onfocus

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today announced the introduction of new legislation to restore balance among the three branches of government, increase transparency to improve public trust in America’s courts, and modernize the courts to ensure greater access to justice for more Americans.

Thanks, Senator Wyden! There are good politicians out there working for their constituents. Wyden is consistently fighting the good fight.

Congress can determine the size of the Supreme Court; it has already added and removed seats on the Court seven times throughout its history. At a time when the American people’s confidence in the nation’s highest court has fallen to a record low and Congressional Republicans have already employed their far-right judicial playbook by disregarding norms and precedent in the confirmations process, Congress must take action by once again expanding the Court.

It's way past time for this to happen. We need a Democratic congress now.

“The evidence assembled thus far plainly suggests that Justice Thomas has committed numerous willful violations of federal ethics and false-statement laws and raises significant questions about whether he and his wealthy benefactors have,” Whitehouse and Wyden wrote.

The US has to remove this corrupt court.

Some journalists are so caught up in the debate furor that one of the most dangerous and consequential Supreme Court terms in memory was pushed off the front pages. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on immunity found that president’s might actually be kings, that’s a game changer that deserves more attention than it got. Instead, news outlets have dedicated most of their resources to covering every blip on the Biden debate follow up instead.

Wake up, journalists! Our democracy depends on an informed electorate and this horse race BS is a sideshow compared with the real story of a massive judicial power grab by a corrupt court.

There is no way to change that outcome in the short term. In the long term, the only way to undo the authoritarianism the court has just ushered in is to expand the Supreme Court. Democrats would have to win the upcoming presidential election and the House and the Senate. Then Congress would have to pass a law expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court; then the Senate would have to pass that law as well, which, at a minimum, would likely have to include getting rid of the filibuster. Then the president would have to sign such a bill, and appoint additional Supreme Court justices who do not think that presidents should be kings—and then those justices would have to be confirmed.

The minority rule coup seems pretty complete with this ruling. Definitely an uphill climb for we the people.

Thomas, in a financial disclosure made public on Friday, acknowledged that conservative billionaire Harlan Crow paid for Thomas to join him on trips to Bali and California in 2019. Thomas wrote in the filing that he “inadvertently omitted” the gifts from Crow in previous filings and that his inclusion of the gifts on this year’s filing came after he “sought and received guidance from his accountant and ethics counsel.”

LOL, fingers crossed that he has a chat with his ethics counsel about recusal for conflict of interest. Also after all the scandal might be time to shop around for a new ethics counsel?

In Alito’s telling, he not only won’t recuse but in fact can’t recuse himself from the insurrection cases. Why? Because, he suggests, the nonbinding and entirely subjective ethics code to which the nine justices half-heartedly committed themselves this past fall requires that they remain on cases when they personally decide there’s no legitimate reason to recuse. Alito therefore asserts an “obligation” to hear the Trump-related cases.

This brazen corruption would be comical if it wasn't a Supreme Court that’s taking away fundamental human rights and enabling authoritarianism in America.

“When Americans see a case like this – so clearly concocted and motivated by special interests, and with evident connections between those interests and the judges on the case, it does tremendous damage to the reputation of the courts, and to the public trust in their ability to give all litigants an even shake,” said Alex Aronson, the executive director of the nonpartisan group Court Accountability and a former chief counsel to the Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

"It’s not technically illegal" is the first refuge of scoundrels.

His position as a justice on the highest court in the land should require more candor, not less, in reporting the kind of relationships the Ethics in Government Act requires be made public.

Not to mention his failure to recuse himself on cases where his wife is an activist for one side. Law and order for thee but not for me.

The subpoenas were approved following a contentious meeting in which Republicans accused their Democratic colleagues of attempting to undermine the Supreme Court by targeting private citizens.

Undermining how corrupt Supreme Court justices are beholden to billionaires is exactly the point.

The code, which does not include any enforcement mechanism, comes after ProPublica and other outlets disclosed that justices had repeatedly failed to disclose gifts and travel from wealthy donors.

LOL, just a perfect non-binding 'code' for a corrupt court. Like a petulant child, "There, we have a code of ethics. Happy?"

The law says that if there is “reasonable cause” to believe a judge “willfully” failed to disclose information they were required to, the conference should refer the matter to the U.S. attorney general, who can pursue penalties. But that would be unprecedented.

You know what else is unprecedented? A Supreme Court that is this corrupt and this dishonorable. It’s time for some unprecedented remedies like holding people accountable to existing rules.