91 Comments

This just in. A correction was issued saying the Justices were interviewed...however, the interviewer, the Court's Marshal, is not an investigator. She's more like an executive housekeeper for the building - including the matter of parking cars. Justice Roberts, said to be smarting from the Court's fall in public approbation, really laid an egg with this maneuver.

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Gail A. Curley, the Marshal, seems to have made a unilateral decision that no judge on the Supreme Court was the source of the leak. That's sooo messed up. Apparently, she talked to all of them and decided all on her own that they were innocent but didn't have them sign affidavits like everyone else that was questioned. Strains credulity.

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As I said, not an investigator - and not meant to be.

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No kidding.

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What a bucket of 'you know what'! Isn't there any way to get Ginny on the stand or something!

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On what stand?

Who on earth would deign to accuse the wife of a Supreme Court Justice of such a breach of ethics?

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Before a Grand Jury..?

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What grand jury? Leaking Supreme Court decisions is not, to my knowledge, a crime. According to Reuters, there are various factors involved.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/is-it-illegal-leak-us-supreme-court-opinion-2022-05-03/

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I think if they did a serious investigation into her (GT) part in the January 6th incident, there'd be a good reason for a grand jury?!

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Roberts is such a strange duck. He is the classic guy who wants his cake and to eat it too. He just comes across as so weak, and from what I read, his position is weak now. He need not worry about his legacy. It is set in stone now. Weak Chief Justice responsible for Citizen's United and other terrible things. How sad for the U.S.A.

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It just occurred to me that John Roberts and Kevin McCarthy have a few things in common. Birds of a feather?

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to my mind, pretty much. I do think that Roberts is more of a brainiac than McCarthy, but then so are most people with a pulse.

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When I was a kid, I had an inflatable Bobo the Clown that was about as tall as I was. Punch it in the red nose and it would fall over and stand back up again. I can imagine Bobo with Kevin McCarthy's face.

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very common toy. mine was Joe Palooka. kicked his ass every day for about a month, then it got very boring.

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They “spoke” to the judges.

Imagine…About the leak, Justice. Have you any ideas about how to begin and where?

No? Ok.

As opposed to a sit down interview with specific questions for each.

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They were not required to sign affidavits. Just reported.

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Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas

by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson

Of course this despicable man married a horrible woman! Who else would?

Just read this old book. He never should have been seated. Decades later we

are still paying the price of the Senate's ineptitude.

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Ineptitude compounded by sexism and racism. Yes, racism: A committee of white men declining to hold a Black man to the standards they would have held a white person to (I hope, though I do have my doubts), and white liberals afraid of being called racist if they criticized the nominee in any way. Oh yeah, and the apparent assumption that any Black man was a suitable successor to Thurgood Marshall.

It's worth revisiting the Republican hue and cry against the late Lani Guinier when she was nominated to be an assistant attorney general less than two years later: more sexism and racism. Republicans didn't have the slightest worry about being called racist. They didn't then, and they don't now.

President Biden was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee that interviewed Anita Hill and confirmed Clarence Thomas. Yes, it was more than 30 years ago, but I've got my fingers crossed that in the intervening decades he's come to understand in his bones just how terrible that process was. "Justice" Thomas was pretty much a bump on the SCOTUS log before the far-right majority solidified, but the country is paying dearly now for his confirmation then.

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Thomas' accuser, Anita Hill, was a Black woman, who many racist whites considered to be promiscuous. I remember my own mother and the derision she expressed about Ms. Hill; it never crossed my mother's mind that she was telling the truth.

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Unfortunately at the time I ran into similar reactions. And now that I think of it, some of the reactions to Christine Blasey Ford's testimony about Brett Kavanaugh 25+ years later were somewhat similar, e.g., "what was she doing at that party anyway?"

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Last year as a personal project I delved a bit into the topic of misogyny over the years, which is something I recommend that everyone do. It's interesting how politics legitimizes misogyny by tying it to racism. There is also no effort made to understand the psychology of the aftermath of sexual assault. I came to the conclusion that most women have been sexually assaulted at least once in their lives. If you grew up in the same time period as Ms. Ford, you would understand why being raped isn't something you want to tell the world, especially when you're young. The overwhelming message was that you brought it on, you were to blame. I think that the people who pushed Ford to come forward were, more than anything else, attempting to weaponize her to stop Kavanaugh's confirmation. It had nothing to do with him being a predator with no moral compass.

If you watched the testimony of Anita Hill, you realized that she was telling the truth. A lot of us saw ourselves in her shoes. What woman hasn't experienced a male co-worker or boss saying things to us that made us uncomfortable? Like, to the point where we did our best to avoid them?

So, we are told by these guilt-free white men, that we must behave ourselves. We must not go to parties, walk alone at night, get into elevators with strange men, sit at the bar, wear certain clothes, Just think, our president was one of those men.

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Biden’s failure as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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George H. W. Bush nominated him.

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Yes, unfortunately, that is one Joe's black checks.

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Biden has had to do more than his share of consciousness-raising over the years. The way he behaved towards Anita Hill was typical for the times, unfortunately. He also has been proverbially kicked in the pants for what he did to the bankruptcy laws (and in his home state of Delaware, he had plenty of support from the banks and creditors who enjoyed the state's lax banking laws).

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That is certainly true...and I think he has done a very good job of bringing himself forward. I'm very thankful for his quiet competence at this point in time.

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So am I. I think the younger members of the Democratic caucus have done a great job of bringing his mindset into the present. One of the things I appreciate about Joe Biden is his open mind and willingness to let go of old attitudes for the sake of our country's future.

I greatly admire his even-handed, adult handling of the war in Ukraine. There is literally no one I would consider to be more competent and level-headed. Imagine what would have happened if this war broke out while Trump was president. Right now, we'd be in World War 3. And Trump would be doing everything under the sun to help Putin.

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True dat!!!

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That was Clarence Thomas, not Kegs Kavanaugh, and it remains one of the darkest stains on Bidens career.

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And have one then Senator Joe Biden to blame, at least in part. What a boor he was to Dr. Anita Hill. Grateful as I am that he is our President today I have a hard time forgetting that shameful episode.

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Shoulda, woulda, coulda, but he was seated...damnit!

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Said to have one of the best porn collections in the DC area. Imagine wifey all dressed up in leather and judgie restrained with a ballgag in his mouth waiting for “instructions”.

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EEEuuuuwwww! Now there's a mental image I did NOT need!!! Yick, yick, yick!

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January 21, 2023
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A good bet is some member of the "Supreme Court Historical Society" - a group of dark money Republicans who buy social access to R. Justices.

If one of their own needs to settle up a $200K credit card bill to get on the Court and reverse Roe v Wade, easy peasy.

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Maybe the same guy who bought Kellyanne Conway’s business then dissolved it. Mr. Leo?

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That is my guess as well....well, that or Leonard Leo "brokered" the payoff of Kavanaugh's credit card bill.

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Could be, although there are many multiples of him.

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Another failure of the news media. After the initial reports that somehow Kavanaugh's suffocating debts simply vanished overnight, that story became somehow off-limits.

Federal judges make a lot of money. Private schools are the norm. However, numerous outstanding loans, a house mortgaged to the hilt and other indications of an inability to live on over $220,000 a year show a lack of maturity and possibly a gambling problem.

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I just need an indictment... anyone would do! Just one eensy weensy indictment... Is that too much to ask for?!

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January 21, 2023Edited
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That's my point. Kavanaugh could afford private school tuition on his salary. What he couldn't afford were the other debts he'd accrued as a ridiculous social climber who "likes beer." The extreme chaos of his financial life created the question of whether he could at some point be "bought." The fact that someone paid all his debts renders the question moot. But it's very important that his debts went poof while the press looked away. How Kavanaugh squeaked into the SC is obviously because of GOP votes, and because someone very powerful made sure he was confirmed.

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Yes! That seemed to die with a whimper...

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John Roberts knows damn well who leaked the decision. If it wasn't Ginni, it was Sam Alito himself, after all we know he leaked Hobby Lobby, he admitted it. Roberts would rather whine about how mean everyone is being to him and the other 5 right wing ideologues than take steps to impose a code of ethics on his court. Roger Taney is cheering him on from Hell, Roberts will be recorded as the worst CJ in the history of the Court.

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He is complicit. The justices are the bosses of the Marshal. Chief knew exactly what he was doing when he assigned her to the task.

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So, if no one was obviously guilty, and the justices were not interviewed by an actual investigator, so by process of elimination, one or more of the justices are guilty.

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Typical in that it fits in so well with “The rules for me and the rules for thee!” mindset in Washington, D.C., in that the peons are held accountable but the higher ups get a pass for any infractions of the rules.

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Please follow up on this Lucian. So important to America that the Trump stacked Supreme Court be exposed and held accountable. Roe v Wade is just the beginning.

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Yes! Please!

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They also interviewed three desks, two filing cabinets, and a wastepaper basket.

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Another writer I consider in the same league with Lucian is Robert Hubbell. He wrote on the same subject in part as follows

"The information content of the first two sentences of the press release is zero. The statements are so broad as to be meaningless. Examples abound:

Dad to son: Did you take my car last night to go joyriding with your friends?

Son: I spoke to my friends, and we engaged in an iterative process in which they asked questions and answered mine.

Dad to daughter: Did you take the bottle of gin out of the liquor cabinet and drink it with your friends behind the garage.

Daughter: I spoke to my friends, and we engaged in an iterative process in which they asked questions and answered mine.

American public to the Marshal of the Court: Did you interview the justices?

Marshal of the Court: I spoke to my employers, and we engaged in an iterative process in which they asked questions and answered mine."

In each of the above examples, the answer consists of quibbling, mental reservation, and distraction. They provide no information about whether the son took the car without permission, the daughter took the gin out of the liquor cabinet, or the Marshal interviewed the justices.

Did the Marshal of the Court really expect that anyone would believe that her vague description of an “iterative process” was an “interview”?

the Marshal did not have “credible” leads that the 82 employees she forced to sign affidavits were the source of the leak—but she made them sign affidavits merely because they had access to the draft opinion. All nine justices had access to the draft but were not forced to sign affidavits.

Why the different treatment for the justices? The question answers itself: the Marshal (and the justices) did not want to force the justices to deny under oath that they were the source of the leak."

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This inquiry bears a strikingly close resemblance to the kind of 'investigation' that Fox News and it's right wing cohort applied to questioning people that they ally themselves with. Of course, none of the staff working at the Supreme Court are in a position to leak confidential information to friendly sources outside the court, nor would they do so. The justices, however, occupy positions where they are essentially accountable to themselves, and only incidentally, to each other. Each justice operates more or less independently of the others, and if something happens untoward, they basically cover each other's backs.

It seems pretty clear to me that Justice Sam Alito spilled the beans, because he's done that before. Chief Justice John Roberts, in announcing the end of the probe as being 'inconclusive', averred that the leaking of the draft opinion was prompted by partisan opposition to the opinion's conclusion and decision. That's patently nonsensical, and there's nothing in the report itself that remotely suggests a motive for leaking the Dobbs draft decision as being an explosion of liberal sentiment against the ending of the Roe v. Wade era. It's also pretty clear to me that releasing the draft opinion had its intended effect of locking down the six radical Republican votes in favor of its ruling, making it a fait accompli that could not be backed away from, should a majority of the American public oppose the ruling. Anyone who did so would be seen as betraying conservative principles, such as they are these days.

As the conservatives now occupying seats on the court have already shown themselves completely lacking in character, one wonders why they even bothered with worrying about a leaked decision. All of the clerks occupying their honorific posts at the court would understand that leaking a bombshell decision would be a death knell to professional advancement in anything having to do with law, and these are people who devoted their entire academic and professional careers just toward the positions that they now hold. They were not selected to be law clerks at the Supreme Court because they oppose its dominant philosophy these days. They're not about to break the Easter egg that symbolizes their entrée into the rarefied world of big firm law practice.

It was revealed this evening that the individual conducting these inquiries into how the Dobbs decision became the subject of a leak, that she claimed that she interviewed the individual justices one or more times during the course of her investigation. Of course, none of those jurists was asked to sign a sworn affidavit that they knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about how Dobbs got leaked. Just a friendly conversation roughly the equivalent of a police detective interviewing the mayor of a city who, not coincidentally, holds the fate of that police detective's continuing employment in that city hostage. In a situation where questions ought to be as pointed and sharp as arrowheads, what we find our marshmallows and suction cups at the tips of the arrows. It just goes to show that even in Washington DC, the courts are just the same as any other place within the federal establishment, where power rules. In other words, nothing I didn't expect already. The fix was in from the very beginning, so complaining about it now makes for a sore loser. Any other alternative was never in the cards.

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"The fix was in," that's been the perfect summation about this entire farce of an "investigation."

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Like the Supreme Court I’m going to have all of my investigations of ‘ME’ be done by someone that I can fire at any time! That seems like an honorable method, fair, impartial and unbiased!!!

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We have the basis of an Agatha Christie style who-dun-it. All nine justices could have a motive. The three liberal women out of outrage; Kavanaugh because he thought Alito went too far; Roberts because he wanted the firestorm to get Kavanaugh to side with him; Alito to prevent Roberts from picking off Kavanaugh and forcing a rewrite; Gorsuch and the nun* to stir it up; Thomas because he could use Ginny. It’s like Murder On the Orient Express. But there’s no Hercule to explain it all in the last scene. (*It’s late and I can’t remember her name.)

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Amy Covid Rosegarden or something like that, wasn't it?

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I just call her "The Handmaiden"

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Of course she would squeak by-she's not a SC employee, and her husband won't let her be held accountable for her previous actions..but who cares?

She would like to be a SC Justice and she thinks she's perfectly suited to be one.

Fortunately she's the only one.

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Every time Ginny Thomas speaks, an angel loses its wings.

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Lucian you are so right. The list of those who weren’t questioned is laughable - what an ‘investigation’ haha. Did everyone read Alexandra Petri’s funny/not funny op-ed in WaPo today. It’s perfect. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/20/supreme-court-leak-investigation-result-satire/

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Just read it. So true. " If there is one thing I know about this crime, it’s like the U.S. Supreme Court: People don’t want any more information about it, and knowing more about it wouldn’t make them feel any better."

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On par with the FBI "investigation" of Kavanaugh. Cursory and completely useless except to Susie Collins and Moscow McConnell, who shoved Kavanaugh's nomination through the Senate.

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Thanks for the lead, err..laugh.

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I’m guessing that they didn’t interview her on purpose. Just a guess…

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Hahahaha

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SCROTUS investigates SCROTUS, finds SCROTUS has done nothing wrong and everything right. Also SCROTUS deserves a raise.

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