Looks like Federalist Society conservatives are desperate to find anything untoward they can pin on liberal SCOTUS justices after revelations of a bribery scandal with Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.
Staffers asking college libraries to buy Sotomayer’s books is some weak sauce in comparison.
I agree with you but we should hold ourselves to the same standard.
But how does encouraging schools to buy a book compare to someone who buying houses and payting tuitions for a justice and their family members, and bringing them on all expense paid vacations, all by someone who is sitting on cases in front of that justice?
I think the same standard would be if these schools had cases in front of the Supreme Court and then bought a ton of her books.
These reports are showing it’s not just a couple bad justices, it’s a systemic ethical failure.
I figured that out when all of the Supreme Court justices all released that joint statement pushing back on independent over sight, mandatory compliance with ethics rules, and greater transparency because their buddy Clarence Thomas was getting exposed. That really proved that the rot went deep.
She’s abusing her office to make money, to me the distinction is only in degrees of criminality. These justices are acting like they’re above the law because they basically are, which is unacceptable. Judges in general have way too much power.
If a regular federal employee or contractor did something similar they’d lose their job and probably go to prison. A janitor at the FBI is held to a higher standard then supreme court justices are.
Pol. party affiliations shouldn’t matter. Investigate all of them and prosecute all who are found guilty.
A person in an influential position using their status to enrich themselves? Shocking.
Though: was it actually Sotomeyer pushing her staff to boost book sales or the publisher, whose job it is to get books into reader’s hands?
It seems it was her clerics. Which, come on… Don’t do that.
They need oversite and an Inspector General for all this shit.
Et tu, Sonia? Do all nine of the justices need to be removed?
Let’s do congress next.
Congress members are elected, so you can blame the people for that one.
Yes and no. Gerrymandering heavily influences the outcomes of elections.
Gerrymandering makes some votes count more than others. That wouldn’t matter if there weren’t significant numbers of people voting right-wing.
blaming the people for corrupt practices keeping these old bigots in office isn’t productive in the slightest when the country is largely democratic if you look at raw numbers instead of the winning side of gerrymandered districts
Not to mention, the parties have a large amount of control over who is able to successfully run.
It’s all above the board, yeah? Like she didn’t fucking lie about it on her disclosures?
Gorsuch? Or Alito?
Or is it Gorsuch too?
It seems to me the only thing possibly problematic with this is that her staff members did it. There’s nothing wrong with someone advertising their work. Presumably her staff is hired to assist her work on the court. Maybe, like a college professor, a part of her duty is to write books and articles for the public and members of the legal profession. So, having her staff hawk her books to libraries is justified. If she had written a detective novel and had her staff push it to libraries that might not be proper. Since this is a scholarly work, university libraries are a logical place for it. Maybe selling the book is a job for the publisher, but this seems completely innocent as it is.
Lmao this is weak as fuck. Sure, it can be seen as problematic in some sense, but… Like cmon. It’s not even in the same zipe code, let alone ball park
I know it’s not popular to think this way, but guys, everyone in national politics is a corrupt piece of garbage. Both Democrats and Republicans have made it legal to loan their campaigns money at 20% interest. They’ve also made it legal to commit insider trading and make fortunes off of the classified info they receive due to their positions.
Biden spends more time making sure his piece of shit son stays out of jail than he does making sure there’s food on your table. Donald openly monetized his presidency by vacationing at his own businesses and forcing everyone in his administration to do the same. He even used the Oval Office and Resolute Desk for ads on his twitter feed.
They’re all assholes.
All of them.
All you can do is take the money you’d contribute to their campaigns and put it in your investments instead.
I don’t agree. This is a very South Park perspective. Yes, all politicians engage in bribery, corruption, and double dealing. No, the parties are not morally equivalent.
Biden has protected his son, but he has consistently displayed an eagerness to help people and to pass useful, popular laws that save lives and shift money downward in the economic pyramid.
Trump passed a tax cut for people with private jets and GW Bush killed 300,000 innocent civilians. It’s insane to pretend there’s a moral equivalence here.
Biden withheld $600 of promised COVID aid when Georgia went to the Democrats.
The messaging went from $2000 checks to “Finish the Job” and they pretended that they’d promised to just tack on $1400 dollars instead. They withheld our own money form us.
But they found $100,000,000,000 to send to another country’s war.
So, no. I don’t buy it.
… well, for one thing, your numbers are a little bit off there. The US is sent about $75 billion to Ukraine, not $100 trillion.
The aid check situation sucked, but that was very much a congress problem caused by the most conservative Dems (one of whom has since left the party).
More to the point, I feel confused by your answer: what is it that you don’t buy? You genuinely feel there’s a moral equivalence across all politicians?
