Clarence Thomas belatedly admits luxury trips were paid for by rightwing billionaire
Supreme court justice amended his financial disclosure to confirm rightwing mega-donor Harlan #Crow funded travel
#Thomas’s relationship with Crow set off calls for more transparency by the justices and calls for more transparency.
ProPublica also reported last year that Samuel #Alito, another of the court’s conservative justices, flew on a private jet and vacationed with a billionaire who had business before the court.
Alito was granted a 90-day extension to file his report, something he has routinely sought.
Alito is also under scrutiny after reports from the New York Times that there was an upside-down US #flag flying outside of his home in Virginia as well as an Appeal to Heaven flag flying outside of a beach home in New Jersey.
The former is associated with the January 6 attack on the Capitol and the latter with #Christian#nationalism.
The supreme court’s nine justices all agreed to a code of conduct last year, though some experts have noted it does not go far enough and there is no way to adequately enforce it.
@cdarwin SCOTUS's Code of Conduct needs be drawn up by independent legal scholars, not the partisan "Federalist Society", to align with ethics rules normal federal judges are subjected to.
And every matter possibly corrupting justices' independence (optimistically taken as given) needs to be put on record & requires consequences relating to justices' participation in judicial processes involving actors contributing to possibly influence & corrupt justices' decisions.
The #Republican leaders of the House Oversight & Accountability, Judiciary & Ways & Means cmtes sent a letter to the #DOJ recommending the prosecution of #HunterBiden & #JamesBiden….
I wish there weren’t going to be debates.
A:They’re dumb
B:2nd term pres are notoriously bad in their 1st debate for reelection. They’re not used to being…questioned. Challenged. Having somebody in their face like that.
Obama got touched up by Romney in their 1st one. HW Bush got destroyed by Bill Clinton. Clinton in turn had trouble w wooden Bob Dole 1st time out
I slightly remember W doing ok against Kerry. But W was so fucking stupid “okay” was using complete sentences
One thing I'd like to point out, however. In the examples cited by #ElieMystal, not once was the "challenger" a former US President; the object of #impeachment...twice; a president that had attempted a #coup; an #insurrectionist; a former president found liable for #Rape; a thief of #ClassifiedDocuments, who never returned said documents when government came a-calling; a former president indicted for #conspiracy.
→not full list
Swalwell: In light of Republicans producing absolutely zero on #impeachment, let’s just declare, until they put up some evidence, that Joe #Biden has been acquitted of every single MAGA smear.
Paul Waldman on how Republicans and Fox News were so gung-ho about impeaching the mysteriously corrupt Biden. And then they weren't, and what does that tell us?
"Once it became clear that impeachment was fizzling out, Fox News stopped talking about the subject.
That silence only drives home that these hearings weren’t designed to root out corruption, but to score political points."
"The fruitless quest to find something criminal Biden did is particularly ironic given that Republicans are working so hard to return possibly the most corrupt president in history to the White House. Even now, they support him as he argues to the Supreme Court that presidents must be immune from prosecution for any crimes they might commit while in office. So if they want to find corruption, they know where they can look."
#Senate now going through nonsensical #Republican motions re #Mayorkas#impeachment that are all being rejected. There will likely be more before a real vote on Schumer’s point of order that article I is unconstitutional.
#HouseRepublicans are expected to send over articles of #impeachment against #DHS Sec #Mayorkas on Tues afternoon, kicking off what is likely to be a brief trial in the upper chamber that could conclude as soon as Wed.
Led by 11 impeachment managers appointed by #House Speaker #MikeJohnson, House #Republicans have demanded a full trial, while Senate Democrats, who hold a 51-49 majority, are planning to band together to dismiss or table the trial.
Most #Senate#Republicans, despite previously voicing issues w/the substance of the articles of #impeachment against #Mayorkas, have echoed the lower chamber’s calls for the Senate to adhere to the rules of impeachment & hold a #trial.
At least one Republican — Sen #MittRomney — has said he plans to vote against a full trial. Several others who have been critical of the impeachment have yet to stake out their position, including Sens #SusanCollins & #LisaMurkowski.
#HouseRepublicans urged Schumer to "schedule a trial on the matter expeditiously."
#Schumer & his staff have promised to start the process of swearing senators in as jurors the day after the articles are received in the chamber. Washington Senator Patty Murray, the #Senate President Pro Tempore, will preside over the #Mayorkas#impeachment trial.
The articles accuse #Mayorkas of "willful & systemic refusal to comply w/the #law" in enforcing #border policy & "breach public trust." After passage, #ChuckSchumer called the #impeachment …a "sham” & said #HouseRepublicans failed to demonstrate the Secy committed any impeachable offenses.
The #Senate is widely expected to acquit…. #Republicans in the upper chamber also expressed doubts Mayorkas' actions rise to "high crimes & misdemeanors" the standard set by the #Constitution for impeachments.
Todd Beeton writes that the Republican attempt to impeach Biden has revealed Republicans to be Russian assets:
"By calling this impeachment hearing, and giving Democrats the opportunity to call Parnas to testify in front of Congress for the first time, Republicans inadvertently left themselves exposed as compromised officials who actively placed Russian disinformation ahead of the truth."
"Trump’s Russian ties and his admiration for Vladimir Putin have been well-established. It’s clear that if reelected, Trump will do Putin’s bidding, particularly when it comes to the war with Ukraine, by ending U.S. funding of the war effort. So, it’s no accident that Republicans in Congress are actively resisting approval of that funding as well."
"Their use of Russian disinformation to try to impeach Biden aligns with their opposition to funding the war in Ukraine. These Republicans have shown themselves to be nothing less than Russian assets, and if they are reelected along with Trump in November, Putin will have what he wants most of all: a sort of shadow government right here in the U.S."
"Trump using his allies in the House GOP to hand Ukraine over to Vladimir Putin has barely registered 1/100th the odium The New York Times reserves for a Black academic’s questionable footnotes."
"And a special counsel appointed by Trump indicting a star witness in the GOP’s impeachment of Joe Biden for spreading Russian disinformation has not invited even one major news organization to step back and revisit how they’d been snowed out of covering the massive scandal of Trump and the GOP’s alignment from Putin and the worst regimes in the world, include Trump’s current benefactors, the Saudi royal family."
"Trump has always benefited from a normalcy bias that entices journalists at papers like The Times to take politicians at their word and to generally tailor their coverage to whatever they’re saying next – unless a politician does something truly unforgivable like, say, be a Democrat who turns 81 or uses home email at work."
"But Comer kept [the impeachment charade] going [even after it became apparent it is a charade], and he kept it going for one simple reason: Fox News, and the rest of the right-wing media following its lead, set up a very clear reward system."
"Comer and Jordan, and anyone else who cared to, make allegations; they get invited on Fox to talk them up; the small-dollar donations come in from the suckers who believe this spittle; and lies get filtered out into the discourse by a non-right-wing media that wants scoops and clicks but also fears in the back of its collective mind that it’s just possible that the Republicans are onto something and that if they dismiss that possibility, they’re guilty of liberal bias."
"It’s the right-wing propaganda equivalent of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous stages of grief. The five stages of right-wing propaganda: Assert, repeat, raise money, repeat again, blame the deep state when it falls apart. But now there is a sixth stage, which is when even Fox taps on the brakes and tells stooges like Comer, OK, you idiot, you have failed, it’s time to move on."