Gangster Joe? Or Dark Brandon?

GOP megadonor Harlan Crow bought property from Clarence Thomas. The Justice did not disclose the deal.

“Thomas was hiding a financial relationship with Crow,” said Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics expert at Washington University in St. Louis who reviewed years of Thomas’ disclosure filings.

"A federal disclosure law passed after Watergate requires justices and other officials to disclose the details of most real estate sales over $1,000," per ProPublica.

👉🏿 https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-real-estate-scotus

Harlan Crow has been very good to Justice Clarence Thomas, lavishing gifts and other favors on Thomas and his family.

Crow provided $500,000 to allow Thomas’ wife to start a Tea Party group, and he once gave Thomas a $19,000 Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass. He also served on the board of a corporate-aligned think tank called the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which once gave Thomas a $15,000 gift.

As ThinkProgress reported earlier, AEI filed at least three briefs in the Supreme Court after giving Thomas this very expensive gift, and Thomas either sided with AEI or took a position that was much more extreme that AEI’s in all three of these cases.

👉🏿 https://archive.thinkprogress.org/second-harlan-crow-connected-group-has-a-perfect-litigation-record-before-justice-thomas-1aaf50c21db8/

Clip'n'save

“With Liberty And Justice For All”

Where is my liberty? Where is my justice?

After the Supreme Court killed the national right to have an abortion while nodding toward its intention to further attack bodily autonomy as a human right, leading Democrats responded by begging for money, reading poems, and singing “God Bless America.”

The decision in Dobbs to overturn nearly 50 years of precedent and once again give repressive state legislatures the right to ban abortion and other forms of reproductive healthcare was made possible by the three newest Supreme Court justices, all conservative and all nominated by former President Donald Trump: Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch. While most Democrats voted against those justices, conservative West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin voted to confirm both Kavanaugh and Gorsuch.

On Friday, following the seismic SCOTUS ruling, Manchin confirmed he’d been taken for a ride when he voted for two conservative judges with the understanding that they wouldn’t overturn Roe v. Wade, since both of them called it a “precedent” and Kavanaugh referred to it as a “precedent on a precedent” after the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision in 1992. Manchin also said that he’s personally “pro-life,” but he repeated his “support” for codifying the protections of Roe into law—although in May, he opposed a bill to do exactly that.

“I trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh when they testified under oath that they also believed Roe v. Wade was settled legal precedent, and I am alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans,” Manchin said.

Prior to the decision, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeatedly said the Democratic party should have no “litmus test” on abortion. She endorsed and donated to the campaign of Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, the House’s last vocally anti-abortion Democrat, as he barely fought off a primary challenge this month from progressive pro-choice lawyer Jessica Cisneros.

Mendacity? From notes taken by Susan Collins' staff members in a private Aug. 2018 meeting between the Senator and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, re Roe:

“Roe is 45 years old, it has been reaffirmed many times, lots of people care about it a great deal, and I’ve tried to demonstrate I understand real-world consequences,” he [said], according to the notes, adding: “I am a don’t-rock-the-boat kind of judge. I believe in stability and in the Team of Nine.”

Seriously, he said the Team of Nine? I mean, we're not talking about the Red Sox here. And Collins' actually believed this? It's hard to believe that she did believe it--though much harder to believe that Kavanaugh believed what he was saying at the time he said it. 

The Lies We Tell usually stand in proportion to the Ambitions We Hold and this looks like a case of that. *And the last word here surely goes to Big Daddy, from Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: “What's that smell in this room? Didn't you notice it, Brick? Didn't you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity. You can smell it. It smells like death.

[Paul Starobin]

Liars

Arch Explains Biology

The conservative justices had an opportunity to rally to the defense of democracy, to gird the system against further attack, to righteously defend the rule of law, and to protect its own prerogatives and powers against a wannabe tyrant who is counting on them to be his supplicants. They could have drawn a sharp line. They could have summoned indignation and outrage. They could have overlooked their partisan priors in favor of principle – or more cravenly in favor of self-preservation. With the possible and limited exception of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, they did none of that. They failed in the worst possible way at the most crucial time.

Rogue SCOTUS Abandons Democracy In Her Hour Of Greatest Need

Say this with me: This SCOTUS majority is not an impartial arbiter of law. This SCOTUS majority has no respect for precedent, the will of the people, or its fundamental role in government.

This SCOTUS majority is doing through force what the other members of their movement could not achieve through elections: change laws to take equality and freedoms away from as many people as possible, to completely remake America into something we don’t recognize.

Donald Trump and his cult are the greatest threat America has ever faced in its history, with this corrupt, venal, activist group of unelected liars (and at least two rapists) enabling him.

Democrats absolutely have to expand the court and begin an impeachment inquiry into Thomas and Kavanaugh the instant they have congressional majorities. 

I don’t think it’s too late, but it’s about five seconds away from being too late. If Congress doesn’t act hard and fast, these seven people will turn America over to corporations and megachurches.

We have to stop this, and the only way we have any chance at all is to turn out in massive numbers this November to overwhelmingly defeat the people who will put Project 2025 into action.