+ We now know that in addition to lavishing Clarence and Ginni Thomas was luxury trips around the world, Harlan Crow also secretly bought property from Thomas, including the house his mother continues to live in, and Thomas failed to disclose the financial transactions in violation of federal law.
+ Thomas isn’t being bribed to make decisions; he’s being rewarded for the fact that he’d make these decisions without being bribed. So would Alito. Yes, they’re corrupt. But their retro judicial views were always clear & the senate approved their elevation to the high court anyway.
+ Harlan Crow is a billionaire with a bulging stock portfolio and vast real estate holdings. Almost everything that comes before the court will have an impact him.
+ Does Crow collect child porn to demonstrate how much he abhors pedophiles?
+ When Ginni Thomas worked for the Heritage Foundation, Justice Thomas checked the box “none” on his financial disclosure form for his wife’s income. She’d actually been paid more than $686,000. When the deception was disclosed, Thomas said it was “due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions.”
+ This seems like a fairly minor blunder to me, except for the fatal fact that Thomas considers himself a “textualist”, where the precise meaning (in 1789) of every word can be a matter of life and death. So petard prepare to be hoisted…
+ Thomas isn’t the only recipient of Crow’s largesse. The coffers of rightwing lawmakers Texas have been infused with at least $19 million from the Dallas-based real estate tycoon.
+ Cory Doctorow: “The reason the rich pour money into campaigns to stoke divisions among working people isn’t because they get off on hatred. The hatred is a tactic. The cruelty is a tactic. The strategic goal is wealth and power.”
Calls for impeachment proceedings against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas intensified Thursday amid new reporting that revealed several specific conflicts of interest related to the justice's financial ties to right-wing real estate magnate and Republican donor Harlan Crow.
Following a bombshell report by ProPublica earlier this month regarding trips Thomas took on Crow's private jet, his superyacht, and to his properties in New York and Texas which had not been included in financial disclosures as required by federal law, the conservative justice brushed off criticism by saying he benefited only from "personal hospitality from close personal friends" and that Crow "did not have business before the court."
While also denying any ethics breaches, Crow, who has donated at least $13 million to Republican politicians, acknowledged in an interview with TheDallas Morning News that "every single relationship... has some kind of reciprocity."
The truth of that admission became clearer Thursday as The Guardian reported on findings in the judicial record, which showed Crow's ties to right-wing groups that have been involved in Supreme Court cases since Thomas was first confirmed to the bench in 1991.
The Texas billionaire was part of anti-taxation group Club for Growth's "founders committee," which helped direct its policymaking, in 2003 when the group filed an amicus brief challenging the McCain-Feingold Act, a campaign finance reform law.
Thomas wrote a blistering dissent when the court permitted the law to stand against the wishes of Club for Growth and other right-wing groups. As The Guardian reported, at this point Crow had already "showered Thomas with several lavish gifts" including "a 1997 flight from Washington to northern California on Crow's private jet to attend an all-male retreat at Bohemian Grove" and a $150,000 donation to create a wing dedicated to the justice at a library in Savannah, Georgia.
Crow also held seats on the boards of at least three right-wing organizations that have written amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases; is a longtime trustee of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, which has filed numerous supporting briefs; and is on the board of the Hoover Institution, which filed an amicus brief challenging student debt relief.
Thomas' involvement with Crow raises questions not only about whether the billionaire has "business before the court," said Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). "Nowadays it's consorting with those... whose business is the court—who are deeply enmeshed in the efforts to capture and corrupt the court."
Law enforcement is fond of saying "no one is above the law."
But the questions surrounding Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' unreported luxury gifts from a conservative billionaire over two decades are shedding light – once again – on the imbalance that ethics watchdogs say exists when it comes to who is held accountable and who is not.
"There's definitely a double standard at play here," said Walter Shaub, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight. "An executive branch employee or, for that matter, even a member of Congress who so flagrantly violated the financial disclosure law as Clarence Thomas had, would certainly face some sort of consequences for their actions."
Shaub is also a former head of the Office of Government Ethics, which oversees how executive branch employees comport themselves – that's everyone from Census and National Parks workers to military generals and even the president of the United States.
He argues that there's one standard for the high-profile and politically connected and another for the almost two million lower-level federal workers.
"The Department of Justice has shown a real unwillingness to hold the top officials in government to the same standard it holds lower-level officials to," Shaub said. "And if you think about it, that's government ethics standing on its head, because the higher up you go and the more power you have to do harm, the more you should be held accountable, because the stakes are so much greater.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Turley, Mother Tucker Carlson, John Stauber, Glenn Greenwald and the other hate merchants going after transgender people are creating a very violent climate. Edward Helmore (Guardian) reports:
Rasheeda Williams, an Atlanta-based transgender woman who features in a forthcoming documentary that highlights the stories of four Black transgender sex workers in New York City and Georgia, was fatally shot this week, the film’s publicist said on Friday.
Williams, 35, who performed under the name Koko Da Doll, was killed on Tuesday evening at a shopping center in the south-west of the city. It was the third fatal shooting of a transgender woman in the city since the beginning of the year, Atlanta police said in a statement.
Alex Cooper (The Advocate) adds:
Koko, whose non-performance name was Rasheeda Williams, starred in the Sundance Film Festival documentary Kokomo City along with Daniella Carter, Liyah Mitchell and Dominique Silve. The film was the directorial debut of Grammy-nominated producer D. Smith. The documentary depicts the lives of several Black transgender sex workers who live in Atlanta and New York City. It has been lauded for its realistic depiction of the various ways the women navigate their identities and their work.
Atlanta Police found Koko with a gunshot wound around 11 p.m. Tuesday night at a shopping center. Authorities announced her dead at the scene.
[. . .]
Koko’s co-star Carter wrote on Instagram, "Never thought I'd lose you, but here I am, standing alone without you by my side. We're sisters for life, we promised, but now you're gone. I don't know what to do without you. I'm going crazy, I'm trying to hold on to keep strong, but it just doesn't feel right. I'm waiting here, my arms wide open, tears running down my face, ready for you to return even if it takes forever, my sister. I will truly miss you, sis."
I never, ever want to see the left welcome back John Stauber. He has fostered hate against the transgender community and that should never be forgotten. His past accomplishments aren't all that to begin with but by going after the most vulnerable in our society, he has roped himself off from the left forever.
The April 16 issue of The New York Times included an article that would chill even the most cynical of leftists. Called “How a Campaign Against Transgender Rights Mobilized Conservatives,” it is about how Republican operatives, public relations hacks, and careerist message makers came to settle upon the demonization of transgender people as their culture war battle du jour.
Stymied by the waning opposition to gay marriage that exists even among Republicans, they ferreted about trying to figure out the next community to demonize. Eventually, they decided to target transgender people, regardless of the violence that has already been inflicted upon them.
It was a rocky start for the right, with “bathroom bills” in North Carolina roundly defeated and mocked in 2016. This stoking of anti-trans animus proved more difficult than they had thought it would be. Then they finally found their “in,” and this is where they confirm what has been transparently clear for the last several years: it would be girls' sports.
The hate machine—dark money, billionaire Nazi fetishists, think tanks, news networks—of the far right found a foothold by focusing on transgender girls in sports and the “unfair advantages,” and even “threat,” that they posed to cisgender girls. In many states, there are no transgender girls on sports teams, or at least none that rightwing lawmakers can name. But that didn’t stop dozens of states from enacting bans, pressuring hesitant but craven rightwing governors to sign these bans while using their political pulpit to whip up a fury. They were joined in this effort by organizations formed by self-proclaimed “liberal feminists” willing to link arms with the far right for a frenzied common goal, whose very slogan is a negation of the existence of trans women: “keeping men out of women’s sports.” They abided by this alliance even when states like Kansas opened the door for “sex tests” to inspect the genitals of girls to ensure they were not trans.
There have been laws which restrict gender expression for centuries. One of the first was enacted in 1863 in San Francisco, where people were prohibited from being in public places if they were wearing clothes that were “different” from their assigned sex. Other laws like this became common in the late 19th century.
In 2022 alone, 29 out of 315 anti-LGTBQ bills were passed into law, with hundreds of others being introduced in state legislatures. Restricting drag shows and gender expression takes it a frightening step further, and The Guardian describes it as nearing “draconian restrictions.”
Tennessee has adopted 14 anti-LGBTQ bills since 2015, more than any other state according to Human Rights Campaign. Last week, a bill was passed in Tennessee that restricts “adult cabaret performances” in public or in front of children. The bill also specifies that the “performances” cannot happen within 1,000 feet of schools, public parks or places of worship.
Critics of this bill in Tennessee say the language is ambiguous, making business owners and performers wary of the extreme range of responses people will have. Despite little constitutional clarity, the punishments are significant. In the first offense of violating this law, people will face misdemeanor charges with fines up to $2,500 and/or up to a year in jail. Further violations could result in felony charges resulting in up to six years in jail.
Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr said ahead of a scheduled legislative session in the state House on Friday that she is "ready to speak" on behalf her constituents, but Republican leaders have given no indication that they'll allow her to do so after silencing her this week in retaliation for comments she made about transgender rights.
State House Speaker Matt Regier (R-4) has refused to acknowledge Zephyr (D-100), the state's only transgender lawmaker, on Thursday when she tried to speak during a debate about a bill that would include binary definitions of "male" and "female" in the state code, and other legislation unrelated to the rights of transgender and nonbinary people.
The Republicans' refusal to allow Zephyr to speak on the House
floor follows her comments made on Tuesday about a bill that would ban
gender-affirming health care for transgender youths.
"If you are denying gender-affirming care and forcing a trans child to go through puberty, that is tantamount to torture, and this body should be ashamed," said Zephyr. "If you vote yes on this bill, I hope the next time you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands."
Soon after, the right-wing Montana Freedom Caucus wrote a letter to the Legislature—posted on Twitter along with a message that misgendered Zephyr—calling for the lawmaker to be censured for using "inappropriate and uncalled-for language" during the debate, unless she issued a formal apology.
Zephyr has refused to do so, saying in a statement that the Republicans' goal is not securing an apology, but "silence as they take away the rights of queer and trans Montanans."
AL MADA reports on the fifth most dangerous snake in the world which is also known as the Sayad Dakhil snake because of the number of people who've been bitten in that area. Six to seven people used to die a year from the snake bites before a vaccine was introduced about 18 months ago. The dangers of that one snake has resulted in the deaths of many snakes of different species in the area as a result of people fearing the saw-scaled viper.
Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Witch, Please" went up Saturday night. The following sites updated:
