms of cutting.”
Trump has also called Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme,” supported raising the age for eligibility, and has been open to privatizing it.
They’d let employers drastically cut overtime — or eliminate it outright.
- Return to Trump’s overtime rule, meaning 4 million middle class workers will lose overtime protections because of the salary they make.
- Make remote employees work 10, instead of 8, hours in a day before they can earn overtime.
- Prevent benefits from counting as part of workers’ overtime calculations
- Allow employers to calculate overtime over four weeks instead of one. (pp. 587, 589, 592)
And they’d reinstate crippling student debt payments.
“The new Administration must end abuses in the loan forgiveness programs. Borrowers should be expected to repay their loans” (p. 322).
“The Secretary should phase out all existing [income-driven repayment] plans by making new loans (including consolidation loans) ineligible…. If new legislation is possible, there should be no loan forgiveness, but if not, existing law would require forgiving any remaining balance after 25 years.” (pp. 337-38).
- Truest statement of the week
- A note to our readers
- Iraq and Gaza
- Media: A great sitcom, a lousy debate
- Books (Jess, Ava and C.I.)
- THE FRIEDKIN CONNECTION (Jess)
- 2024 passings
- Book List
- Tweet of the week
- The rumor mill
- Justice for Ayşenur Eygi: As Israel Kills Another ...
- Video of the week
- Kat on the corruption in the Michigan court system
- The Harris-Walz campaign explains Trump's Project ...
- Say it
- This edition's playlist
- Highlights
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Mdou Moctar: Tiny Desk Concert3 hours ago
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Hideous Junior8 hours ago
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Kamala8 hours ago
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Black Eyed Pea Soup in the Kitchen8 hours ago
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Trump and Turley terrorize the country8 hours ago
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The disgusting Ken Paxton8 hours ago
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