The Clarence Thomas Scandal Is Somehow Looking Even Worse
ProPublica reports that Thomas was in debt, frustrated with his salary, and implying he'd resign from the Supreme Court if his financial situation didn't change—just before Harlan Crow and other conservatives started lavishing him with expensive gifts and luxury vacations.
Before he began receiving expensive gifts and luxury vacations from Harlan Crow and other conservative benefactors, Clarence Thomas reportedly expressed significant concerns about his financial situation—even prompting concerns from a Republican lawmaker more than 20 years ago that he might resign from the Supreme Court if he could not boost his salary.
“One or more justices will leave soon” if justices aren’t given a raise, Thomas told then Republican Representative Cliff Stearns in 2000, as they flew home from a conservative conference at a Georgia resort, according to ProPublica.
They get paid 274k...DC is expensive, but anyone that can't live very comfortably on that is awful with money. Being awful with money will lose you a TS clearance because it makes you susceptible to bribery by spies. I would think it would also be a disqualifier for a SCOTUS judge for the same reason.
I think maintaining a TS clearance should be a requirement for all positions above a certain level in the federal government. Not because they need access to TS information, but to ensure they are at a lower risk of bribery, adversarial interests, and criminal activity. Getting a TS clearance isn't terribly hard. Just generally have your act together. As long as you aren't a train wreck, a drug addict, a criminal, an untrustworthy asshat, or have connections to adversaries, you will pass adjudication. TLDR: A TS clearance would ensure high level government employees are minimumly functional humans.
The "rules for thee and not for me" coming out of our politics this last 5-10 years seems to be accelerating. It's infuriating. When this story broke, I was in the middle of doing my trainings at work. You know the ones you roll your eyes and burn an afternoon doing to get off the naughty list. Clarence must have skipped the ethics training. The whole part of "even the appearance of wrong doing" violates our ethics guidelines. THE APPEARANCE.
You know what would happen if I sold my house to a contractor we were working with, then let my mom move into that house, then this person renovated and remodeled the whole house, but my mom's rent didn't go up mind you. Oh, and then I did official business with this person's company and made official decisions that would/could directly impact that persons business. Oh yea, then not disclose it. You know what the fuck would happen to me?? I'd be investigated by OPR, put on administrative leave immediately, eventually terminated, and probably charged criminally.
Then you have this clown who absolutely knows better. He's a supreme court justice. You can't plead ignorance here, Clarence. He just...gets to continue to wipe his ass with the public trust and violate his oath of office and responsibility to the American people.
Odd that red state losers vote for people who make them bigger losers, isn't it?
That would create huge separation of power issues. The executive branch would become the arbiter of who is allowed to serve in Congress or the Supreme Court. Trump showed us how easy it is for a president to abuse the clearance system when he got his dipshit spawn cleared despite the objections of the usual personnel.
Maybe they shouldn't be issued clearances (unlessn it's required to do part of their job), but they should do through a similar background check process to make sure they're fit to hold office.
Then again, the whole power-of-the-people election thing is supposed to filter out people who aren't fit for office 🤔
To add on, security clearances are centered around the idea of "how much damage could this cause to the country if mishandled".
Well, SCOTUS can do a lot of damage to the country.
Like fixing an election - Gore vs Bush
Even rich people are susceptible to bribery. I remember someone saying that they voted for Trump because he is rich and won't be influenced by lobby, but look at what happens. He passed laws that benefit him and his family, supporting Russia,... We need other means and not throw more money for those people.
We had a bit of a thing about that in Canada with opposition leaders not wanting to pass security clearance to be allowed to see documents related to Chinese interference because as long as they didn't see the documents they could speculate as much as they wanted... Pretty crazy that it's not automatic to be an elected member of the government...
Regular TS sure, but like Whitehouse comms? Kinda strict... But I completely agree that this guy obviously for sale to the highest bidding handler.
The way this is supposed to work, is the higher the position and responsibility, the greater the "find out" consequences. You absolutely had to know better and you absolutely did it anyway.
Some Airman walks off with a Secret document, and they're in for some UCMJ meat grinding.
This joke needs to be fired and charged if there are crimes. If that kind of blatant bias for bucks bullshit isn't a crime it needs to be.
Fuck that guy.
Yeah, but that would 100% get abused politically to remove justices that don't align with whoever is issuing clearances. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but recent history has shown that trusting politicians to not abuse the system isn't a good long term solution
They did it to Oppenheimer
Oh also agree 💯 about the salary. 274K with gold plated benefits? Yeah cry me a river. If you had to shovel sewage for 60 hours a week for minimum wage, but his benefits package, there would be a million people fighting for the job.
Its first time for me hearing about the ts clereance, but seems to me its doing its job. If it was used the way you describe it, I am sure it would fast become the victim of Goodharts law and thus become useless.
I like this sentiment, but giving the US intelligence apparatus what amounts to a veto for elected/appointed officials feels like a recipe for disaster.
The only way I see that being workable is if the clearance grantors are transparently beholden to elected officials or the people directly. Which are essentially what elections and the congressional confirmation process are supposed to be. But both of those processes feel like they've been subverted. (Elections by the two-party system and the fact that half the population seems intent on electing a dictator, and the other by the senators/representatives that come out of that electoral system).
The US intelligence apparatus doesn't do this. The OPM does.
As per your second paragraph and many other comments. I agree. It is hard to avoid it being politicized at any step of the process. Everything interview would have to be recorded. Copies of all reviewed records would need to be kept. Adjudicators would need heavily redacted transcripts of the records and interviews.
a clearance wouldnt ensure anything, and Supreme Court Justices dont need them (by law - USC Title 18a,9 ), so it doesnt matter