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.