Clarence Thomas resign calls grows over disclosure: "People deserve better"

USA ONE@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 1318 points –
Clarence Thomas resign calls grows over disclosure: "People deserve better"
newsweek.com
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He's not resigning from a position that is a lifetime appointment.

So sick of hearing these moronic articles.

Either get the goddamn Department of Justice or IRS involved in this and see if these trips and other gifts were illegal, or STFU. Yes, we all know he's a corrupt piece of shit, but he's not resigning, and it sure as hell doesn't look like any governmental departments even want to try going after him for corruption.

These "Moronic articles" places him into the spotlight.

There is very few things that can be considered an "Annoyance" to rich folk, being in that spotlight is one of them.

People like Clarence Thomas want to go on vacation and not worry about being recognized in public.

Being in the spotlight means they have to hire more security, it means background checks, it means more people in your private life, it means always looking over your shoulder because the "media" is everyone with a smart phone nowadays.

So while I would love to see less topics on Clarence Thomas that doesn't involve a jail cell. The attention on his shadiness, is the 2nd best for now.

He knows he's essentially untouchable, so all the things you list, he probably doesn't give a flying fuck about. Lazy Merrit Garland isn't going to open an investigation on Thomas and it looks like neither is the IRS to see if there were any tax shenanigans going on. And our corporate news media is more on his side, than the side of The People. 90% of these stories are utterly pointless. They are filler to get clicks

You can be untouchable and still have social pressures.

Just as you can be a fly could do virtually nothing to harm a living human being, but buzz around his ear enough and they will do anything to get rid of the buzzing.

The point is to be within the law, and be annoying.

But stress causes health problems....

That would imply he feels remorse.

Does this look like remorse to you:

https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/clarence-thomas-comp.jpeg?quality=75&strip=all

We know that he doesn't feel remorse. But being annoyed is a form of stress.

I was with the OP at first, but @HuddaBudda@kbin.social is right. Let's give this fucker so much attention that he hates leaving his mansion(s).

Right? There's only so much we can do. But for fucks sake let's at least do that.

Security? He's not going to places you go to. Security is built into the places he goes.

You would be suprised how much that isn't true. That's why yatch make sense for the rich to have. Keeps them out of sight. But anywhere on land, there will be other normal ish people.

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Unfortunately, you are not the target audience for this article.

Most Americans are not informed at all, and no matter how stupid it may seem, they need the most watered down solution shoved in their face repeatedly just so they recognize the problem in the first place

Based on how often he and Alito are crying out about his unfair it is that they're being scrutinized for corruption, I think this is really bugging them.

Believe me, I hope to hell you're right, but when it comes down to it, it seems like wishful thinking from the Internet.

Everything is wishful thinking until it happens!

But yeah same here :/. Gotta keep the hope.

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is it SO fucking insane that we all know he's corrupt but he's still able to go to work and put on his fucking robe and ruin people's lives and we're meant to keep respecting that. fucking dogshit country

The GOP spent the last 2 decades getting to an overwhelming 6-3 majority on the court. They won't risk that over something they find as superfluous as integrity.

We are rapidly approaching a point where the SCOTUS can rule and states, or even the federal government will simply.. ignore it.

I'm not sure which party will cross that line, but we're real close. And when it happens, we almost immediately devolve into an epic shitstorm.

We have already reached that point. You've got Democratic-majority states that, despite Bruen, continue to pass legislation banning firearm types and features. Just like Republican states pass bans on abortions and birth control when Roe was still good case law. This shit happens all the time, and SCOTUS keeps working and slapping states and the fed. gov't down.

Yeah it would be sick if the judiciary was abolished.

Why are we waiting on a resignation? Kick him the fuck out.

Congress can vote to kick him out, but they won't. Conservatives have been scheming and buying up anyone they could since the 80s to have a major conservative court to push their agenda: an evangelical christian based country, but only the parts that benefit them and tax cuts for the super wealthy. They didn't spend billions to never get a return on their investments.

Dissolve the court. Arrest Gorsuch, Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh. Bring in an independent investigator and if any of the others have so much as gotten a ride to their car from someone with business before the court arrest them too. No more "well it's only a little bit corrupt" or "yeah but you've gotta understand" or that horse shit. You want your word to be the literal law that almost 400 million people have to live under? You need to be fucking flawless.

While I agree with the sentiment, there's technically no laws against the corruption. You can't just arrest people because you don't agree with them and think they're immoral. Do that and imagine what a republican regime will do with that ability.

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And Clarence Thomas' response is that the American Mullahs can do whatever they like and there's fuck all anyone can do about it.

Except stay awake while hearing cases at the country's top court. Thomas likes his naps as much as he likes his billionaire patrons.

And he's 100% correct.

Yeah the way the media works, he realistically just has to keep a low profile for maybe a year or even less, wait for them to fixate on something else and then it's back to business.

And he's pretty much immune to any legal blowback - if anyone tried, I mean he's 75, in his position he could easily jam that up in the courts for a decade or more and even if it somehow managed to progress, there's the classic "I'm suddenly too old and frail to go through a lengthy trial" defence.

I think realistically the absolute worst case scenario for him is being forced to retire and spending the rest of his days in opulence anyway. I don't like it but that's probably how it is.

Didn't the chief justice decide not to do an investigation for corruption, because reasons? It's basically the same when cops investigate themselves.

He won't resign because the bar to remove him is too great. Now if they prosecuted him for tax evasion, that could get him off the bench before he dies.

Now that Thomas's image can not get any worse, he's just going to become more overt about trying to destroy the US government from the bench. That's all that will happen.

Requesting him to resign is the same thing as asking cancer to just… please leave.

I skimmed the title and saw "Clarence Thomas resigns over calls [...]" and my first thought was "I can't believe it took this long."

Unless there are dramatic political reforms, you'll be waiting the rest of his life.

You can't shame him out of office. If he felt shame, he wouldn't have taken so many bribes in the first place.

It's why lifetime appointments to powerful positions are a stupid idea.

What made sense 300 years ago may not make a lot of sense in 2023.

Why did it make sense 300 years ago? Just so you couldn't fire judges you didn't like?

Why did it make sense 300 years ago?

Because it did.

300 years ago.

Harlan Crow is such a comic book vilain name too. Maybe it makes me think of the Harlans in altered carbon.

Why would he resign? Like really why would he do it. You can't force him to, his time won't run out and corpos and lobbying will never let any sort of political entity take him from his place.

Dude is there until death you can cry all you want but he's not leaving.

I will gladly be wrong about this btw but I know i probably won't.

he won't resign unless he is compelled by the law or court order. there are too many people who have invested in him for him to just walk away.

There is literally no court aside from SCOTUS that can compel him to resign.

Well, he could be impeached. Simple majority in the house and 2/3 in the senate though, iirc. Don’t see that happening any time soon.

Republicans hold the house for now, so that's absolutely not happening, esp. since the poorly-name "Freedom Caucus" would immediately move to remove McCarthy if he even brought it to the floor for a vote.

you betcha. he's going nowhere.

There is literally nothing compelling him to resign and if he did resign under democrat rule, the republicans would make sure that he will never feel safe again.

Can any overly-conservative and/or overly-corporate decision that was 5:4 thanks to him be recalled, too?

The only way he'll ever leave his position is feet first. Just like RBG and Scalia.

He has literally stated his life goal is to "make liberals' lives miserable" because some Catholic priest wannabes were racist to him in seminary.

Which would be cool of him if he'd like, not picked the bootlicking side. Or if he wasn't doing what those miserable dicks wanted? Or knew what a liberal was?

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Maybe a system where someone can be this openly corrupt while making decisions for a large group of people shouldn't exist?

That would be ethical and the right thing to do so there's no way in hell that corrupt sex pest would ever resign.

Lol over half the court was bought and put in place by right wing billionaires to push their agenda. They've spent millions to put them in power and like heck they are going to let Congress remove them. The US government is not for the people it's for the billionaire oligarchs.

we will never have better way this show is playing out even biden does it with clarence's age and job security and the people that are to supposed to check and balance each other doing the same bs and people voting for the same people this might never change

if people really truly cared about living better there would be riots the in streets over all the current mess or lack of votes for the demopublicans

might be some propaganda article out soon to smooth this over out by your local news which is owned by the same megacorp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McClatchy it might read out that the "insert scapegoat here" are to blame for this immorality not poor clarence and we as citizens will be back at each other's throats instead just like other times in our history all over the world

He's not resigning unless there's a Republican president + Senate to replace him; all we can do is hope that that doesn't happen until he dies of natural causes. (and that the Democrats triumph in the election after that, so we don't end up with a Scalia->Garland->Gorsuch situation again)

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Calls for Justice Clarence Thomas to resign have intensified after documents released this week revealed more trips gifted to the U.S. Supreme Court by wealthy benefactor Harlan Crow.

"This late-come effort at 'Clean-up on Aisle Three' won't deter us from fully investigating the massive, secret, right-wing billionaire influence in which this Court is enmired," wrote Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Earlier this year, ProPublica—a New York-based non-profit, independent newsroom conducting investigative journalism in the public interest—revealed that Thomas had accepted gifts from friend Crow, a Republican donor, for the past two decades.

The trips included a voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas, several private jet and helicopter flights, luxury stays and a dozen VIP passes to professional college sporting events, among others.

In the aftermath of the revelations by ProPublica, which sparked outrage among members of the public and Democratic lawmakers and questions over increasing ethics requirements for Supreme Court justices, Thomas defended himself, saying he had always "always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines."

A group of House Democrats, including New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland calling for the DOJ to launch an internal inquiry into Thomas's billionaire-funded trips.


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He won't resign, he's gonna wait until the next election.

He won't resign until he's dead. He's not the brightest bulb in the box, but I'm sure he's realized by now that the second he's off the bench, Harlan Crow will tell him to get his n- ass out of his house.

Is there a good article anywhere that directly draws the line between cases he has seen and perks he has been given? I know that he should have to declare all of the trips, etc, and that that is a big problem. But I am interested in how he has directly damaged democracy in more obvious quid pro quo. I am especially interested in having an answer to anyone that tries to minimize what he has done.

I mean look up every case the heritage foundation has brought to the supreme court.

He'll just ignore the calls and life will continue.

He will NEVER resign. No matter what.