In re. Respect for the Law vs. Thomas and Scalia: Time for another round of our beloved game "If the Shoe Was on the Other Foot"

WANTED

ANTONIN "NINO THE LIP" SCALIA
and CLARENCE "COKE CAN" THOMAS

Caution: Do not attempt to apprehend these men yourself. They are armed with extreme crackpot ideology and considered extremely dangerous to the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law, and can count on the support of persons of limitless resources, contempt for the law, and ruthlessness. Especially watch out for that Mrs. Justice Thomas. She's hell on wheels.

by Ken

In a post earlier today Howie asked, "When Do Impeachment Proceedings Get Underway For Clarence Thomas?" The immediate issue is the awkward matter of a wee goof by Supreme Court Justice Thomas: He, um, well, lied on, for sure, five annual disclosure forms, and almost certainly a sixth -- and that's just what we know of.

For the years 2003-06, we know, thanks to Common Cause's dredging of IRS records, that Mrs. Justice Thomas was paid $686,589 by the conservative Heritage Foundation, and Common Cause believes that for 2009 Mrs. Justice T was paid a salary by Liberty Central, the far-right lobbying group she helped found. For each of those years Justice T listied his wife's income on his disclosure forms as "none." This is called breaking the law, six times over (again, that we know of), and it's hard to imagine a situation whereby this could be inadvertent or in any way innocent.

Since Mrs. Justice T is well-known as an extreme-right-wing activist, Justice T is hardly a stranger to questions about the propriety of her political activities, which include zealous partisanship on a whole range of issues that have been brought before her husband in his years on the High Court. His answer is always some variant of defending her free speech rights, but of course he's not that stupid, or he wouldn't have lied six times (that we know of) on those disclosure forms -- isn't it clear that he knows perfectly well what a clearcut conflict of interest there is?

And while we're on the subject of flagrant conflicts of interest, Common Cause is currently also asking:

"Did these two men, Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, have a shocking and undisclosed conflict of interest when they ruled on the Citizens United case -- which opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate political spending?"

They're inviting visitors to sign a petition "calling for a Justice Department investigation of whether Scalia and Thomas should have recused themselves from the Citizens United case because of their participation in secret political strategy meetings with Koch Industries."

We, the undersigned, call on the Department of Justice to investigate whether Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas should have recused themselves from ruling on the Citizens United case. We believe there are serious questions about their impartiality in this matter.

Justices Scalia and Thomas have been featured guests at secretive political strategy sessions sponsored by Koch Industries, a multi-billion dollar conglomerate that has invested millions of dollars in political campaigns and causes. Koch Industries was a major beneficiary of the Citizens United decision, which overturned long-established law to permit corporations to spend unlimited amounts on political advocacy.

Other guests at the private Koch meetings have included corporate leaders and conservative commentators. The involvement of Justices Scalia and Thomas creates a troubling appearance of bias, and should have led the Justices to disqualify or recuse themselves from participation in the Citizens United case. The Department of Justice has a duty to launch an immediate investigation.

About the only answer I can think of to the charges of conflict of interest against Justices Thomas and Scalia, the same one I hypothesized back when Justice Nino was taking the tiniest bit of heat for his flagrant conflict of interest in hanging out with then-Vice President "Big Dick" Cheney while he had every reason to believe he would be called on to rule on "Big Dick"'s suppression of the identities of the people he met with officially while developing his "energy policy," is that it doesn't matter how much time Justice Nino or Justice Clarence spends schmoozing right-wing potentates or even how much money said potentates pour into their family coffers, because the justices' votes were never affected in any way -- there was never any possibility that in a million years that would give even a microsecond's consideration to voting against the interests of their ideological bedfellows. That those bedfellows also made themselves their benefactors is just, well, gravy.

It's a time-honored cliché to say, with regard to conflict of interest, that what matters isn't actual conflict but the appearance of conflict of interest. Justices Nino and Clarence not only don't care about the appearance of conflict, they don't give a damn about the actual thing.

YES, IT'S TIME TO PLAY OUR FAVORITE GAME,
"IF THE SHOE WAS ON THE OTHER FOOT"!

By way of illustration, let's play, as I suggested in the post heading, another round of one of my favorite games, "If the Shoe Was on the Other Foot." This is where we imagine the roles switched: where accusations comparable to those against Justices Nino and Clarence were brought against one of the Supreme Court's moderate Justices -- Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, or Kagan.

TO BE CLEAR ABOUT SUPREME COURT LIBERALS

Let me say once again that there aren't any "liberal" justices on the High Court now, and there probably won't ever be again, the way the nomination and confirmation process has been reshaped. There's just the bloc of four ultra-extreme right-wing justices (the aforementioned Thomas and Scalia plus of course Chief Justice "Smirkin' John" Roberts and Justice "Sammy the Hammer" Alito), one more or less plain old right-wing justice ("Slow Anthony" Kennedy), plus the four moderates.

So just imagine Drudge or Hannity or Glenn Barf breathlessly "reporting" the ghost of a hint of a whisper of the slightest possibility of a financial irregularity anywhere in the same township with conflict of interest on the part of one of the moderate justices. In a matter of days the echo chamber of the Right-Wing Noise Machine would have the story thundering so crashingly from coast to coast that the justice's continued service would become a virtual impossibility. (At that, they're lucky that they're all sitting justices, so that their continued service would be only a virtual impossibility. If they were mere nominees caught in that ocean-to-ocean echo chamber, long before it reached that point they would have been cut loose by the president who appointed them, at least if it happened to be this president.)

There would be no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The drooling stooges who pass for "opinion leaders' now on the Right would be screaming for blood, and they would get it. (Think "Shirley Sherrod.")

CAN SOMEONE TELL THE INFOTAINMENT NOOZERS
THAT COMMON CAUSE IS NOT A "LIBERAL" ORG?

With regard to Common Cause, by the way, to whatever extent its reports on the financial and conflict-of-interest embarrassments of Justices Thomas and Scalia have gotten any notice in the infotainment noozemedia, in all the cases I've encountered it's always identified as a "liberal" group. It isn't. Never has been, and still isn't. It's a nonpartisan advocacy organization whose principal issues it lists as "money in government," "election reform," "ethics in government," "government accountability," "media and democracy," and "rule of law." "Right now," the "Our Issues" page on its website says,

we are working on several fronts to:

• Increase participation in the political process,

• Advance campaign finance reforms that make people and ideas more important than money,

• Make certain that government is open, ethical and accountable,

• Remove barriers to voting and ensure that our voting systems are accurate and accessible,

• Increase the diversity of voices and ownership in media, to make media more responsive to the needs of citizens in a democracy and to protect the editorial independence of public broadcasting, and to

• Make certain that public policy on health care, defense spending, climate change and other issues reflects the needs and priorities of our citizens, not special interests.

On the normal, rational ideological specturm, none of these is an "ideological" issue, just a good-government issue.

Is it really necessary to recall that Common Cause was the brainchild of a Republican, John Gardner? Actually, I would say that yes, apparently it is necessary.

I think I know where the confusion comes in. Common Cause says on the "About Us" page on its website," Common Cause "remains committed to honest, open and accountable government, as well as encouraging citizen participation in democracy." When we get down to specifics, it will be seen that while the group's goals are resolutely nonideological and nonpartisan, every single one is unequivocally and violently opposed by present-day right-wingers. Indeed, each is the object of lavishly funded to-the-death campaigns funded by those deep right-wing pockets.

Here's how those issues are framed in the website's "Our Vision" statement:

Common Cause is dedicated to restoring the core values of American democracy, reinventing an open, honest and accountable government that serves the public interest, and empowering ordinary people to make their voices heard in the political process.

In this spirit, Common Cause serves as an independent voice for change and a watchdog against corruption and abuse of power. Together with our sister organization, the Common Cause Education Fund, we employ a powerful combination of grassroots organizing, coalition building, research, policy development, public education, lobbying and litigation to win reform at all levels of government.

Founded with 4,000 core members in 1970 to serve as a people’s lobby, Common Cause has grown into a nationwide network of more than 400,000 members and supporters, with offices in 36 states and Washington, D.C. Today it works tirelessly to
• Strengthen public participation and faith in our institutions of self-government;

• Ensure that government and the political process serve the common good, rather than special interests;

• Curb the excessive influence of money on government decisions and elections and illuminate the connections between lobbying money coming in and government expenditures going out;

• Promote fair, honest and transparent elections;

• Hold government officials accountable for working within the rule of law and under high standards of ethical conduct;

• Fight for a vigorous, independent and diverse media; and

• Protect the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans.

"Public participation and faith in our institutions of self-government"? Serving "the common good, rather than special interests"? "Excessive influence of money on government decisions and elections"? "Fair, honest and transparent elections"? Applying the rule of law and high ethical standards to government officials? "A vigorous, independent and diverse media"? "The civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans"?

I don't see how any of these goals could be branded as "ideological," but modern-day "conservatism" is diametrically and implacably opposed to each of them. To illustrate how far off the rational ideological specturm it is, the achievement of any one of these goals would mean an immediate, automatic, unappealable death sentence for the present-day movement. In fact, even partial achievement of as few as two of these goals would probably represent a crippling blow.

Which isn't likely to happen, of course. Slowly but surely over the last several decades the New Right has learned how to spend all those billions of dollars at its disposal to make sure that its voice is overwhelmingly the one most Americans hear, and overwhelmingly represented in the courts. Which brings us, as a random example, to the pair of federal judges who has so far ruled against part or all of the health care law. Which we'll take up tomorrow.

#