This is my general sentiment as well. Irrespective of any consequences or entertaining "What should be done" considerations, we hopefully can agree that financial enmeshment with our Supreme Court justices is of serious concern. The issue is, is that it seems like we (as people) cannot agree, as people like Goom find no issue with this at all. However, I would bet money that if Soros was enmeshed with a more liberal justice, that peoples' takes would be different.

Like I said, its an extremely boring conversation. Why bother with hypotheticals when you could find real examples from PARD? I could say, I'd point out the facts and lack of malintent and you could challenge me on whether I would, because its a hypothetical where neither of us can prove anything and can make whatever arbitrary claims we want. If you go find a relevant parallel from the past, of which we've had no shortage, you could see how people treated it, or I could just play both roles in that hypothetical and save us some posts.

Supreme court justices have lives just like the rest of us, they're going to have financial entanglements with someone somewhere, particularly with legitimate friends or family, as opposed to political activists who pump money into the judiciary for the explicit purpose of enacting an agenda like George Soros does. Nobody brought any evidence of someone trying to influence Thomas's decisions, and that would be pointless since we already know exactly how Thomas will rule on any case, so what does that leave us with? What we're seeing right now, the WaPo/CNN/NYT/NPR news laundering machine that echoes around a story about Thomas not crossing his t's and dotting his i's, which is just ridiculous at face value.

There's a reason I contrasted it with the Biden example. It shows what happens when there's a clear quid pro quo and clearly malicious actors. Corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs with a history of bribery have zero legitimate reason to spend millions of dollars on a no-show job for a crackhead who doesn't even speak their language. Its not someone buying a house at market rate when the market is at its lowest, Hunter Biden didn't incur a financial loss like Thomas did. Nor did Thomas turn around and wield the entire power of the supreme court to personally intervene in a case for Harlan Crow in some dramatic fashion like Joe Biden personally flying to Ukraine and demand they fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma.
You strip away the malicious intent and ill gotten gains and what are you left with? The liberal media circlejerking over a report that shows Thomas made a typo

I ascertain that you have no qualms with financial enmeshment of Supreme Court justices, so long as no explicit quid pro quo takes place. An interesting perspective, but one that we do not share.

As opposed to shutting them into a monastery?
Our government only exists insofar as there's a shared civil spirit. The founding fathers built some checks and balances and but its nowhere even close to creating a system that would be stable against every actor maliciously exploiting every lever of their power the fullest extent of game theory. The lower courts answer to the appeals courts, the appeals courts answer to the supreme court, the supreme court police themselves. Once they've been nominated by a president and confirmed by the senate, they should be beyond political intrigue. Disagree with their philosophies, come up with legal workarounds the try to enact your own policies, sure. But in the past few years the radicals have been leaning more towards finding excuses to impeach, pursue frivolous claims of scandals, deliberate about trying to infringe on the separation of powers with constitutional changes or just outright try to assassinate justices at their home.
I might even agree with Sotomayor on more issues than with Thomas, but I don't join high tech lynchings. Like the ""investigations"" into Trump, its obvious and undeniable that these are politically motivated hit jobs trying desperately to conjure up an excuse, not pursue any legitimate evidence of wrongdoing.

I am unmoved by a need to consider impeachment or resignation at this time, as that seems both pre-emptive and also missing out on a much large dynamic. I understand that for you, there is no concern about financial enmeshment with Supreme Court justices and that a Goomshill-approved world is one in which every justice can be lavished upon so long as it is under the pretense of friendship and with the absence of explicit quid pro quo.

Theres no obligation for justices to avoid financial dealings. They are free to live normal private lives and that includes their own business. The early catholic church tried to wall off the clergy's power from worldly concerns, how did that go? They couldnt marry, they couldn't eat meat on fridays in lent. They couls live in opulent mansions, deck themselves in gold, raise their own armies, be kings in all but name.

The legitimacy and resiliency of a system of government doesnt come from demanding regular anal probing of the leaders, as tempting as that may sound. It relies upon the body politic being mature and civil enough to disregard this kind of tripe, otherwise democracy is nothing but a majority finding an excuse to stab the majority to death

Where we diverge, my friend, is that I think there's a world of difference between between "walling people off from wordly concerns" and the inappropriateness of financial enmeshment--particularly when justices are well-compensated at $260K+ a year. It strikes me to understand that your position equates disallowing meat on Fridays or disallowing the ability to marry as equally unfair of standard and expectation as not allowing a billionaire, who exists on the boards of organizations who bring cases to your very courtroom, to be the benevolent landlord of your mother and to lavish you in gifts that altogether alienate you from the very citizenry that you are entrusted to play a role for. Truly baffling that the Goomshill-approved world is one in which there is unfettered access to our Supreme Court justices so long as it is couched as friendship.

being held to any kind of ethical standard == walled off from worldly concerns
following rules that literally every other politician or legislator abides by == anal probing
expecting lifetime appointees to the highest court in the world to follow any kind of rules == death of democracy

the greasy, weasely hyperbole is out of control.


Supreme Court justices should absolutely be held to high standards, democracy depends on it

This post was edited by gnarjay on Apr 17 2023 11:59pm

lol thats a good one

why shouldnt they be just as jacked up as everything else? i mean who the hel is qualified to hold anyone to any kind of standard in this total clown show world.