And He Wound Up On the Wrong End of an Opinion

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that, yes, of course a law meant to keep domestic abusers from purchasing a gun was constitutional and that gun rights did not extend to anyone known to commit abuse against spouses or children.  Even Samuel Alito wasn't going to say otherwise.

The ruling was 8-1.

Who was crazy enough to dissent?

This guy.

Clarence Thomas, who most likely did sexually harass Anita Hill despite his assertions to the contrary, demonstrated once again his lack of concern for women not his wife.  Solid and steadfast in that the Second Amendment is absolute - especially the second clause, which does not mention a well-regulated militia - he offered a dissenting opinion that made his majority opinion declaring the ban on bump stocks an unlawful interpretation of machine-gun regulatory laws seem positively Periclean.

Recently, an attempt has been made - primarily by historian Jon Meacham, but also by others - to rehabilitate George Herbert Walker Bush's record as the forty-first President of the United States because of his low-key diplomacy and his actions to get the U.S. to make the transition out of the Cold War, among other things.  None of these efforts, however, will ever succeed, as it was he who put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court for purely political reasons (the second black Supreme Court justice, he repealed Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice).   There was no bus big enough to hold the judges who in 1991 were more qualified for the Supreme Court than Thomas, whereas you could have counted Thomas' qualifications for the Court on one hand with three fingers to spare.  The first qualification was that he is black.    

The second qualification was that he had a pulse. 

Oh yeah, about the ruling on presidential immunity . . ..  The Supreme Court secretary who schedules releases of rulings is Helen Waite.  If you're waiting for the ruling on presidential immunity, go to Helen Waite. 

Tomorrow Thomas turns 76, an age when most jurists have long since retired.

Doubting Thomas

Trapped in the house during the third month of the COVID pandemic and with nothing else to watch on TV, I watched a documentary on the life of Clarence Thomas on public television (!).  The second of only two black male Supreme Court justices, who was interviewed for the documentary, explained what he likes to do for fun.  During the three-month summer break from the Court, Thomas said, he likes to head out to the backwoods and backwaters of America in his recreational vehicle and stops at campgrounds and big-box-store parking lots to meet real Americans, the sort of folks he insists his reactionary judicial philosophy benefits the most. 

That may be so, but, contrary to what Justice Thomas was implying, he hasn't spent all of his vacation time in the heartland.  It seems he's taken junkets to Indonesia on the dime of right-wing billionaire real estate developer Harlan Crow, prompting accusations of Thomas selling his judicial integrity to a rich bastard with deep pockets who's buying influence.  It looked like Justice Thomas's critics finally had him dead to rights.

Nope.  Thomas just flicked away the issue like a speck of calcified lint, explaining that he was assured when he first joined the Court that as long as someone did not have any business before the Court gave him free vacations, there was no conflict of interest.  Except how could anyone have been certain in 1991 that Crow was never going to have any business before the Court?  Well, then, it's not like right-wing real estate developers take cases based on seizing power all the way to the High Court, is it? 

Oh, wait, one of them has already.  Here's his lawyer.

And so Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), still under the illusion that she has any relevance in a Republican-controlled House, has called for Clarence Thomas' impeachment.  Even if the House did impeach the bastard, the Senate would still need a two-thirds majority to convict him - not gonna happen - and besides, no Supreme Court justice has been impeached since Samuel Chase in 1805 (who was acquitted). 

But, on the other hand, Samuel Chase was never known to have a cozy relationship with a rich landowner who liked to collect late-sixteenth-century Russian artifacts that used to belong to Ivan the Terrible, though Justice Thomas' rich-boy buddy Harlan Crow is known for collecting Hitler and Third Reich memorabilia.

Bet that would be an interesting topic of discussion in those Wal-Mart parking lots in the summertime.

Get Used To It

The investigation into Trump meddling in the 2020 Georgia elections looked to be picking up steam.  U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was ordered by a federal appeals court to honor a subpoena and testify over what he knew bout Trump's plan to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia based on phone calls Graham had made at the time.  Graham, insisting hat these phone calls were related to his legislative work, appealed to the Supreme Court, which convinced me that he would get a reprieve of some sort - because he wouldn't have appealed to the highest court of the land if he didn't think the Court would help him.

It did - in the form of Justice Clarence Thomas blocking Graham's subpoena temporarily.

Now why would Thomas do such a thing?  It's not because he, born and bred a Georgia man, just cannot believe that Trump would try to corrupt his (Thomas') native state by trying to overturn an election, is it?

No, of course not.  It's more likely because his wife, a conservative activist, was trying to help get the election overturned herself.

This is just the latest in a series of right-wing extremist rulings form the justice, whose reactionary jurisprudence was once explained by his supporters as the result of anger of women pushing sexual-harassment charges against him during his 1991 U.S. Senate confirmation hearings that left him bitter and vindictive.      

In other words, it's Barbara Boxer's fault.

Yeah, right.

Lindsey Graham will likely have to testify in the grand-jury investigation of Trump in Georgia.  But if Clarence Thomas can't recuse himself when the situation calls for it, how can we be assured that, in a ruling in which he speaks for the majority, justice will be done? 

In response to those who objected to his mere presence on the bench when he first joined the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas is said to have offered these two sentences, each comprised entirely of monosyllabic words - "I'm on the Court.  Get used to it."

Meet Virginia

This is Virginia Lamp Thomas.  She's the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

She got into the news for communicating with Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on strategy for overturning Joe Biden's election to the Presidency and discussing ideas for exposing the Democrats as perpetrating the most criminal fraud in the history of American government and urging Meadows - who saw the "Stop the Steal" campaign as a fight of good versus evil - as a fight for liberty.  She's totally bought into wild conspiracy theories about the election. 

She was also pleased to share the news that Meadows was fighting like hell for Trump with her best friend . . . apparently, she meant her husband, who passes judgment on cases related to election challenges.

This could mean that Justice Thomas - who recently spent a week in the hospital with "flu-like symptoms" - could be influenced by his wife in ruling on cases instigated by Trump.  The House January 6 committee hopes to get answers from Mrs. Thomas, but she's not likely to testify.

Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has all but pushed the January 6 investigation off the front pages and the airwaves.  Many people think this could hurt Trump, because he can't get attention, but it may in fact help him, because no one is reporting on the outrageously stupid things he says and people will be able to look at him anew if - when? - he runs for President again.  But when you have a guy like Trump who makes gaffes and isn't near a microphone to utter any gaffes, one must hope for a Trump supporter to make a gaffe on his behalf and accidently hurt him - and in this case, I'll be damned if it didn't turn out that way!  😃Thanks, Mrs. Thomas! 😉 

Clarence Thomas should reuse himself from future cases regarding election integrity.  He won't, of course.

Touch of Joe

Joe Biden's old-school ways of campaigning finally caught up with him in this new age.  Former Nevada assemblywoman Lucy Flores came forward and accused him of having hugged her from behind an kissing her on the head while they were backstage at a 2014 campaign rally when she was a candidate for lieutenant governor of Nevada.  (She lost the election.)

Until now, Biden's only scandal was using the words of another politician back in the 1988 presidential campaign to describe his humble beginnings (though, to be fair, he and former British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, that other politician, had similar backgrounds), which led to revelations that Biden plagiarized someone else's work for a college paper.  Now Biden faces a scandal over how he acts with women not his wife in the glare of the Me Too movement.  And for getting minimally physical with a woman in the heat of the excitement of a campaign rally.  Oh yeah, three women have made similar accusations. 

Biden's potential rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination (he's not a presidential candidate yet) all say that believe Lucy Flores, and Biden himself moved swiftly to control the damage.  He acknowledged the incident, he said it was never his intent to make Flores feel uncomfortable, and he says he's willing to listen to her concerns.  Not . . . good . . . enough.  Biden also apologized in an impromptu Twitter video, but more recently, he's been trying to laugh it off, though not too many people are laughing with him. Biden is about to learn what Gary Hart - who, ironically, was forced out of the 1988 presidential campaign over a sex scandal just as Biden was forced out of that same campaign over plagiarism - learned back in the spring of 1987.  He doesn't get the last word on this, and he doesn't get to move on until everyone else lets him, and by then, moving on to a withdrawal may be his only recourse.  Lucy Flores - who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and was at a Beto O'Rourke rally recently - still thinks this disqualifies Biden for the Presidency, and she's gone back to how he ran the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991 as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and botched the handling of Anita Hill's testimony over sexual harassment on Thomas' part. 

The thing is, Biden's transgression is hardly worthy of the term.  He didn't have an affair.  He didn't assault anyone.  He crossed the line, yes, but he did so thinking it was just innocent physical contact.  He's had physical contact with women before, yes, but he's also been touchy-feely with men, too.  That's the sort of fellow Biden is; he likes to literally press the flesh with everyone, getting close to people and connecting with people, because he lives people and he loves politics.   He has a penchant for glad-handling everyone just like the uncle he is.  (I'm not talking about literal nephews and nieces, though I assume he has some; I mean he's the uncle of the Democratic Party.)  He's not unlike the late actor Telly Savalas, who'd always glad-handle friends and fans and tell them he lucky they were to get "a touch of Telly."  And by all accounts, he was a great guy to hang around with.  So, it seems, is Biden.

 And Anita Hill?  Biden was completely foolish to cross-examine her as if Thomas were the victim, which was exactly the wrong strategy, but his bigger problem was reining in his fellow senators with their over-the-top grilling of Professor Hill  - including Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter, who voted for Thomas and later regretted it, saying he realized Professor Hill had been telling the truth all along - and, I swear, Biden almost came to blows with Utah's Orrin Hatch.

Biden voted against Thomas in the end.  He believed Anita Hill after cross-examining her.  And he went on to become a major proponent of women's issues.  That part is left unmentioned.

What should not be left unmentioned is that any remedy to Biden's latest incident should be the equivalent of a slap on the wrist, not internal exile, as happened to Al Franken.  Because any punishment for sexual harassment or unwanted physical contact should only be out of proportion only when the act is also out of proportion.

Which begs the obvious question - why are we talking about minor physical contact ending a political career while Clarence Thomas - who reaffirmed recently that he's not retiring - is still on the Supreme Court?      

Ford Tempo

Here's how the issue of Christine Blasey Ford's attempt to testify against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh  stand at this point.  After Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley set an arbitrary deadline for Mrs. Ford to agree to a time to testify and she and her attorney held out for demands to benefit her ability to present her case, the chairman kept setting the deadline further back.  And further back,.  And further back.  And so on and so on, until Mrs. Ford finally agreed to testify, and now she and her attorney are in the process of negotiating the particulars. 

What caused Grassley to be more accommodating? Probably Donald Trump's tweet in which he wanted to know why the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which would investigate Mrs. Ford's claims of sexual assault against Kavanaugh, didn't hear from the accuser in the early 1980s, when the assault was supposed to have taken place.  Once reminded that the FBI doesn't involve itself in sexual-assault cases involving people who have not been appointed to the judiciary due to the fact that they are teenagers, Trump then asked in a follow-up tweet why she and her "loving parents"  (his words) didn't report the assault to local authorities in Maryland, where Kavanaugh and Mrs. Ford lived.  Well - thousands if not millions have people who had been sexually assaulted took to Twitter to explain why they never reported cases of assault - because they involved family members, a star student, an employer . . . and fear of retribution was a common factor in all of these cases.  They feared not being believed or having the blame deflected to them if they were believed.

Nevertheless, the Senate Republican caucus seems hell-bent on getting Kavanaugh confirmed, and with a couple of renegade Democrats, they're likely to pull it off.  But Christine Blasey Ford can still pursue a case against Kavanaugh even if he makes it onto the Court, and what might ultimately happen is that Democrats can "Fortas" him.  I refer to what happened to former Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas. who in 1969 was shown to have accepted a $20,000 retainer and was believed to have entered into a tax evasion scheme with other judges.  Fortas resigned from the Court under pressure, rather than face lengthy impeachment proceedings, to save his family grief.  If Kavanaugh is confirmed and the charges against him don't go way, he could be forced off the Court like Fortas was, resigning to spare his wife and daughters further grief.

But then he'll have more time to devote to charity.

I've been led to understand that the Senate Judiciary Committee didn't do a good job the last time it looked into a sex scandal, when many of its members didn't take seriously Anita Hill's charges of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas in 1991.  The full Senate did a better job of that. Thomas was confirmed by a vote of 52-48 - the highest negative vote ever received by a confirmed Supreme Court justice.