The Supreme Court announced today that Justice Clarence Thomas, the serial glommer of luxo-deals from billionaire “friends” of his, recused himself from an appeal brought by former Trump lawyer John Eastman that sought to have his emails withheld from the House January 6 Committee. The court rejected the appeal without Thomas’ participation in the vote.
If there is karmic justice then Democrats, for better or worse, will sweep 2024 and Clarence will be booted on his proverbial ass on to the steps of the Supreme Court. His entire career is an exposed sham and Congress can force the Scotus to clean up their house or suffer imposed regulation. Clarence is a HUGE problem that undermines American values and moving into the future.
Thomas has lifetime tenure on the Court. There is no way we can get him off, short of impeaching him. But politicians of every stripe are loath to impeach one another for the same reason sharks don't bite each other: "Professional Courtesy". (Old joke, sorry, I couldn't resist!)
There’s also the very strong possibility that more than a few of the messages are between Eastman and Ginni Thomas. Which might even cause John Roberts to pause getting his third haircut of the day to cluck his tongue. Briefly.
See, one must empathize with Clarences delicate situation regarding recusal. If he recused himself too much then that would expose the favors and perks. While Clarence publicly opined about vacationing in RV camps with Joe 6-pack, he really did NOT want to give up the secret jet-set and yachting lifestyle. Almost best to not recuse at all.
Low life. It is funny. I never did like the man. His vibe and aura have always been nasty. Turns out it is true. It is shocking our system is set up where he can just continue to be on the Supreme Court. It is stunning his peers have not acted. What is their deal? Why are they frozen? In this age, where honor and truth are cancelled, we must close the loopholes.
I mean he might as well keep going on vacations, taking bribes and ruling in their favor. He did it all along, got caught, and still no action. Fuck it.
Had to look this up. Thought you were referring to Tammany Hall, a corrupt political organization.
Turns out the Taney Court refers to Chief Justice of Supreme Court, Roger Taney who famously ruled that slaves were property under the Fifth Amendment, and any law that would deprive a slave owner of that property was unconstitutional." - Dred Scott decision, 1857.
During the 1828 U.S. presidential election, Tammany Hall leaders met with Democratic candidate Andrew Jackson and agreed to endorse him after he promised to give them control over the allocation of some federal jobs. After he was elected president, Jackson fulfilled his promise. Oddly enough, it was President Jackson who appointed Roger Taney to the Supreme Court in 1836.
In the old days he never spoke up & his votes were on the losing side. Now he’s emboldened, probably regretting it, kind of like TFG probably regrets running for Prez.
In the last fifty years, we have had the good, bad and the ugly on SCOTUS. Thomas makes the bad and ugly pale to insignificance. If any of you have ever studied his decisions, the logic, the intellectual rigor of a strong mind- is utterly missing. He is the poster child for what is wrong with our nation's court system.
I am stupefied that the Claremont Institute alleged with straight faces that, in Lucian’s telling, “the Constitution should be interpreted according to a theory of “natural law.” That intellectual theory went beyond even the “originalist” interpretation of the Constitution by justices such as Antonin Scalia, and stated that rights held by citizens of the United States came from God and nature, rather than the Constitution.”
Their assertion is ludicrous on its face, given that the Constitution *itself* includes the words that vitiate the assertion, namely, the First Amendment:
“ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Asserting that people’s rights derive from God and nature and not the Constitution when the Constitution prohibits the establishment of any religion essentially amounts to arguing that the Constitution is bunk and they should be entitled to ignore it.
But of course, as a Pastafarian, I am actually in touch with the One Source of Truth. The Flying Spaghetti Monster told me in a vision that the Claremont Institute is full of baloney and should be publicly ridiculed for arrogance and for publishing complete drivel.
Well, it looks to me that Mr. Justice Thomas has decided to pass up the opportunity to further rub into the public's psyche the fact that he, and not any of them, occupy an undeserved seat on the Supreme Court. Not that it matters to anyone there, the public visage of utter contempt for law, equity, and it sounded administration would not have dissuaded Mr. Justice Clarence Thomas from weighing in on whether one of his former law clerk's could successfully assert some sort of privilege against exposing the contents of his email account to federal prosecutors. Even for Justice Clarence Thomas, protecting his former clerk, John Eastman from the obligations of responding to a federal subpoena for his email records was a bridge too far. But, like all potential autocrats, Justice Thomas belongs to him, and to he and his cohort of arch conservatives alone. John Eastman, you may recall, had strong links to Claremont-McKenna College in Southern California, where Eastman was a law professor, supposedly known for his devotion to constitutional interpretation. But this time his efforts failed. Eastman knew that if the plan he was proposing ever came before the Supreme Court, and objectively rendered verdict on the part of the court would have thrown him out summarily. What Eastman was counting on was that institutionalists and liberals quail at the thought of political violence thrown into the service of a novel theory of governance that would allow deep dyed conservatives to bypass the normal procedures for counting electoral college votes, and toss the issue back to the state legislators for a redetermination as to who won the 2020 election.
The ambiguous language of the presidential succession act of 1887 supposedly would allow Professor Eastman's theory of presidential succession to somehow survive the scrutiny it was then getting, which arose from the bear language of the Constitution, which said that state legislatures got to decide how members of the electoral College would be selected. The fact that for a century and a quarter, the actual practice had been to base decisions on the number of actual votes cast and counted, one by one, in favor one or another presidential candidate. Now, Eastman was proposing, that gerrymandered state legislatures could themselves suddenly get to rethink how they wanted the system of elections for president and vice president to occur. The whole idea was to suddenly make our existing practices 'controversial', which would have the effect of delegitimizing the built-up edifice of national elections conducted every four years in which the number of votes cast by actual voters within the fifty American states, plus American territories, would actually carry the day.
John Eastman was also counting on the smokescreen thrown up by the losing candidate, Donald Trump, would so muddy the waters that Trump's supporters, building on their outrage and willpower, would force the nation to reconsider how presidential elections should be conducted. Eastman knew that, as a legal matter, his chances of prevailing were between slim and none, and he admitted as such, that if the Supreme Court ever got a hold of the case, his theories would go out the window. But the thought of defenestration did not stop him; no indeed. He was relying on a cynical view shared by many movement conservatives that the pusillanimity of members of Congress and the institutional government would cause them to cave in in the face of righteous anger streaming into Washington from all points on the compass. The out-of-towners did in fact arrive, but the stout resistance put up by The Capitol Police Force against the insurrectionists carried the day, and the secrecy that surrounded how these insurrectionists came to travel to Washington to impress members of Congress and the national media of their righteous anger fell far short of the mark. Instead, it was the thin blue line of Capitol police that garnered the nation's sympathy and attention. The rioters simply lent themselves to the impression of a football game tailgate party gone bad, and all the sudden the tables were turned.
Now what is John Eastman's turn for his case to be heard in the courts, and he is objecting to having his email account exposed to public view by prosecutors, and Clarence Thomas, his onetime boss and benefactor, is not being heard from. No surprise there. Mr. Justice Thomas has all he can do to keep the tide of public scrutiny from washing him and his wife, Ginny Thomas, in a flood of bad publicity. That kind of circumspection comes rather late in Mr. Justice Thomas' career. Better late than never.
Oct 3, 2023·edited Oct 3, 2023Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
I don't mean to be a nit-picker but the Greenbrier Resort is in West "BY GOD" Virginia. Having grown up in Greenbrier County and spent most of my adult life correcting the assumption that West Virginia is still located somewhere in Virginia, I just couldn't let this, I'm sure just an oversight, pass without comment. By the way, the Greenbrier is owned by the current Governor of West Virginia, Jim Justice. I'm sorry to say. https://www.greenbrier.com/
thomas would own black slaves if he thought he could get away with it. The man is an incredible pig of a person, who like the orange maggot traitor, does nothing unless it serves his own interests. He is probably going to use this recusal as justification that he "does the right thing".
We have Bush Sr. to thank for this poor excuse for a SC justice. Biden, of course played a role too as chair of the Judiciary Committee in 1991. Uncle Thomas has been an embarrassment to the nation for the past 32-years, and shows no signs of leaving. His recusal from the Eastman matter is a no-brainer, and gives him the illusion of being ethical. Whether he would have recused himself without all the recent exposures of his corrupt lifestyle is anyone’s guess. And whether CJ Roberts played any role in it is also unknown. Roberts himself is no shining example of ethical rectitude, and is spineless to boot. Uncle Thomas is the poster boy for term limits on federal judges, or at the very least age limits. Even the not-exactly ethical Roman Catholic hierarchy requires its bishops to retire at 75, and prohibits cardinals over 80 from voting for a new pope. Ginsberg should have been the real lesson. Leaving justices to decide on their own when to go obviously doesn’t work, and reasonable limits on their tenure will not cause the pillars of civilization to crumble.
I’m enjoying the news, hearing the Felon-in-Chief, Cry-Baby Extraordinaire rant about having to attend his trial. As for Clarence & Co.-- he and his billionaire, fascist Traitors deserve a take down next. They should take their tax-free yachts and sail off while they’re ahead.
Maybe the “unwoke” dead heads will wake up when their grandkids start asking pointed questions . . . Like, “Why does Ronny want to murder people at the border?” Or “Are the Chinese trying to kill us with Fentanyl like Miss Nikki says?”
You’ve really gotta be “un-woke” to fall for this crap.
This was a no cost recusal for Clarence. He knows that Eastman is toast. He's going to be disbarred and he is going to go to prison no matter what SCOTUS does. By recusing he plays both sides of the fence. He isn't too tainted with the Eastman stench (at least no more than he already is) and he avoids MAGA hate if he doesn't side with Eastman on the case. Ginni may be a lot of things, but she knows how to keep Clarence out of trouble when it don't cost them nothing.
It's true, I haven't read the book (yet). However my comment referred to the modern cultural reference to "an exceedingly subservient person or house negro" (quoted from Wikipedia).
I can’t seem to comment without an obscenity.
In 83 years i found yelling obscenities is great for stress release. So scream fuck loudly. As many times as it takes to feel better.
They say going to a room (made for that purpose) and smashing things is said to be a pretty good destresser.
Good psych resorts have such
overrated.
It truly is very cathartic. Even Twain opined that in the right circumstances it has greater value than prayer!
I've completely run out of OMGs, WTFs, and WTAFs.
Read Jeff Tiedrich
He’s always got good words for these situations
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/donald-trump-is-about-to-have-a-very?utm_campaign=email-post&r=a0bt&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Thanks Lucian for keeping us well informed.
I skim his newsletter, but sometimes the outrage overload is just too much.
I do that all the time.
If there is karmic justice then Democrats, for better or worse, will sweep 2024 and Clarence will be booted on his proverbial ass on to the steps of the Supreme Court. His entire career is an exposed sham and Congress can force the Scotus to clean up their house or suffer imposed regulation. Clarence is a HUGE problem that undermines American values and moving into the future.
Thomas has lifetime tenure on the Court. There is no way we can get him off, short of impeaching him. But politicians of every stripe are loath to impeach one another for the same reason sharks don't bite each other: "Professional Courtesy". (Old joke, sorry, I couldn't resist!)
Oh can we ever dream!
There are ways around Clarence. Change SCOTUS terms?, pack the court?, indict Ginny?!!,…
Let’s get creative!😊
There’s also the very strong possibility that more than a few of the messages are between Eastman and Ginni Thomas. Which might even cause John Roberts to pause getting his third haircut of the day to cluck his tongue. Briefly.
No, he recused himself in an easy no-brainer case to make himself look ethical.
See, one must empathize with Clarences delicate situation regarding recusal. If he recused himself too much then that would expose the favors and perks. While Clarence publicly opined about vacationing in RV camps with Joe 6-pack, he really did NOT want to give up the secret jet-set and yachting lifestyle. Almost best to not recuse at all.
Low life. It is funny. I never did like the man. His vibe and aura have always been nasty. Turns out it is true. It is shocking our system is set up where he can just continue to be on the Supreme Court. It is stunning his peers have not acted. What is their deal? Why are they frozen? In this age, where honor and truth are cancelled, we must close the loopholes.
I mean he might as well keep going on vacations, taking bribes and ruling in their favor. He did it all along, got caught, and still no action. Fuck it.
Considering that Roberts, as in The Roberts Court, has his own issues with his wife and her income sources, not stunning at all. 😡
This court has no peers except for the Taney court.
Had to look this up. Thought you were referring to Tammany Hall, a corrupt political organization.
Turns out the Taney Court refers to Chief Justice of Supreme Court, Roger Taney who famously ruled that slaves were property under the Fifth Amendment, and any law that would deprive a slave owner of that property was unconstitutional." - Dred Scott decision, 1857.
During the 1828 U.S. presidential election, Tammany Hall leaders met with Democratic candidate Andrew Jackson and agreed to endorse him after he promised to give them control over the allocation of some federal jobs. After he was elected president, Jackson fulfilled his promise. Oddly enough, it was President Jackson who appointed Roger Taney to the Supreme Court in 1836.
Thanks, Babette!
This court is making the Taney court look enlightened.
Wow! Now THAT is a truly damning comparison, especially in relation to Clarence Thomas!
In the old days he never spoke up & his votes were on the losing side. Now he’s emboldened, probably regretting it, kind of like TFG probably regrets running for Prez.
In the last fifty years, we have had the good, bad and the ugly on SCOTUS. Thomas makes the bad and ugly pale to insignificance. If any of you have ever studied his decisions, the logic, the intellectual rigor of a strong mind- is utterly missing. He is the poster child for what is wrong with our nation's court system.
“Scholarly writing” from the Claremont Institute will just never not be funny.
I am stupefied that the Claremont Institute alleged with straight faces that, in Lucian’s telling, “the Constitution should be interpreted according to a theory of “natural law.” That intellectual theory went beyond even the “originalist” interpretation of the Constitution by justices such as Antonin Scalia, and stated that rights held by citizens of the United States came from God and nature, rather than the Constitution.”
Their assertion is ludicrous on its face, given that the Constitution *itself* includes the words that vitiate the assertion, namely, the First Amendment:
“ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Asserting that people’s rights derive from God and nature and not the Constitution when the Constitution prohibits the establishment of any religion essentially amounts to arguing that the Constitution is bunk and they should be entitled to ignore it.
But of course, as a Pastafarian, I am actually in touch with the One Source of Truth. The Flying Spaghetti Monster told me in a vision that the Claremont Institute is full of baloney and should be publicly ridiculed for arrogance and for publishing complete drivel.
When I read that, I thought "It's time for Thomas Jefferson to rise from the dead and smite the Claremont Institute but good."
Ramen!!
:D
Agree. Sophistry (only sounds good) is nevah evah a valid substitute for scholarship (soundness)
The first Civil War ended badly
for Manifest Destiny white Supremacist lunatics.
They want to do it again.
Well, it looks to me that Mr. Justice Thomas has decided to pass up the opportunity to further rub into the public's psyche the fact that he, and not any of them, occupy an undeserved seat on the Supreme Court. Not that it matters to anyone there, the public visage of utter contempt for law, equity, and it sounded administration would not have dissuaded Mr. Justice Clarence Thomas from weighing in on whether one of his former law clerk's could successfully assert some sort of privilege against exposing the contents of his email account to federal prosecutors. Even for Justice Clarence Thomas, protecting his former clerk, John Eastman from the obligations of responding to a federal subpoena for his email records was a bridge too far. But, like all potential autocrats, Justice Thomas belongs to him, and to he and his cohort of arch conservatives alone. John Eastman, you may recall, had strong links to Claremont-McKenna College in Southern California, where Eastman was a law professor, supposedly known for his devotion to constitutional interpretation. But this time his efforts failed. Eastman knew that if the plan he was proposing ever came before the Supreme Court, and objectively rendered verdict on the part of the court would have thrown him out summarily. What Eastman was counting on was that institutionalists and liberals quail at the thought of political violence thrown into the service of a novel theory of governance that would allow deep dyed conservatives to bypass the normal procedures for counting electoral college votes, and toss the issue back to the state legislators for a redetermination as to who won the 2020 election.
The ambiguous language of the presidential succession act of 1887 supposedly would allow Professor Eastman's theory of presidential succession to somehow survive the scrutiny it was then getting, which arose from the bear language of the Constitution, which said that state legislatures got to decide how members of the electoral College would be selected. The fact that for a century and a quarter, the actual practice had been to base decisions on the number of actual votes cast and counted, one by one, in favor one or another presidential candidate. Now, Eastman was proposing, that gerrymandered state legislatures could themselves suddenly get to rethink how they wanted the system of elections for president and vice president to occur. The whole idea was to suddenly make our existing practices 'controversial', which would have the effect of delegitimizing the built-up edifice of national elections conducted every four years in which the number of votes cast by actual voters within the fifty American states, plus American territories, would actually carry the day.
John Eastman was also counting on the smokescreen thrown up by the losing candidate, Donald Trump, would so muddy the waters that Trump's supporters, building on their outrage and willpower, would force the nation to reconsider how presidential elections should be conducted. Eastman knew that, as a legal matter, his chances of prevailing were between slim and none, and he admitted as such, that if the Supreme Court ever got a hold of the case, his theories would go out the window. But the thought of defenestration did not stop him; no indeed. He was relying on a cynical view shared by many movement conservatives that the pusillanimity of members of Congress and the institutional government would cause them to cave in in the face of righteous anger streaming into Washington from all points on the compass. The out-of-towners did in fact arrive, but the stout resistance put up by The Capitol Police Force against the insurrectionists carried the day, and the secrecy that surrounded how these insurrectionists came to travel to Washington to impress members of Congress and the national media of their righteous anger fell far short of the mark. Instead, it was the thin blue line of Capitol police that garnered the nation's sympathy and attention. The rioters simply lent themselves to the impression of a football game tailgate party gone bad, and all the sudden the tables were turned.
Now what is John Eastman's turn for his case to be heard in the courts, and he is objecting to having his email account exposed to public view by prosecutors, and Clarence Thomas, his onetime boss and benefactor, is not being heard from. No surprise there. Mr. Justice Thomas has all he can do to keep the tide of public scrutiny from washing him and his wife, Ginny Thomas, in a flood of bad publicity. That kind of circumspection comes rather late in Mr. Justice Thomas' career. Better late than never.
I don't mean to be a nit-picker but the Greenbrier Resort is in West "BY GOD" Virginia. Having grown up in Greenbrier County and spent most of my adult life correcting the assumption that West Virginia is still located somewhere in Virginia, I just couldn't let this, I'm sure just an oversight, pass without comment. By the way, the Greenbrier is owned by the current Governor of West Virginia, Jim Justice. I'm sorry to say. https://www.greenbrier.com/
Thank you. Corrected.
He's a compromised and corrupt criminal who needs to be impeached and removed from office.
thomas would own black slaves if he thought he could get away with it. The man is an incredible pig of a person, who like the orange maggot traitor, does nothing unless it serves his own interests. He is probably going to use this recusal as justification that he "does the right thing".
We have Bush Sr. to thank for this poor excuse for a SC justice. Biden, of course played a role too as chair of the Judiciary Committee in 1991. Uncle Thomas has been an embarrassment to the nation for the past 32-years, and shows no signs of leaving. His recusal from the Eastman matter is a no-brainer, and gives him the illusion of being ethical. Whether he would have recused himself without all the recent exposures of his corrupt lifestyle is anyone’s guess. And whether CJ Roberts played any role in it is also unknown. Roberts himself is no shining example of ethical rectitude, and is spineless to boot. Uncle Thomas is the poster boy for term limits on federal judges, or at the very least age limits. Even the not-exactly ethical Roman Catholic hierarchy requires its bishops to retire at 75, and prohibits cardinals over 80 from voting for a new pope. Ginsberg should have been the real lesson. Leaving justices to decide on their own when to go obviously doesn’t work, and reasonable limits on their tenure will not cause the pillars of civilization to crumble.
Bush and Leonard Leo.
I’m enjoying the news, hearing the Felon-in-Chief, Cry-Baby Extraordinaire rant about having to attend his trial. As for Clarence & Co.-- he and his billionaire, fascist Traitors deserve a take down next. They should take their tax-free yachts and sail off while they’re ahead.
Maybe the “unwoke” dead heads will wake up when their grandkids start asking pointed questions . . . Like, “Why does Ronny want to murder people at the border?” Or “Are the Chinese trying to kill us with Fentanyl like Miss Nikki says?”
You’ve really gotta be “un-woke” to fall for this crap.
This was a no cost recusal for Clarence. He knows that Eastman is toast. He's going to be disbarred and he is going to go to prison no matter what SCOTUS does. By recusing he plays both sides of the fence. He isn't too tainted with the Eastman stench (at least no more than he already is) and he avoids MAGA hate if he doesn't side with Eastman on the case. Ginni may be a lot of things, but she knows how to keep Clarence out of trouble when it don't cost them nothing.
I often wonder if Harriet Beecher Stowe had a time machine when she created the character "Uncle Tom".
If you're comparing Uncle Tom to Clarence Thomas, or Clarence Thomas to Uncle Tom, I've got to wonder if you've ever read the book.
It's true, I haven't read the book (yet). However my comment referred to the modern cultural reference to "an exceedingly subservient person or house negro" (quoted from Wikipedia).