+ The Trump-appointed Judge James Ho, who has previously written that abortion is
“immoral, tragic, and violent,” will hear the mifepristone case on May 17. In January
2018 Ho was sworn by Justice Clarence Thomas in his benefactor Harlan Crow’s private
library.
Photo: Ted Cruz.
+ There are two senate committees looking into, rather passively to be sure, Harlan Crow’s financial gifts to Clarence Thomas. Crow’s given money to each of the Republican senators
on both committees to the tune of $429,000 to Republicans on the Judiciary Committee
and $239,140 to Republicans on the Finance Committee.
Supreme Court decisions impact every facet of American life. Because of this, justices must be held to the highest ethical standards. When Americans see news like this about Clarence Thomas—or anything other justice—the Court demonstrates that it cannot hold itself accountable and it doesn’t take its responsibilities seriously.
A Court with no legitimacy only hurts the American people. It’s time for Congress to pass a Supreme Court code of ethics to bring legitimacy back to the court.
To the editors of THE MODESTO BEE, Christopher C. Doll writes:
Last year, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito complained that “saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line.” At the time, his comments lacked any semblance of self-awareness, and only look worse in hindsight. In reality, a line is crossed when court rulings ignore stare decisis (precedent), are blatantly partisan, reek of specious argumentation and treat women as second-class citizens.
And the continued presence of Clarence Thomas is proof that the court lacks integrity. Thomas is one of two justices to have been credibly accused of sexual assault. He failed to recuse himself from cases involving the Big Lie even though his spouse is an insurrectionist. And he has repeatedly violated ethics by failing to report lavish gifts from a billionaire with an agenda. Chief Justice John Roberts said he isn’t planning to investigate Thomas. Astonishingly, unlike the lower courts, the Supreme Court has no official code of ethics.
The reputation of the Supreme Court was already in the gutter and it's only getting worse due to Crooked Clarence. He is rotting on the inside and destroying whatever's left of the Court's integrity. As Jonathan Turley obsesses over DISNEY and gun rights and attacks education (which isn't going over well with the institutions he teaches at but does keep FOX "NEWS" sticking ones in his g-string), try not to notice that supposed legal expert Swirley Turley -- Swirley Turd to his students -- remains silent. Like others in the Republican Party, Turley thinks he can just stick his head in the sand and no one will notice. He thinks he can wait this scandal out. I don't think it can be waited out. The outrage is only growing.
Should Thomas resign or face impeachment? Absolutely!
That assumes, however, a different political climate, certainly not the one in which we’re currently embroiled. Throughout his tenure on the court, Thomas is known famously for his silence during oral arguments. But when it comes to his financial relationship with Crow, Thomas vociferously holds up his middle finger to the institution that employs him.
There is no question, in my view, that Thomas’ infractions trump those of former Justice Abe Fortas, who was forced to resign from the court in 1969. But the circumstances differ greatly. We should dismiss the canard that Fortas did the “honorable” thing by resigning. Fortas resigned only after it was clear the “honorable” thing was his only option.
Moreover, there were individuals serving in Congress, circa 1969, regardless of party, who refused to allow their partisan sensibilities to serve as the final arbiter. Today’s political landscape bears little resemblance to that grand commitment.
The current 6-3 conservative majority is the result of political hypocrisy fortified by an ends-justifying-the-means rationale. There’s no doubt the Republican-led House would already be holding impeachment hearings if Thomas’ infractions were conducted by one of the liberal members of the court.
The requests have been greeted as you’d expect. Thomas says these gifts were “personal hospitality,” not business, and thus didn’t have to be reported. Crow responded to Wyden’s letter with a letter of his own, or more specifically from his lawyer, arguing in essence that Congress has no legitimate legislative purpose in exposing Crow’s gifts to Thomas and is constrained by separation of powers issues.
Sheldon Whitehouse of the Judiciary Committee has pursued a complementary angle. He asked the Judicial Conference, the policymaking body for federal courts, to reveal how it handled an inquiry into Ginni Thomas’s income in 2011. He, too, has received no answer yet.
Wyden and Whitehouse mean business. Whitehouse has been the Democrats’ point person in the Senate for years on these ethics matters. But of the two, Wyden spells more potential trouble for Thomas and Crow because as chairman of one of Congress’s tax-writing committees, he has what’s called 6103 authority: the power to ask for any citizen’s tax returns at any time for any reason (actually, under the relevant law, he wouldn’t even have to give a reason). Richard Neal, the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee until the GOP retook the House this year, used this same law to get several years of Trump’s returns). In 2021, the Supreme Court ordered the IRS to give Neal’s committee Trump’s returns.
In other words, if the Supreme Court says that even the president’s tax returns can be sent to Congress, surely that means that anyone’s can be. Even if that person sits on the very Supreme Court that will be passing judgment.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday sent a letter asking Harlan Crow—the billionaire GOP megadonor who has secretly showered U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts since the mid-1990s—to provide a full accounting of his financial ties to Thomas and any other judges on the high court.
It comes as "no surprise" that none of the panel's nine Republicans signed the letter, Accountable.US declared Tuesday, because they have collectively accepted nearly half a million dollars in campaign cash from Crow since the turn of the century, as a new analysis from the watchdog group shows.
Last month, one day after ProPublica published its bombshell report on Crow's under-the-table funding of near-annual luxury vacations for Thomas—the first of what would become many revelations about the two men's financial relationship—Accountable.US calculated that the current Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee received $453,300 from Crow between 2001 and 2022. The group revised that figure up to $457,000 on Tuesday in light of a $3,700 donation Crow made to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) earlier this year.
The following is a list of Crow's total contributions to the nine GOP lawmakers on the panel as well as their affiliated PACs and joint fundraising committees, in descending order:
- Cornyn: $294,800
- Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa): $46,600
- Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.): $23,900
- Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas): $23,500
- Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.): $20,600
- Sen. Mike Lee (Utah): $19,500
- Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.): $13,400
- Sen. John Kennedy (La.): $8,300
- Sen. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.): $6,400
"There should be bipartisan outrage about the undisclosed gifts and travel billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow has given Justice Thomas," Accountable.US president Kyle Herrig said last month. "Senate Judiciary Republicans should join their Democratic colleagues to act. However, their silence so far may be because they have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Crow as well."
"The highest court in the land should have the highest ethical standards," he added. "When it doesn't, Congress should exert its oversight authority."
In April, a group of Sadrist followers known by the name “People of the Cause” were spreading a theory that Imam al-Mahdi would appear at the Kufa Mosque, coinciding with Sadr’s decision to attend a religious retreat at the mosque. They claimed that Sadr would be the promised one.
Protesting their claims, Sadr announced he was freezing the activities of his Sadrist Movement for a year and deactivating his Twitter account indefinitely.
“I want nothing else than to exonerate myself and loyalists from the actions of the outliers and the corrupt and those with perverted convictions, of those who claim I am Imam al-Mahdi,” said Sadr in a voice message published on Twitter on Sunday.
Muqtada al-Sadr check your ego. Get back in your hole. #Iraq https://t.co/UUVXYODzq2 pic.twitter.com/KraMXmdU8H
— Stuff Things (@_Stuff_Things_) May 14, 2023
#Al-Afti Muqtada Al-Sadr calls for punishing the believers by preventing them from visiting his father’s shrine on the occasion of his death at the hands of the Ba’athists... This is because of the owners of the case who are supported by Nuri Al-Maliki pic.twitter.com/BXuy6Esg1o
— سجاد حيدر (@sajad_hr1) May 14, 2023
In other news, Ali Mamouri (AL-MONITOR) reports:
Following a series of confrontations, it seems an open war has broken out between the Catholic Caledonian Church and the Christian political party and militia of Babylon Movement.
In mid-April, an Iraqi court issued a summons for Cardinal Louis Sako, patriarch and archbishop of Baghdad, in response to an accusation by an Iraqi businessman affiliated with the Babylon Movement over a property belonging to the church.
On April 29, Rayan al-Kaldani, secretary-general of the Babylon Movement, accused Sako of interfering in politics and damaging the reputation of the church.
