US Supreme Court Discussions

[Voronwë the Faithful]

CNN has reported that the Religious Liberty Initiative, which has submitted briefs to the Court on several matters where Alito has ruled, including this one which we discussed last year (and in which the conservatives on the Court appear to have lied about the facts of the case)* paid for him to visit Rome in 2022.
*Alito filed a concurring opinion in that case which read in full:

The expression at issue in this case is unlike that in any of our prior cases involving the free-speech rights of public employees. Petitioner’s expression occurred while at work but during a time when a brief lull in his duties apparently gave him a few free moments to engage in private activities. When he engaged in this expression, he acted in a purely private capacity. The Court does not decide what standard applies to such expression under the Free Speech Clause but holds only that retaliation for this expression cannot be justified based on any of the standards discussed. On that understanding, I join the opinion in full.

But in fact, and as included in Justice Sototmayor's dissent along with several other visual aids, this is a photo of the petitioner, football coach Joseph Kennedy, at a point in which Alito claims he was merely "engage[d] in private activities":

It gets worse still.



He coached one game before he quit.

[N.E. Brigand]

There's a new article in Politico about how Ginni Thomas and Leonard Leo collaborated in 2010 to launch a new PAC that would strongly benefit from the judgment in Citizens United, which was decided just a week later.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

What is Ken Burns doing palling around with Clarence Thomas and Charles David Koch?

Edited to add:

[Voronwë the Faithful]

What is Ken Burns doing palling around with Clarence Thomas and Charles David Koch?

Apparently, Koch is a financial backer of Burns' films. I would not have guessed that.

[RoseMorninStar]

What is Ken Burns doing palling around with Clarence Thomas and Charles David Koch?

Apparently, Koch is a financial backer of Burns' films. I would not have guessed that.

Yeah, that is surprising.

[N.E. Brigand]

What is Ken Burns doing palling around with Clarence Thomas and Charles David Koch?

Apparently, Koch is a financial backer of Burns' films. I would not have guessed that.

Yeah, that is surprising.

More than 25 years ago, I remember reading in Film Comment that James Benning's experimental 1995 film Deseret (I've never seen it, but it's a history of Utah) was in part a rebuttal to Burns's Civil War PBS series. I still don't know what that means, but I remember being surprised that anyone had concerns about Burns's work. Since then, I've come to understand that the The Civil War romanticizes the South somewhat.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The only works of Burns that I have seen were his series on baseball and the national parks, and I certainly had nothing to complain about with either of those.

[N.E. Brigand]

Here's a new ProPublica analysis of how even if Clarence Thomas's and Samuel Alito's already shaky argument that flights on billionaires' private jets and stays at billionaires' private homes don't require disclosure because they are "personal hospitality" is correct, Thomas still broke the law when he failed to disclose that he flew jet chartered (not owned) by David Koch to a function in Palm Springs and that he stayed on Harlan Crow's dime at the Bohemian Grove club. But Thomas will probably get away with it, as he also did in 2012, because apparently only the Judicial Conference can refer conflicts of interest to the Attorney General for investigation, and it seems they act in secret to protect their own.

[N.E. Brigand]

New York Times: "Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas 'failed to repay much, perhaps all,' of a $267,230 loan to buy an RV, a Senate probe has found ... 'His benefactor wiped the slate clean, with ethical and potential tax consequences.'"

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think that Clarence Thomas could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't affect his place on the Court.

[N.E. Brigand]

Sen. Ron Wyden says that his staff found:

-A handwritten note from Clarence Thomas *on Supreme Court stationery* dated December 6, 1999 referencing an agreement between Thomas and Welters.

-A promissory note detailing the terms between Clarence and Ginni Thomas and Welters for a $267,230 loan at 7.5%.

-A handwritten note from Welters to Justice Thomas dated November 22, 2008, stating that Welters would no longer seek payments on the loan. The note also stated that Justice Thomas had only paid interest on the loan, indicating that the principal of $267,230 had not been repaid.

And Thomas apparently never disclosed this $267,230 gift.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

Senator Dick Durbin: "I just announced: I'm asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to grant me authorization to issue subpoenas to Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo, and Robin Arkley II – the next step in our Supreme Court ethics investigation."

As reported in Talking Points Memo, Republican senators like Lindsay Graham are threatening to filibuster any enforcement of subpoenas.

That's something that's never happened before.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This comment by Elie Mystal about the passing of Sandra Day O'Connor definitely resonates with me.

[N.E. Brigand]

Senator Dick Durbin: "I just announced: I'm asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to grant me authorization to issue subpoenas to Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo, and Robin Arkley II – the next step in our Supreme Court ethics investigation."

As reported in Talking Points Memo, Republican senators like Lindsay Graham are threatening to filibuster any enforcement of subpoenas.

That's something that's never happened before.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted yesterday to subpoena conservative activist Leonard Leo and conservative donor Harlan Crow. The vote was 11-0, with all Democrats voting for the measure and all Republicans having walked out after several procedural moves and some heated rhetoric meant to block the vote failed.

Leo has already said that he won't comply. If he and/or Crow remain recalcitrant, the Senate will have to vote to enforce the subpoena, and such votes are subject to the filibuster, so Republicans could block enforcement. As noted above, that would be a novel move, but the Republicans on the committee yesterday seem very upset about the possibility that their friends will have to testify about their dealings with the Supreme Court.

[RoseMorninStar]

Wow. Just .. wow. The corruption drips like acid, eating away at Democracy.

[N.E. Brigand]

Nina Totenberg explains why even some mainstream Republicans are alarmed by Moore v. U.S., a tax case which the Court hears today. Charles and Kathleen Moore are Americans who invested $40,000 in an Indian company in 2005. Today their investment is worth $500,000. Under the law prior to 2017, they wouldn't have to pay tax on that $460,000 gain until they brought that money back to the U.S. But in December of that year, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the huge Trump tax bill (the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act"). Most of the law was aimed at reducing taxes on corporations and the wealthy -- thus vastly increasing the U.S. deficit -- but Republicans did include one positive item, which was imposing a tax on such "unrealized" foreign income. The Moores claim that, contra to decades of tax jurisprudence following the passage of the 16th Amendment (which allowed Congress to tax income) and subsequent tax law (notably in 1962), that this money isn't really income but wealth. Paul Ryan, who was Speaker of the House when the law passed, says that a ruling in favor of the Moores, depending on the specifics, could wreck the U.S. tax code and cost the U.S. government anywhere from $3 billion to $300 billtion to $1 trillion. The smaller number alone is more than 20 times the Supreme Court's annual budget, so I think even a narrow ruling in favor of the Moores should be followed by a reduction in Supreme Court salaries to $0. (We've been told so often that "elections have consequences." Decisions should too. There are more important things to pay for than justices' salaries. The CRFB points out that school lunches, for example, cost about $300 billion.)

In addition to all that, the Moores also don't appear to have been entirely truthful about how they've managing and using the money, but that probably doesn't matter, since we've seen in the past few years that the Court's conservatives don't really care about the facts when inconvenient to their arguments.

See also this piece from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

[N.E. Brigand]

Nina Totenberg explains why even some mainstream Republicans are alarmed by Moore v. U.S., a tax case which the Court hears today. Charles and Kathleen Moore are Americans who invested $40,000 in an Indian company in 2005. Today their investment is worth $500,000. Under the law prior to 2017, they wouldn't have to pay tax on that $460,000 gain until they brought that money back to the U.S. But in December of that year, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the huge Trump tax bill (the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act"). Most of the law was aimed at reducing taxes on corporations and the wealthy -- thus vastly increasing the U.S. deficit -- but Republicans did include one positive item, which was imposing a tax on such "unrealized" foreign income. The Moores claim that, contra to decades of tax jurisprudence following the passage of the 16th Amendment (which allowed Congress to tax income) and subsequent tax law (notably in 1962), that this money isn't really income but wealth. Paul Ryan, who was Speaker of the House when the law passed, says that a ruling in favor of the Moores, depending on the specifics, could wreck the U.S. tax code and cost the U.S. government anywhere from $3 billion to $300 billtion to $1 trillion. The smaller number alone is more than 20 times the Supreme Court's annual budget, so I think even a narrow ruling in favor of the Moores should be followed by a reduction in Supreme Court salaries to $0. (We've been told so often that "elections have consequences." Decisions should too. There are more important things to pay for than justices' salaries. The CRFB points out that school lunches, for example, cost about $300 billion.)

In addition to all that, the Moores also don't appear to have been entirely truthful about how they've managing and using the money, but that probably doesn't matter, since we've seen in the past few years that the Court's conservatives don't really care about the facts when inconvenient to their arguments.

See also this piece from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

There's a little reporting here on today's court session.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I knew that the name of the Moore case sounded familiar to me but I didn't remember why until I saw this tweet.