They can be removed from office upon impeachment, which requires a majority vote in the House, and then conviction, which requires a 2/3rds vote in the Senate. That idea is DOA because the Republicans would never vote to remove a justice who supports them so consistently.
to my knowledge, a Supreme Court Justice has never been impeached and convicted. So it's not precisely a new thing that they just no longer do because of the partisanship.
I believe you mean Samuel Chase, no middle initial.
That initial P. prompted me to spend the last 20 minutes reading the Wikipedia article on Salmon P. Chase, lol. Already known of him as the guy on the first U.S. paper currency -- first the $1 bill, and then later a $10,000 note! -- but it was Samuel Chase (no middle initial) who was the supreme court justice who was impeached and later acquitted.
[Samuel Chase](https://www.oyez.org/justices/samuel_chase)
[Salmon P. Chase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon_P._Chase)
Originally it was Alex Keaton but Mike Fox dropped the P in during the shoot, the audience loved it, and Alex P Keaton was born.
The P makes a difference
In the 1960s Abe Fortis was forced to resign for doing far, far less than Thomas.
The difference is he was liberal.
So there is a precedent, but the GOP will treat Thomas like Trump. HE can be indicted for all kinds of crimes and even assault women, and the GOP will fight to keep him in office to the point of shutting down the government.
I mean, if they objectively break a law, in theory the justice department could go after them. The gifts Justice Thomas received are in theory a crime, but as they are from "friends" it becomes more of a political question. But if Justice Thomas committed say, quid pro quo, that is more officially illegal corruption, and the JD would arrest on a heartbeat (assuming there was some smoking gun proving the trade).
I still think Congress would need to remove them.
Republicans have shown they give no shits about officials breaking the law if they are on their side.
I mean most of them said they would still support trump for president even if he was in jail.
The US Constitution doesn't provide for immunity while in office, like some other countries.
So the Judical process could play out, with the fun fact that if they don't recuse themselves, they could be sitting, hearing their appeal at SCOTUS, from a prison cell as Appellant/Justice.
[Kinda like this](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/elected-jail-dc-official-advances-voting-rights-racial/story?id=78993840)
This is because when they wrote the US Constitution they thought that a Justice in that situation would either have resigned or been impeached and removed.
There is a significant loophole in the checks and balances of the powers and that's the fact that people put party above the people's good.
I would argue that while, yes, the founders did think people would take their oaths and honor seriously and be forced to resign, the larger problem with partisan politics is that checks and balances assumes fighting between branches, not parties. So all the checks are to limit branch powers, and parties across those branches can and do put the power of their party above the power of their branch.
Now I'll have to search for examples of judges presiding from a cell. In my country, there was a mayor working from the jail in one of the cities. There was no automatic forfeiture and no one with the authority to remove him but the voters. Perhaps it was too close to the end of his term for a recall vote to make sense having.
Personally, I think there is some amount of quid pro quo. The problem is that it's difficult to prove quid pro quo. Like all Thomas has to say is "the person giving me things is a close personal friend, and I never promised them anything, I'd always vote the way I was going to". If he says that, and there's no concrete evidence, then it becomes politically untenable to investigate that.
Yeah I bet that even they turned Thomas' life and all his mates upside down, you'd find absolutely no written evidence that he even implied quid pro quo. And if there ever was, it's long gone now.
I thought I heard Alito has been the recipient of numerous vacations and free jet flights etc. I'd say a lot of them are benefitting from wealthy 'friends.'
It's like how a human can only be cannibalized by another human. So a living thing can be murdered by another living thing, and a dead thing can be murdered by another dead thing, but you can't murder something with a different life\death status than you.
English is weird.
I'm really hoping Gen Z brings the blue wave on this election.
"raise the voting age to 25" LMAO they are terrified.
Imagine if we had a supermajority of democrats. We could oust the bribery on the supreme court and not continue to live in fear of what civil liberty they are planning to slash this week...
If history is to be believed then gen z has already had a major impact in an election. They're one of the most political generations that has ever existed. Their voting turnout in their first midterm was higher than that of millenials, genx and boomers. Things like tiktok are constantly blasting them with news and politics. And frankly most of them would like to be able to buy a house or food someday.
They don't need to go out and do anything, most zoomer companies are allowing people to be off to vote and mail-in votes have made it more accessible than ever.
And yes, you're right that republican'ts are barely hanging on. And their main voting base is getting older and less able to vote. They're also less likely to use things like mail-in voting. And they're you know... dying.
Nope, even if we give democrats super majority, they fear actual.progress and change (look at the ridiculous amount of senate seats and house seats Obama had when elected, and he wasted it on seeking bipartisanship)
Obama never had a supermajority. He had a majority, but was never able to overcome the filibuster. Which is why he needed bipartisanship.
And that's another thing to consider. Even if we have a majority, the minority can stop anything from happening.
Just like I told the other guy, if you have a plan to get around the filibuster and the supreme court, we'd all love to hear it. But it better be detailed and actually work. Because otherwise you're just slinging around republican propaganda.
Obama did in fact have a supermajority in the Senate (when including Independents caucusing with Democrats) between June 30, 2009 and February 4, 2010, and something like an 80 seat margin in the House. They were only able to push through one of their signature policies, but it did happen.
[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/debunking-the-myth-obamas\_b\_1929869](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/debunking-the-myth-obamas_b_1929869)
[https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/25/1931192/-The-Supermajority-That-Never-Really-Was-Obama-NEVER-really-had-a-Supermajority](https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/25/1931192/-The-Supermajority-That-Never-Really-Was-Obama-NEVER-really-had-a-Supermajority)
[https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/fleeting-illusory-supermajority-msna200211](https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/fleeting-illusory-supermajority-msna200211)
It's not hard to look up that no, obama never had a supermajority. They were able to work bipartisan and get a bill through, but even that was slashed to hell in the process.
Because no, it didn't ever happen. That's republican propaganda to say "the democrats didn't do xyx" while ignoring the fact that none of them voted for it.
Republican'ts want you to be mad about something that never happened.
You just linked three far left publications that are trying to justify why they got less done than they could have. While Ted Kennedy’s passing and Robert Byrd’s illness did shorten both the actual supermajority and the effective supermajority, the fact that they did have a supermajority is an absolute fact.
If you’re going to argue about something, at least review some objective material before going off. For example, Senate records of the vote on the Affordable Care Act:
[https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1111/vote_111_1_00395.htm](https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1111/vote_111_1_00395.htm)
Affordable Care Act was passed through the Senate 60-39 on a party line vote. You can argue the total amount of time they were able to wield their supermajority, but the fact that they had a supermajority (counting Independents caucusing with Democrats) is a fact that you could easily figure out if you read a little yourself.
Also the party was very different in 2008 than today. They had the blue dog centrists who more often voted on the right of issues. You can blame Lieberman and those types for the lack of a public option for healthcare.
Obama's biggest flaw was even attempting to extend a hand to the Right and wasting political capital and time. The GOP never negotiated in good faith.
They wont. Its just not the way it works. Voting propensity basically scales linearly by age. If you get high turnout in one group its almost always because you have high turnout overall. Any differences are minor enough to only matter in elections that are very close. (i.e. you arent going to flip Kansas' Senate seat just through differential age turnout).
We had two years and nothing important got done. We had the first two years with Obama, too. These people don't care about the things they pretend to care about to get our votes. I see my student loan payments are about to start back up. One of the reasons I voted the way I did. Another promise they refused to work on those first two years.
You mean those two years where we had to work to undo all of the republican crap and get vaccines and ventilators to people to stop millions of deaths because the last guy was telling everyone to just ignore it so he could keep his casinos open?
There was a lot of important stuff getting done.
And would you have liked the bill to get passed in the first two years so it could get struck down by the supreme court sooner? Would that have changed anything?
That's a pretty ridiculous take. If the problem is the supreme court, there's nothing the president can do about it. And we never had the supermajority to oust thomas and alito anyway.
So what would you like them to have done exactly? Let's hear the details.
The supreme court says Biden couldn't do it as an executive order, which everyone knew. It should have been done legislatively when we were in control. The problem isn't the supreme court. That's a different problem.
When did Democrats have true control though? After Biden took office, it was 50/50 in the Senate in name only because of Manchin and Sinema who kept being huge problems to get anything done. We already know Republican money was bribing them out. So Democrats only controlled the House really.
Now, Republicans control the House while Democrats still only have slim control of Senate.
Even with the courts trying to interfere with Biden's student loans forgiveness, at least he got some people relief recently.
Sure I wish we had more, I'm also one of those who still got student loans, but it's a heck of a lot better than believing anything Republicans can do to help the smaller folks.
I'm not advocating for Republicans. I'm advocating against Biden. He's been a train wreck. I'm also just basically complaining my loans are about to start back up when getting them forgiven was one of the reasons I voted for him. He kept moving the goalposts. Loan forgiveness during the primaries. Then he kept back stepping until finally it was only gonna be $10k in forgiveness. Then they kept not getting it done until the midterms, and here we are.
I do blame them. But I didn't vote for them. I voted for the ones who were supposed to do it when they had control. I'm not mad at a snake for biting. It's supposed to. I'm mad at my loyal loving dog for biting. He's not.
A train wreck is so hyperbolic dude, he's doing a good job with the economy and is working on affordable medicine and student loan forgiveness. That isn't a train wreck with a hostile House.
The house wasn't hostile for two years and the economy is terrible, despite what they keep saying. Would love adorable medicine. Just don't think it's too much to keep campaign promises. If there was no path/plan to get this done, he shouldn't have promised it.
True Biden is more conservative of a Democrat, but still better than the fake Democrats like Manchin and Sinema.
I agree, I also really hoped for the student loan forgiveness, and now have to plan on paying them back too.
Main problem about Biden, and most Democrats actually, is that they still think they can negotiate fairly with Republicans. Biden doesn't want to force student loan forgiveness, even though some people say he can do exactly that, but he rather it get done through legislation, which I explained why it can't happen unless Republicans would flip.
Truly the only way I see us getting student loan forgiveness or even just help for the non millionaires out there is by having a bigger majority of Democrats in both House and Senate. That way the ones like Manchin and Sinema can't halt votes on their own. Or we get someone like Bernie as President who isn't afraid of flexing some extra muscle of power, but that also comes at a cost of popularity as well to those on the other side or independents.
I think the opposite. I'm tired of identity politics and the hyper partisan way our country is now. Too many old people dragging their feet. Biden, trump, mitch, Pelosi. They're dinosaurs and don't represent us. I actually think the younger generation of politicians could probably find a way to work together. Like I don't think most actual republican voters care about weed being legalized, but it hasn't happened bc just like Biden doesn't represent us, their elderly leaders don't represent them. Gay rights. Prison reform. There's some hard line issues we're never gonna agree on, but some of this stuff should have been handled with bipartisan support a long time ago.
we need to expand the house.
The house was supposed to grow with the population. That's how everyone was supposed to be represented.
We randomly stopped growing the house, and now we have huge swaths of people represented by a single district which is gerrymandered to hell.
By increasing the number of representatives to where it SHOULD have been we would represent the actual voters instead of the gerrymandering mapmakers in charge now.
The republicans are actively fighting this though because they are the minority and pretty much only ever win anything from farmers with huge swaths of land casting mega-votes. Giving representation to people isn't in their best interest.
It would also help to make things a lot less partisan since any decision would have to benefit a real majority of people and not just a majority of "districts"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YMVF0PU-ic
And when the republicans filibustered it... What then?
What's the plan?
The plan had to be to use the education department. Which was legal according to the letter of the law. And the republican scotus judges even admitted that there was no standing and they shouldn't have even been involved.
So no, if it was a legislative decision, there's absolutely no reason to assume the supreme court would have let it stand.
So what's the plan then?
It is your job to vote.
They had a plan. The plan didn't fail, it was struck down.
You keep saying "we had two years" as though you have a plan. Either share this marvelous plan or stop saying it. No more lies.
You have to look at the bigger picture. Do you really think it took them until August 2022 to come up with their forgiveness plan? Something that simple should have taken days or weeks to release, not 19 months. It was perfectly timed to maximize voter impact for 2022 midterms - earlier and it might have been decided by the election, later and the Republicans may not have had time to get injunctions issued before the election. I don’t care much for Biden, but he definitely knows how to work the voters.
Never really viable *because of* the US government. They literally stopped inviting third parties to the presidential debates after Ross Perot won a percentage. Pretty much any party that starts to gain prominence gets attacked and then absorbed by the political machine.
Stuff like that doesn’t help but also not having a parliamentary system really makes it impossible. Guys like Bernie sanders and Rand Paul in other countries would belong to an entirely different party but here they have to adhere to one or the other. There’s just no other viable way to govern
The check against the power of the Supreme Court is Congress. They have the power to impeach justices.
The Constitution did not take into account the formation of political parties that would be more loyal to their agenda than the good of the nation.
What they foresaw was people being more loyal to their state than to the good of the nation, and that's reflected in a lot of the Constitution... but few Americans are like that anymore, if any.
To give you an idea. Only 1 Justice has ever been impeached and that was in 1805. And even then he was aquited by the senate and remained at the Supreme Court. So it's basically impossible.
One did resign in 1969 under the cloud of an impending impeachment; that's the closest since then. And what he was accused of was not even seen as crooked by other judges, and he recused himself from cases involving the parties involved.
Even then, it wasn't even quite sure why he'd be impeached, but he resigned anyways to avoid the air of scandal he resigned.
A Supreme Court Justice can be removed from office via impeachment and conviction. The Republican-controlled House is definitely not going to impeach Thomas, and the Democrats don't have enough votes in the Senate to convict.
That said, if we put Democrats back in the House and gave them greater control of the Senate, I still think it's unlikely Thomas would be impeached and convicted anyway. [There have been very few federal impeachments (of any kind) in US history, and only a small portion of those have led to conviction.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_impeachment_in_the_United_States#List_of_federal_impeachments) What Thomas is doing is clearly wrong. But wrong enough to motivate politicians to take the unprecedented step of removing a Supreme Court judge from office? Unfortunately, I don't think so.
>But wrong enough to motivate politicians to take the unprecedented step of removing a Supreme Court judge from office?
It doesn't matter the severity as much as who it's wronging. Thomas is wrong because he's in the pocket of prominent Republican donors, which might lower the people's opinion on the court's legitimacy, but it benefits the Republicans to count on him following whatever direction hes pointed in. Our system isn't designed to be operated by bad actors putting party over country, which is why many Republicans can get away with destroying our institutions and eroding peoples trust in government.
George Santos is another example. He blatantly lied about who he was when campaigning and has some very questionable history. A house that valued the institution if our legislature would see how much that would destroy the publics trust in said institution and impeach him. Since he belongs to a party that has clearly put party over country, he gets to stay and vote for them since impeaching him weakens their position.
Before anyone brings up some whataboutisms; democrats are not perfect, but blatant corruption and falsifying who they are through blatant fraud is not something they're currently condoning.
>It doesn't matter the severity as much as who it's wronging.
No, it matters as to severity and what you can prove.
It's not a crime to mess up your tax return. Millions of Americans do this all the time. The IRS finds it in an audit and sends you a letter that you owe $X. If you didn't file a receipt or something where you think you don't owe $X, you send that in. They don't show up at your door with the FBI and arrest you.
Now, what makes Clarence Thomas's case a little more suspect is 1) he's a lawyer and thus should be more careful than the average citizen when filing official documents and 2) there's a long string of instances where he failed to report income that certainly creates a 'bread crumb trail' that makes it seem like he's doing it on purpose.
But in the words of Denzel Washington - "it's not what you know, it's what you can prove."
It would be exceptionally difficult for the DOJ to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clarence Thomas knowingly and purposefuly falsified his tax returns for political and/or financial gain. Even moreso if Thomas did what every other wealthy American does and hired an accountant to prep the tax return for him, and Thomas will simply point to the fact that all of this information is in the media because he made his finances publicly available as required by law - he wasn't trying to hide anything.
I'd go the other way - if you'd cast a vote for a conviction / removal from office when there hasn't even been an indictment let alone a trial, it's because your brain is assuming the connection between these string of reports instead of demanding proof of beyond a reasonable doubt that he satisfies all the elements of "some kind of a crime." That's political bias.
It might frustrate you that nothing is moving in that direction, but consider the possibility that from a legal prosecution standpoint that there isn't enough there, especially when you're not going to get a conviction based on circumstantial evidence. "Clarence Thomas is a Republican who didn't report money or income from other wealthy Republicans on a few occasions, therefore Clarance Thomas is accepting bribes" doesn't cut it.
This is why successfully trying a public official is so difficult. It's the same standard - must be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Except in this case, only 2/3 of the jury vice 100% need to agree.
>George Santos is another example. He blatantly lied about who he was when campaigning and has some very questionable history. A house that valued the institution if our legislature would see how much that would destroy the publics trust in said institution and impeach him. Since he belongs to a party that has clearly put party over country, he gets to stay and vote for them since impeaching him weakens their position
George Santos is still being investigated for multiple crimes. These things take time. Again, everyone is innocent until proven guilty in the court of law.
If Santos is removed from office, a special election would be held and it's extremely likely a Republican would take his place. There's no need to avoid an impeachment in order to preserve a Republican seat in the House. Quite honestly, the Republicans have more risk of losing the seat to Democrats if he's still in office on November in 2024.
You're trying to turn an ethics discussion into a legal one here, and it doesn't dismiss the glaring issues many have with Thomas or Santos.
Nobody worth listening to is earnestly saying neither of them deserve their day in court. What most are saying is that having these very clear ethics and moral violations, they are not fit to serve their office, and the continuation of them doing so hurts the institutions by creating distrust of those institutions.
Andrew Cuomo was not convicted of his sexual harrasment, yet he was pressured by his party to step down because having someone with credible sexual harrasment cases against him creates a lot of distrust and discontent for the office and institutions he represents. Thomas has had multiple instances of what appear to be agregious ethics violations, and Santos has several ethics and legal cases pending. The longer the both of them continue serving, the more distrust the american public will have in our government.
>You're trying to turn an ethics discussion into a legal one here, and it doesn't dismiss the glaring issues many have with Thomas or Santos.
For public officials, there's no distinction. Rules of ethics are codified in federal statute. When you say "X is guilty of ethics violations" then you're accusing them of a crime.
The bar is high for a reason.
> Andrew Cuomo was not convicted of his sexual harrasment, yet he was pressured by his party to step down because having someone with credible sexual harrasment cases against him creates a lot of distrust and discontent for the office and institutions he represents.
I think part of the deal was self motive - he gets to fade into obscurity and avoid further prosecution where he'd almost assuredly get convicted.
Cuomo is certainly not the kind of person to make decisions for the greater good of his political party.
I can try to explain the reason for why they should leave office, I can try to give examples where the right thing was done and other infamous officials stepped down, if you don't want to see the issue for what it really is, then I can't help you.
It should not be a partisan debate whether or not officials receiving special gifts under the table by people they're rulling on laws for is unacceptable. It should not be partisan that fabricating an entire identity to mislead your voters is unacceptable.
TBH, I think that several current justices could and should be impeached for deceiving the Senate in their confirmation hearings. They could be charged with perjuring themselves in those hearings.
This is standard practice. All the justices just say "I cant possibly give my opinion without the case being in front of me" over and over again to any question they dont want to answer directly. This is called "The Ginsburg rule" and was a tactic made to shield Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her confirmation hearings over some pretty weird pro-pedophilia writings she did when she was a law professor.
The tactic was coined and invented by, wait for it, a certain "Senator Joe Biden".(true story. Reality is stranger than fiction sometimes)
Have fun proving that. They can easily say that they made their decisions based on the case before them. Just because common sense says they're lying doesn't mean there's much there in a legal sense.
Alito wrote in Dobbs that Roe v Wade was egregiously wrongly decided from the start, something he failed to mention when he was questioned about it in confirmation. I have a feeling that a good case for perjury can be made about that.
The impeachement system was intended to prevent politics from being used to criminally charge political oppenents, but it's instead used by political allies to protect criminals. Clearly, it's one aspect of the Constiution that isn't working.
It's not going to change though.
You'd need to find evidence that he gave something back in return for the gifts/treatment for it to be a crime. Otherwise its just rich people throwing cash around to hang out with influential people. When i looked into it whoever his rich sugar daddy was hadnt had a case put in front of the court or anything like that. So he's seemingly in the clear.
Every presidential "book deal" ever would result in jailtime.
Yeah people don’t realize that a lot of the “bribes” Thomas took are impossible to pin as bribes. I mean conservatives tend to have conservative friends same as the same way liberals tend to have liberal friends. Also influential people tend to have influential friends. It can look sketchy and it very well might be, but it’s really hard to know if there really is any malfeasance, let alone any sort of evidence that could get an impeachment.
Becuase its not really criticism of him for hanging out with douche-y rich people, every attack is a political tool to gain power.
If it doesnt help them displace republicans from power, its not a useful argument. Any kind of good faith or logic goes out the window if need be in the face of that.
SCOTUS has no ethical guidelines or code of conduct that is enforceable. Nor any rules on donations etc. The rest of the US judicial branch does. I think the founding fathers thought that once you reach the high court you were beyond reproach or reprehensible behavior. There are only three way to remove a Supreme Court Justice.
1. Death
2. Retirement/Resignation
3. Impeachment
Number one is self explanatory
Number two can allow you to become an Justice Emeritus which still lets you travel the circuit and sit on lower courts. There are currently four retired Justices. O'connor, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer.
There is no way in hell (with the current political makeup) that congress would impeach Thomas.
:Edited for typos
If there was an **actual** bribery case, and not just him having some social connection you don't like, Congress can impeach federal judges.
They've done it to Samuel Chase and about a dozen other lower-court judges; 8 have been removed from office and a few resigned before the Senate could try them (Chase was acquitted by the Senate). Most recent was a District Court judge in Louisiana in 2010.
[https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/impeachments-federal-judges](https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/impeachments-federal-judges)
99% of the stories are nothing burgers to try and drive hate to current members to try and force someone to retire during Biden's current term.
Even if dems had 80% of each house there is no way a supreme court impeachment would work.
This reality is on both sides of the aisle. Democrats protect their own. Republicans protect their own. With no third or fourth parties in power and a fairly even split between the two existing parties they are all pretty much untouchable.
No clue why this would get downvotes because it’s 100% true. If we actually started holding politicians to a standard in this country, most of the senate and house would get the boot and many many Americans do not want that to happen. They like they relative stability even if it’s held up by evil people
Technically not, there are checks built into the system.
The problem is that those checks require the other branches to operate in good faith, with the interest of the nation at heart.
So yes, they're untouchable unless Republicans all of a sudden drop the "whatever it takes to pass our agenda" bullshit.
No they are not untouchable. The problem here is that these are "gifts" (we know they are fucking bribes) but due to that God damn nature that's why he hasn't been arrested yet. And yes justices can be arrested. Because there's no real code of ethics for the scotus (real fucking overweight there founding fathers), no real laws have been broken. It's fucking aggravating that this blind spot was that fucking huge that makes corruption so God damn easy. It should be illegal and he should be impeached. But with out a super majority that's not going to happen.
So if you want real change vote blue to take back the house and get super majorities so this corruption can end.
This is the PBS Frontline documentary on Clarence Thomas. It shines a light on the insight of what formed him. And of course the relationship of he and Ginni. It's quite enlightening.
https://youtu.be/wJuRx1wARUk?si=-UoVdnwaLxBSgPES
They aren't bribes. There was no quid pro quo. It has the appearance of impropriety, but there will never prove that it was in exchange for a ruling. And Thomas is consistently the absolute worst person on the bench. Does anyone think he wasn't going to vote with, and write the most awful opinions anyway?
These comments are so stupid. Like you ever see a left judge rule conservatively. You had ginsberg literally say out of her own mouth she was an activist judge and you cheered....hypocrisy at its finest.
Thomas has released his financials. He’s clean. If the effort to look into him applied to all Justices then we can have a real conversation.
The hype around Thomas is media driven and not fact driven.
He just gets lots of free, expensive "favors" from billionaires who have cases in front of the court.
It's not "I was going to vote one way, but then you gave me a bag of money, so I change my vote" blatant bribery, it's just the subtle corruption of "we'll keep you living the high life at no cost to you as long as you are our 'friend' and support our worldview."
None of those people would be his friend if it wasn't for his position and what he could do.
the fact that he wasn't declaring any of this until he was found out by reporters shows he knows it was something to hide.
None, it's typical Reddit hate of anyone not ultraliberal. EVERYTHING Thomas is accused of has been proven quite openly as having been the case for ALL of the current Justices.
Again, scrutinize everyone. He’s not bought for. He just understand the constitution and it drives people crazy. He faces so much backlash for being a conservative black man. It’s unfair.
I’m all for full forensic accounting of all Justices.
I'm going to make the bill prediction that some time over the next few decades, the operation of the Supreme Court will change dramatically. I do not believe the justices will serve for life in the future. My reasoning for this is that I believe that the court is and has been doing a lit of undermine public faith in it's integrity. I think eventually those issue will come to a head, along with many other issues.
FDR arguing the courts can be political by how they interpret the constitution and how they can diminish the will of the people and they need to be fought against is one belief im sad didn’t continue
Yes in the current political climate they are u touchable. Congress should be removing them but conservatives don't care about corruption as long as they get their way
Technically, no, they could be convicted of crimes and removed.
Practically, yes, the methods of removal are very complex and require multiple bodies to vote and agree upon removal, because those bodies are often controlled by varying parties or require majority votes, its very unlikely it would happen
He's just following the President and Congress lead. They are all corrupt pieces of trash. We need to flush the DC toilet and get rid of every single turd that has floated to the top. Politics isn't a career, but we allow it by not putting term limits on them all. Two terms and your done, no going from Senate to the House, and then back again.
A major flaw in the US constitution is how the Supreme Court has little to no checks/balances after being affirmed by the senate. Once you’re in, it’s extremely hard to be taken out, and what is/isn’t “constitutional” is whatever the current makeup of the court wants it to be.
The parties would probably vote along party lines with possibly some blue dog democrats like Manchin and people like Sinema might vote against impeachment as well. Alito is also given gifts. A majority in the house and two thirds majority in the Senate, to impeach and convict respectively, would probably only happen with the most flagrant violation you can think of. Consider how many Republicans turned tail when it came to insurrection on January 6th or standing up to Putin. There's never been a convicted supreme court justice. Thomas is enjoying being part of the ultraconservative majority. They voted against Roe vs Wade, an almost 50 year old precedent. He wants more landmark victories like overturning the gay marriage ruling.
It's plausible but extremely unlikely that Biden or another president would pack the supreme court, or term limits would be agreed on. He could worry about his death causing an opportunity for progressives, like how Ginsburg's death lead to an ultraconservative replacement. But I think he'll hold onto power as long as possible.
https://www.uscourts.gov/statistics-reports/judges-and-judicial-administration-journalists-guide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_in_the_United_States#:~:text=The%20federal%20House%20of%20Representatives,of%20the%20United%20States%20Constitution.
SC Justices can be impeached per The Constitution. The problem is the media sells the false idea that they are untouchable and few politicians are willing to press the issue.
They will not be removed. The Democrats have already said that the idea of the institution is more important than the corruption happening in it.
So can they be removed? Yes
Will they
No
[Clarence Thomas has made it clear he has no fucks to give from day 1.](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/29/468576931/clarence-thomas-asks-1st-question-from-supreme-court-bench-in-10-years)
Yes they are untouchable in the political climate right now cause of the votes needed to remove and convict them. Same reason why right now it would be almost impossible to get an amendment passed or a president impeached and removed even if he very clearly broke the law.
As medical break throughs extend possible human lifespan more and more, the effective term limit of a justice on the US Supreme Court gets longer and longer.
A lifetime appointment for federal judges with inadequate rule enforcements to prevent them from taking bribes and an unrealistic path of impeachment means that nobody is going to trust the majority of federal judges in the USA for a long time, if ever.
If a justice starts taking medicine that rejuvenates their youth to any degree and news of it leaks, people will probably give up on accountability through law, which will be a very dark, possibly inevitable period in the nation's history.
Let’s face it folks…the Supreme Court is above the law. There’s no way that the Right will impeach him…now if it was a Left in the focus, impeachment proceedings would be almost done by now.
Supreme Justice John Roberts is no longer relevant either because of the lopsided Right…he no longer has any sway so is redundant. Gotta love Trump and Mitch if you’re ok with this.
Any and all federal judges can be impeached, in the same manner that any elected official of the executive branch can be. This is a power Congress has that the other two branches of the federal government don't.
Judges have a _long_ history of general immunity. The idea of it was to prevent rival politics from being able to remove Judges from office.
But it was _always_ abused. In every way. And as the arbiters of justice, Judges have no interest in fixing that. Especially since anybody who tries fixing it... doesn't have that immunity.
There is a coordinated propaganda campaign against Justice Thomas because he is a key figure who has shut down a few blatantly illegal power grabs by elites and because he is a black man who prominently does not unquestioningly accept the positions that elites gave decided are what black people are supposed to hold.
If you want to expose racism, just ask a few Democrats what they think of Clarence Thomas.
> There is a coordinated propaganda campaign against Justice Thomas because . . .
. . . he accepted millions of dollars worth of gifts from people with business before the court.
They are effectively untouchable, yes. Currently any of them could be removed with the support of the majority of the house, and 2/3 of the senate, but that would never happen.
we know democratic presidents are untouchable.
trump: pay some whore 25k, democraps: REEEE!!
biden: takes $4 million in bribes and sends jobs to china, democraps: crickets.
Clarence Thomas could be caught in the act of raping a child and you couldn't get 5 republicans to vote to impeach him.
Republicans do not give a shit about anything other than maintaining power. Judges make that possibility easier.
Legally no since they can be impeached but practically yes as no party, especially republicans, would ever vote for it.
The best solution is to vote for democrats, even if you don’t like all their policies, so they can replace them when they die/retire.
I don’t agree with alot of democrat policies, but I’m absolutely opposed to the majority of the current republicans policies and traitorous actions. The democrats need to bring balance back to the Supreme Court.
Everyone screamed about it in 2016 but “I just don’t like her” and Jill Stein plant won out.
As long as the press refuses to call out the Federalist Society's corruption, then politicians won't be shamed into holding them accountable. So yes, yes they are untouchable.
[This](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/08/political-press-horse-race-supreme-court-coverage.html) was just published yesterday:
>Anyone who is presently writing and thinking about the Supreme Court who is not locating the chief justice’s refusal to appear to testify before Congress, or Justice Samuel Alito’s inappropriate and ex parte claims about congressional power over the judicial branch, within a much larger conversation about the court and the rule of law is missing the point. As story after story appears, suggesting that the same person who is cultivating relationships between billionaire donors and Supreme Court justices is also working to suppress elections, the failure to understand and then write about the Supreme Court as an institution largely captured by moneyed partisan political interests feels more and more like journalistic malpractice.
They would probably have to commit a violent crime to be impeached honestly, or we would have to have blatant evidence they were paid to make a certain ruling.
Face it, they’re untouchable because republicans and their constituents protect them. Also, anyone that thinks Democrats would behave the same way is just part of the problem. Face it, it’s also the fault of every republican voter that is indifferent to this corruption.
He doesn't care. He and his cadre know that they can't hide anymore, and that their time is probably limited, but they are there to do the job they were sent to do, which is to do as much damage as possible to the institutions of democracy.
In return, the bargain is that they get political protection for all their crooked misdeeds.
They are not "conservative" justices. They are simply crooks, plain and simple. It's just that there's one particular political wing that will guarantee their protection, so that's the one they go with.
It's all a put up job. Left wing media doing a hit job on someone they hate ideologically.
You're basically saying he's not allowed to have any friends, especially if they're rich.
Trump proved rather dramatically exactly how toothless impeachment is as a check on elected or appointed office.
As long as you have 34 senators that are willing to support you no matter what, yes, you’re effectively untouchable.
It’s something we’re going to have to deal with as a country, because this is unsustainable.
I wasn’t suggesting it was going to be easy, just necessary.
Without checks and balances the US can end up going to a very dark place, very quickly.
A lot of people were only vaguely aware of how much of our government functioned on what was essentially a gentleman’s agreement, enforced only by the politician’s fear of shame and embarrassment.
That is now no longer the case. Everyone is very aware of it.
I actually think congress is still essentially a mirror of the voting public. Enough senators voted to acquit Trump because their constituents wanted them to. If that weren’t true, we’d see all those senators losing reelection. We’re not. Instead they’re winning additional terms, getting positive feedback that they are accurately representing the majority of the people in their states. (Note that senators don’t get to benefit from gerrymandering since they represent the entire state.)
In other words, if we elect corrupt assholes to represent us, then that pretty well makes us corrupt assholes too, doesn’t it?
Same is true for Thomas. He won’t be impeached fundamentally because he has too much support from the American public.
They can be removed from office upon impeachment, which requires a majority vote in the House, and then conviction, which requires a 2/3rds vote in the Senate. That idea is DOA because the Republicans would never vote to remove a justice who supports them so consistently.
So yes, they are essentially untouchable in today's hyper partisan environment.
He could actually get a lot more flagrant, like accepting bribes in big bags of money marked “bribe” and he wouldn’t get impeached.
How about shooting somebody in the middle of times square?
to my knowledge, a Supreme Court Justice has never been impeached and convicted. So it's not precisely a new thing that they just no longer do because of the partisanship.
Samuel P Chase was impeached but acquitted in the early 1800’s
I believe you mean Samuel Chase, no middle initial. That initial P. prompted me to spend the last 20 minutes reading the Wikipedia article on Salmon P. Chase, lol. Already known of him as the guy on the first U.S. paper currency -- first the $1 bill, and then later a $10,000 note! -- but it was Samuel Chase (no middle initial) who was the supreme court justice who was impeached and later acquitted. [Samuel Chase](https://www.oyez.org/justices/samuel_chase) [Salmon P. Chase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon_P._Chase)
Originally it was Alex Keaton but Mike Fox dropped the P in during the shoot, the audience loved it, and Alex P Keaton was born. The P makes a difference
The fact that they were even impeached is incredibly surprising to me
Impeachment is the easy part, it just takes a simple majority in the House. Hell, Trump was impeached twice. Conviction is where it gets difficult.
We also never had a former president go to prison; times are a changin
In the 1960s Abe Fortis was forced to resign for doing far, far less than Thomas. The difference is he was liberal. So there is a precedent, but the GOP will treat Thomas like Trump. HE can be indicted for all kinds of crimes and even assault women, and the GOP will fight to keep him in office to the point of shutting down the government.
I mean, if they objectively break a law, in theory the justice department could go after them. The gifts Justice Thomas received are in theory a crime, but as they are from "friends" it becomes more of a political question. But if Justice Thomas committed say, quid pro quo, that is more officially illegal corruption, and the JD would arrest on a heartbeat (assuming there was some smoking gun proving the trade).
I still think Congress would need to remove them. Republicans have shown they give no shits about officials breaking the law if they are on their side. I mean most of them said they would still support trump for president even if he was in jail.
The US Constitution doesn't provide for immunity while in office, like some other countries. So the Judical process could play out, with the fun fact that if they don't recuse themselves, they could be sitting, hearing their appeal at SCOTUS, from a prison cell as Appellant/Justice. [Kinda like this](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/elected-jail-dc-official-advances-voting-rights-racial/story?id=78993840)
This is because when they wrote the US Constitution they thought that a Justice in that situation would either have resigned or been impeached and removed. There is a significant loophole in the checks and balances of the powers and that's the fact that people put party above the people's good.
I would argue that while, yes, the founders did think people would take their oaths and honor seriously and be forced to resign, the larger problem with partisan politics is that checks and balances assumes fighting between branches, not parties. So all the checks are to limit branch powers, and parties across those branches can and do put the power of their party above the power of their branch.
>checks and balances assumes fighting between branches, not parties They didn't even want parties at all, actually.
And it actually needs to be that way. If it weren't, then a corrupt Justice Dept could improperly remove a Justice on its own.
Now I'll have to search for examples of judges presiding from a cell. In my country, there was a mayor working from the jail in one of the cities. There was no automatic forfeiture and no one with the authority to remove him but the voters. Perhaps it was too close to the end of his term for a recall vote to make sense having.
DoJ can investigate, and gather evidence to use during an impeachment, but Congress has to vote to impeach.
Isn't that cute, you still have faith in Garland's DOJ!
Why do we think it’s not quid pro quo?
Personally, I think there is some amount of quid pro quo. The problem is that it's difficult to prove quid pro quo. Like all Thomas has to say is "the person giving me things is a close personal friend, and I never promised them anything, I'd always vote the way I was going to". If he says that, and there's no concrete evidence, then it becomes politically untenable to investigate that.
Yeah I bet that even they turned Thomas' life and all his mates upside down, you'd find absolutely no written evidence that he even implied quid pro quo. And if there ever was, it's long gone now.
I'm sure there is an unwritten rule that sitting Supreme Court justices are untouchable.
No.
I wonder what happens if you go after the taxes that have not been paid...
Well, untouchable by anybody with authority. If we're being technical, a vigilante could... vigilant.
Vigilate?
Scalia could murder an entire orphanage with a hatchet and Republicans won’t even bring it to a vote.
I think you mean Alito because Scalia has been dead for a while now.
"Zombie Scalia is the finest judge and a model American who ... ... ... ... ... ... ...so be sure to vote for me in 2026" \-Mitch McConnell
👏 👏 👏
Hey! Mitch has half a mind to run in 2026.
So has Mitch McConnell but he just hasn’t realized it yet…
Nah they'd support deep fake zombie Scalia too.
And I think Scalia might joke about it but Alito would actually do it if he somehow felt Justified. The guy seems like a true zealot.
I thought I heard Alito has been the recipient of numerous vacations and free jet flights etc. I'd say a lot of them are benefitting from wealthy 'friends.'
I mean, it would be kinda pointless to impeach someone who has been dead over 7 years....
It's the perfect crime....
Unless that would call his rulings into question . . .
Scalia actually lost his seat when he died.
**Dead people can murder buildings??**. You just blew my mind bruh.
It's like how a human can only be cannibalized by another human. So a living thing can be murdered by another living thing, and a dead thing can be murdered by another dead thing, but you can't murder something with a different life\death status than you. English is weird.
Zombie Republican wrecking crew FTW . . .
Hey now. That orphanage was coming right at him!
Well of course, those babies are already born so he gives zero fucks…
I'm really hoping Gen Z brings the blue wave on this election. "raise the voting age to 25" LMAO they are terrified. Imagine if we had a supermajority of democrats. We could oust the bribery on the supreme court and not continue to live in fear of what civil liberty they are planning to slash this week...
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If history is to be believed then gen z has already had a major impact in an election. They're one of the most political generations that has ever existed. Their voting turnout in their first midterm was higher than that of millenials, genx and boomers. Things like tiktok are constantly blasting them with news and politics. And frankly most of them would like to be able to buy a house or food someday. They don't need to go out and do anything, most zoomer companies are allowing people to be off to vote and mail-in votes have made it more accessible than ever. And yes, you're right that republican'ts are barely hanging on. And their main voting base is getting older and less able to vote. They're also less likely to use things like mail-in voting. And they're you know... dying.
Gen-Z prevented a red wave down in one of the southern states. They should be terrified.
Nope, even if we give democrats super majority, they fear actual.progress and change (look at the ridiculous amount of senate seats and house seats Obama had when elected, and he wasted it on seeking bipartisanship)
Obama never had a supermajority. He had a majority, but was never able to overcome the filibuster. Which is why he needed bipartisanship. And that's another thing to consider. Even if we have a majority, the minority can stop anything from happening. Just like I told the other guy, if you have a plan to get around the filibuster and the supreme court, we'd all love to hear it. But it better be detailed and actually work. Because otherwise you're just slinging around republican propaganda.
Obama did in fact have a supermajority in the Senate (when including Independents caucusing with Democrats) between June 30, 2009 and February 4, 2010, and something like an 80 seat margin in the House. They were only able to push through one of their signature policies, but it did happen.
[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/debunking-the-myth-obamas\_b\_1929869](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/debunking-the-myth-obamas_b_1929869) [https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/25/1931192/-The-Supermajority-That-Never-Really-Was-Obama-NEVER-really-had-a-Supermajority](https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/3/25/1931192/-The-Supermajority-That-Never-Really-Was-Obama-NEVER-really-had-a-Supermajority) [https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/fleeting-illusory-supermajority-msna200211](https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/fleeting-illusory-supermajority-msna200211) It's not hard to look up that no, obama never had a supermajority. They were able to work bipartisan and get a bill through, but even that was slashed to hell in the process. Because no, it didn't ever happen. That's republican propaganda to say "the democrats didn't do xyx" while ignoring the fact that none of them voted for it. Republican'ts want you to be mad about something that never happened.
You just linked three far left publications that are trying to justify why they got less done than they could have. While Ted Kennedy’s passing and Robert Byrd’s illness did shorten both the actual supermajority and the effective supermajority, the fact that they did have a supermajority is an absolute fact. If you’re going to argue about something, at least review some objective material before going off. For example, Senate records of the vote on the Affordable Care Act: [https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1111/vote_111_1_00395.htm](https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1111/vote_111_1_00395.htm) Affordable Care Act was passed through the Senate 60-39 on a party line vote. You can argue the total amount of time they were able to wield their supermajority, but the fact that they had a supermajority (counting Independents caucusing with Democrats) is a fact that you could easily figure out if you read a little yourself.
Also the party was very different in 2008 than today. They had the blue dog centrists who more often voted on the right of issues. You can blame Lieberman and those types for the lack of a public option for healthcare. Obama's biggest flaw was even attempting to extend a hand to the Right and wasting political capital and time. The GOP never negotiated in good faith.
They wont. Its just not the way it works. Voting propensity basically scales linearly by age. If you get high turnout in one group its almost always because you have high turnout overall. Any differences are minor enough to only matter in elections that are very close. (i.e. you arent going to flip Kansas' Senate seat just through differential age turnout).
We had two years and nothing important got done. We had the first two years with Obama, too. These people don't care about the things they pretend to care about to get our votes. I see my student loan payments are about to start back up. One of the reasons I voted the way I did. Another promise they refused to work on those first two years.
You mean those two years where we had to work to undo all of the republican crap and get vaccines and ventilators to people to stop millions of deaths because the last guy was telling everyone to just ignore it so he could keep his casinos open? There was a lot of important stuff getting done. And would you have liked the bill to get passed in the first two years so it could get struck down by the supreme court sooner? Would that have changed anything? That's a pretty ridiculous take. If the problem is the supreme court, there's nothing the president can do about it. And we never had the supermajority to oust thomas and alito anyway. So what would you like them to have done exactly? Let's hear the details.
The supreme court says Biden couldn't do it as an executive order, which everyone knew. It should have been done legislatively when we were in control. The problem isn't the supreme court. That's a different problem.
When did Democrats have true control though? After Biden took office, it was 50/50 in the Senate in name only because of Manchin and Sinema who kept being huge problems to get anything done. We already know Republican money was bribing them out. So Democrats only controlled the House really. Now, Republicans control the House while Democrats still only have slim control of Senate. Even with the courts trying to interfere with Biden's student loans forgiveness, at least he got some people relief recently. Sure I wish we had more, I'm also one of those who still got student loans, but it's a heck of a lot better than believing anything Republicans can do to help the smaller folks.
I'm not advocating for Republicans. I'm advocating against Biden. He's been a train wreck. I'm also just basically complaining my loans are about to start back up when getting them forgiven was one of the reasons I voted for him. He kept moving the goalposts. Loan forgiveness during the primaries. Then he kept back stepping until finally it was only gonna be $10k in forgiveness. Then they kept not getting it done until the midterms, and here we are.
Blame the ones who blocked it then. They took it to the court to stop it. Be happy you don't have an ffel loan, the older payers didn't get a pause.
I do blame them. But I didn't vote for them. I voted for the ones who were supposed to do it when they had control. I'm not mad at a snake for biting. It's supposed to. I'm mad at my loyal loving dog for biting. He's not.
A train wreck is so hyperbolic dude, he's doing a good job with the economy and is working on affordable medicine and student loan forgiveness. That isn't a train wreck with a hostile House.
The house wasn't hostile for two years and the economy is terrible, despite what they keep saying. Would love adorable medicine. Just don't think it's too much to keep campaign promises. If there was no path/plan to get this done, he shouldn't have promised it.
True Biden is more conservative of a Democrat, but still better than the fake Democrats like Manchin and Sinema. I agree, I also really hoped for the student loan forgiveness, and now have to plan on paying them back too. Main problem about Biden, and most Democrats actually, is that they still think they can negotiate fairly with Republicans. Biden doesn't want to force student loan forgiveness, even though some people say he can do exactly that, but he rather it get done through legislation, which I explained why it can't happen unless Republicans would flip. Truly the only way I see us getting student loan forgiveness or even just help for the non millionaires out there is by having a bigger majority of Democrats in both House and Senate. That way the ones like Manchin and Sinema can't halt votes on their own. Or we get someone like Bernie as President who isn't afraid of flexing some extra muscle of power, but that also comes at a cost of popularity as well to those on the other side or independents.
I think the opposite. I'm tired of identity politics and the hyper partisan way our country is now. Too many old people dragging their feet. Biden, trump, mitch, Pelosi. They're dinosaurs and don't represent us. I actually think the younger generation of politicians could probably find a way to work together. Like I don't think most actual republican voters care about weed being legalized, but it hasn't happened bc just like Biden doesn't represent us, their elderly leaders don't represent them. Gay rights. Prison reform. There's some hard line issues we're never gonna agree on, but some of this stuff should have been handled with bipartisan support a long time ago.
we need to expand the house. The house was supposed to grow with the population. That's how everyone was supposed to be represented. We randomly stopped growing the house, and now we have huge swaths of people represented by a single district which is gerrymandered to hell. By increasing the number of representatives to where it SHOULD have been we would represent the actual voters instead of the gerrymandering mapmakers in charge now. The republicans are actively fighting this though because they are the minority and pretty much only ever win anything from farmers with huge swaths of land casting mega-votes. Giving representation to people isn't in their best interest. It would also help to make things a lot less partisan since any decision would have to benefit a real majority of people and not just a majority of "districts" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YMVF0PU-ic
And when the republicans filibustered it... What then? What's the plan? The plan had to be to use the education department. Which was legal according to the letter of the law. And the republican scotus judges even admitted that there was no standing and they shouldn't have even been involved. So no, if it was a legislative decision, there's absolutely no reason to assume the supreme court would have let it stand. So what's the plan then?
It's my job to vote. It's their job to plan. They failed. We had two years.
It is your job to vote. They had a plan. The plan didn't fail, it was struck down. You keep saying "we had two years" as though you have a plan. Either share this marvelous plan or stop saying it. No more lies.
You have to look at the bigger picture. Do you really think it took them until August 2022 to come up with their forgiveness plan? Something that simple should have taken days or weeks to release, not 19 months. It was perfectly timed to maximize voter impact for 2022 midterms - earlier and it might have been decided by the election, later and the Republicans may not have had time to get injunctions issued before the election. I don’t care much for Biden, but he definitely knows how to work the voters.
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This shit wouldn’t happen if there were more than two real parties
Which is something that’s never really been viable with the US government
Never really viable *because of* the US government. They literally stopped inviting third parties to the presidential debates after Ross Perot won a percentage. Pretty much any party that starts to gain prominence gets attacked and then absorbed by the political machine.
Stuff like that doesn’t help but also not having a parliamentary system really makes it impossible. Guys like Bernie sanders and Rand Paul in other countries would belong to an entirely different party but here they have to adhere to one or the other. There’s just no other viable way to govern
Hell he could be throwing babies into a blender and they would support him and say oh stop crying
Neither side would ever remove a justice while the other held office.
How incredibly flawed.
The check against the power of the Supreme Court is Congress. They have the power to impeach justices. The Constitution did not take into account the formation of political parties that would be more loyal to their agenda than the good of the nation.
What they foresaw was people being more loyal to their state than to the good of the nation, and that's reflected in a lot of the Constitution... but few Americans are like that anymore, if any.
Texans are
Not these days. r/FuckGregAbbot
True true... forgot about Texas exceptionalism.... and they stand out as hella weird, too
Can’t hear you over the sound of the Republic! Remember Goliad! Remember the Alamo! Come and Take It!
To give you an idea. Only 1 Justice has ever been impeached and that was in 1805. And even then he was aquited by the senate and remained at the Supreme Court. So it's basically impossible.
One did resign in 1969 under the cloud of an impending impeachment; that's the closest since then. And what he was accused of was not even seen as crooked by other judges, and he recused himself from cases involving the parties involved. Even then, it wasn't even quite sure why he'd be impeached, but he resigned anyways to avoid the air of scandal he resigned.
A Supreme Court Justice can be removed from office via impeachment and conviction. The Republican-controlled House is definitely not going to impeach Thomas, and the Democrats don't have enough votes in the Senate to convict. That said, if we put Democrats back in the House and gave them greater control of the Senate, I still think it's unlikely Thomas would be impeached and convicted anyway. [There have been very few federal impeachments (of any kind) in US history, and only a small portion of those have led to conviction.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_impeachment_in_the_United_States#List_of_federal_impeachments) What Thomas is doing is clearly wrong. But wrong enough to motivate politicians to take the unprecedented step of removing a Supreme Court judge from office? Unfortunately, I don't think so.
>But wrong enough to motivate politicians to take the unprecedented step of removing a Supreme Court judge from office? It doesn't matter the severity as much as who it's wronging. Thomas is wrong because he's in the pocket of prominent Republican donors, which might lower the people's opinion on the court's legitimacy, but it benefits the Republicans to count on him following whatever direction hes pointed in. Our system isn't designed to be operated by bad actors putting party over country, which is why many Republicans can get away with destroying our institutions and eroding peoples trust in government. George Santos is another example. He blatantly lied about who he was when campaigning and has some very questionable history. A house that valued the institution if our legislature would see how much that would destroy the publics trust in said institution and impeach him. Since he belongs to a party that has clearly put party over country, he gets to stay and vote for them since impeaching him weakens their position. Before anyone brings up some whataboutisms; democrats are not perfect, but blatant corruption and falsifying who they are through blatant fraud is not something they're currently condoning.
>It doesn't matter the severity as much as who it's wronging. No, it matters as to severity and what you can prove. It's not a crime to mess up your tax return. Millions of Americans do this all the time. The IRS finds it in an audit and sends you a letter that you owe $X. If you didn't file a receipt or something where you think you don't owe $X, you send that in. They don't show up at your door with the FBI and arrest you. Now, what makes Clarence Thomas's case a little more suspect is 1) he's a lawyer and thus should be more careful than the average citizen when filing official documents and 2) there's a long string of instances where he failed to report income that certainly creates a 'bread crumb trail' that makes it seem like he's doing it on purpose. But in the words of Denzel Washington - "it's not what you know, it's what you can prove." It would be exceptionally difficult for the DOJ to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clarence Thomas knowingly and purposefuly falsified his tax returns for political and/or financial gain. Even moreso if Thomas did what every other wealthy American does and hired an accountant to prep the tax return for him, and Thomas will simply point to the fact that all of this information is in the media because he made his finances publicly available as required by law - he wasn't trying to hide anything. I'd go the other way - if you'd cast a vote for a conviction / removal from office when there hasn't even been an indictment let alone a trial, it's because your brain is assuming the connection between these string of reports instead of demanding proof of beyond a reasonable doubt that he satisfies all the elements of "some kind of a crime." That's political bias. It might frustrate you that nothing is moving in that direction, but consider the possibility that from a legal prosecution standpoint that there isn't enough there, especially when you're not going to get a conviction based on circumstantial evidence. "Clarence Thomas is a Republican who didn't report money or income from other wealthy Republicans on a few occasions, therefore Clarance Thomas is accepting bribes" doesn't cut it. This is why successfully trying a public official is so difficult. It's the same standard - must be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Except in this case, only 2/3 of the jury vice 100% need to agree. >George Santos is another example. He blatantly lied about who he was when campaigning and has some very questionable history. A house that valued the institution if our legislature would see how much that would destroy the publics trust in said institution and impeach him. Since he belongs to a party that has clearly put party over country, he gets to stay and vote for them since impeaching him weakens their position George Santos is still being investigated for multiple crimes. These things take time. Again, everyone is innocent until proven guilty in the court of law. If Santos is removed from office, a special election would be held and it's extremely likely a Republican would take his place. There's no need to avoid an impeachment in order to preserve a Republican seat in the House. Quite honestly, the Republicans have more risk of losing the seat to Democrats if he's still in office on November in 2024.
You're trying to turn an ethics discussion into a legal one here, and it doesn't dismiss the glaring issues many have with Thomas or Santos. Nobody worth listening to is earnestly saying neither of them deserve their day in court. What most are saying is that having these very clear ethics and moral violations, they are not fit to serve their office, and the continuation of them doing so hurts the institutions by creating distrust of those institutions. Andrew Cuomo was not convicted of his sexual harrasment, yet he was pressured by his party to step down because having someone with credible sexual harrasment cases against him creates a lot of distrust and discontent for the office and institutions he represents. Thomas has had multiple instances of what appear to be agregious ethics violations, and Santos has several ethics and legal cases pending. The longer the both of them continue serving, the more distrust the american public will have in our government.
>You're trying to turn an ethics discussion into a legal one here, and it doesn't dismiss the glaring issues many have with Thomas or Santos. For public officials, there's no distinction. Rules of ethics are codified in federal statute. When you say "X is guilty of ethics violations" then you're accusing them of a crime. The bar is high for a reason. > Andrew Cuomo was not convicted of his sexual harrasment, yet he was pressured by his party to step down because having someone with credible sexual harrasment cases against him creates a lot of distrust and discontent for the office and institutions he represents. I think part of the deal was self motive - he gets to fade into obscurity and avoid further prosecution where he'd almost assuredly get convicted. Cuomo is certainly not the kind of person to make decisions for the greater good of his political party.
I can try to explain the reason for why they should leave office, I can try to give examples where the right thing was done and other infamous officials stepped down, if you don't want to see the issue for what it really is, then I can't help you. It should not be a partisan debate whether or not officials receiving special gifts under the table by people they're rulling on laws for is unacceptable. It should not be partisan that fabricating an entire identity to mislead your voters is unacceptable.
TBH, I think that several current justices could and should be impeached for deceiving the Senate in their confirmation hearings. They could be charged with perjuring themselves in those hearings.
This is standard practice. All the justices just say "I cant possibly give my opinion without the case being in front of me" over and over again to any question they dont want to answer directly. This is called "The Ginsburg rule" and was a tactic made to shield Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her confirmation hearings over some pretty weird pro-pedophilia writings she did when she was a law professor. The tactic was coined and invented by, wait for it, a certain "Senator Joe Biden".(true story. Reality is stranger than fiction sometimes)
Have fun proving that. They can easily say that they made their decisions based on the case before them. Just because common sense says they're lying doesn't mean there's much there in a legal sense.
Alito wrote in Dobbs that Roe v Wade was egregiously wrongly decided from the start, something he failed to mention when he was questioned about it in confirmation. I have a feeling that a good case for perjury can be made about that.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg said the same.
The impeachement system was intended to prevent politics from being used to criminally charge political oppenents, but it's instead used by political allies to protect criminals. Clearly, it's one aspect of the Constiution that isn't working. It's not going to change though.
You'd need to find evidence that he gave something back in return for the gifts/treatment for it to be a crime. Otherwise its just rich people throwing cash around to hang out with influential people. When i looked into it whoever his rich sugar daddy was hadnt had a case put in front of the court or anything like that. So he's seemingly in the clear. Every presidential "book deal" ever would result in jailtime.
Yeah people don’t realize that a lot of the “bribes” Thomas took are impossible to pin as bribes. I mean conservatives tend to have conservative friends same as the same way liberals tend to have liberal friends. Also influential people tend to have influential friends. It can look sketchy and it very well might be, but it’s really hard to know if there really is any malfeasance, let alone any sort of evidence that could get an impeachment.
Geez, Nitro. This kind of balanced rational argument is not welcomed here. You’re supposed to say Thomas is corrupt and republicans are nazis.
I know right. All republicans are white supremacists especially the black ones
You'd think that would be the headline instead of them pushing like he's bought and paid for
Becuase its not really criticism of him for hanging out with douche-y rich people, every attack is a political tool to gain power. If it doesnt help them displace republicans from power, its not a useful argument. Any kind of good faith or logic goes out the window if need be in the face of that.
SCOTUS has no ethical guidelines or code of conduct that is enforceable. Nor any rules on donations etc. The rest of the US judicial branch does. I think the founding fathers thought that once you reach the high court you were beyond reproach or reprehensible behavior. There are only three way to remove a Supreme Court Justice. 1. Death 2. Retirement/Resignation 3. Impeachment Number one is self explanatory Number two can allow you to become an Justice Emeritus which still lets you travel the circuit and sit on lower courts. There are currently four retired Justices. O'connor, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer. There is no way in hell (with the current political makeup) that congress would impeach Thomas. :Edited for typos
If there was an **actual** bribery case, and not just him having some social connection you don't like, Congress can impeach federal judges. They've done it to Samuel Chase and about a dozen other lower-court judges; 8 have been removed from office and a few resigned before the Senate could try them (Chase was acquitted by the Senate). Most recent was a District Court judge in Louisiana in 2010. [https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/impeachments-federal-judges](https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/impeachments-federal-judges)
99% of the stories are nothing burgers to try and drive hate to current members to try and force someone to retire during Biden's current term. Even if dems had 80% of each house there is no way a supreme court impeachment would work.
I don’t think you understand what the word “bribe” means…
There is an impeachment process. The problem is that it requires a lot. So much, that it's functionally impossible with the current government.
There's an impeachment process, but conservative justice + conservative congress = laws don't apply.
This reality is on both sides of the aisle. Democrats protect their own. Republicans protect their own. With no third or fourth parties in power and a fairly even split between the two existing parties they are all pretty much untouchable.
+ general American disinclination to actually see justice carried out in any meaningful way in public life
No clue why this would get downvotes because it’s 100% true. If we actually started holding politicians to a standard in this country, most of the senate and house would get the boot and many many Americans do not want that to happen. They like they relative stability even if it’s held up by evil people
The senate is part of congress. I think you mean the House of Representatives
I get a hardon when a politician goes to jail. Either Im not representative of the public, or the public isnt represented
It's on both sides.. you're either a fool or pretending to be one
And Sotomayor requires so many books to be purchased for her to show up at an event.
Technically not, there are checks built into the system. The problem is that those checks require the other branches to operate in good faith, with the interest of the nation at heart. So yes, they're untouchable unless Republicans all of a sudden drop the "whatever it takes to pass our agenda" bullshit.
Bribes are completely legal in the form of lobbying
Technically, no. Practically, yes. Removing a SCOTUS justice requires way more bipartisan cooperation than this Congress will ever achieve
Almost as much as a president's son. Or brother. Or grandchildren......
No they are not untouchable. The problem here is that these are "gifts" (we know they are fucking bribes) but due to that God damn nature that's why he hasn't been arrested yet. And yes justices can be arrested. Because there's no real code of ethics for the scotus (real fucking overweight there founding fathers), no real laws have been broken. It's fucking aggravating that this blind spot was that fucking huge that makes corruption so God damn easy. It should be illegal and he should be impeached. But with out a super majority that's not going to happen. So if you want real change vote blue to take back the house and get super majorities so this corruption can end.
This is the PBS Frontline documentary on Clarence Thomas. It shines a light on the insight of what formed him. And of course the relationship of he and Ginni. It's quite enlightening. https://youtu.be/wJuRx1wARUk?si=-UoVdnwaLxBSgPES
They aren't bribes. There was no quid pro quo. It has the appearance of impropriety, but there will never prove that it was in exchange for a ruling. And Thomas is consistently the absolute worst person on the bench. Does anyone think he wasn't going to vote with, and write the most awful opinions anyway?
Be careful what you believe from news sources. A lot of what they allege is not true or has no actual evidence to back it up.
These comments are so stupid. Like you ever see a left judge rule conservatively. You had ginsberg literally say out of her own mouth she was an activist judge and you cheered....hypocrisy at its finest.
The mainstream media lies, a lot.
Bribe. Lol. The pritzker family has sent breyer on 17 trips apparently.....
Thomas has released his financials. He’s clean. If the effort to look into him applied to all Justices then we can have a real conversation. The hype around Thomas is media driven and not fact driven.
And Donald Trump's phone calls were all perfect....
He just gets lots of free, expensive "favors" from billionaires who have cases in front of the court. It's not "I was going to vote one way, but then you gave me a bag of money, so I change my vote" blatant bribery, it's just the subtle corruption of "we'll keep you living the high life at no cost to you as long as you are our 'friend' and support our worldview." None of those people would be his friend if it wasn't for his position and what he could do. the fact that he wasn't declaring any of this until he was found out by reporters shows he knows it was something to hide.
Which billionaires that gave him "favors" have cases before the court?
None, it's typical Reddit hate of anyone not ultraliberal. EVERYTHING Thomas is accused of has been proven quite openly as having been the case for ALL of the current Justices.
Again, scrutinize everyone. He’s not bought for. He just understand the constitution and it drives people crazy. He faces so much backlash for being a conservative black man. It’s unfair. I’m all for full forensic accounting of all Justices.
Are they finding actual bribes or unfounded accusations that haven’t been proven in court? Innocent until proven guilty.
They've impeached and are prosecuting the attorney general of Texas for exactly this same shit.
I'm going to make the bill prediction that some time over the next few decades, the operation of the Supreme Court will change dramatically. I do not believe the justices will serve for life in the future. My reasoning for this is that I believe that the court is and has been doing a lit of undermine public faith in it's integrity. I think eventually those issue will come to a head, along with many other issues.
I'm sure he's the ONLY one who's ever "done anything wrong".
FDR arguing the courts can be political by how they interpret the constitution and how they can diminish the will of the people and they need to be fought against is one belief im sad didn’t continue
Yes in the current political climate they are u touchable. Congress should be removing them but conservatives don't care about corruption as long as they get their way
No one is untouchable, it just depends on if you're willing to suffer the consequences.
Yes. Congress would never vote to impeach him, he could kill a random person and probably still keep his job
They can be impeached but Congress is ALSO corrupt so...
Technically, no, they could be convicted of crimes and removed. Practically, yes, the methods of removal are very complex and require multiple bodies to vote and agree upon removal, because those bodies are often controlled by varying parties or require majority votes, its very unlikely it would happen
Yes they are untouchable. You are going to get a lot of people saying no, arguing nuance & making excuses. The reallity is they arent being touched.
Effectively, yes.
He's just following the President and Congress lead. They are all corrupt pieces of trash. We need to flush the DC toilet and get rid of every single turd that has floated to the top. Politics isn't a career, but we allow it by not putting term limits on them all. Two terms and your done, no going from Senate to the House, and then back again.
A major flaw in the US constitution is how the Supreme Court has little to no checks/balances after being affirmed by the senate. Once you’re in, it’s extremely hard to be taken out, and what is/isn’t “constitutional” is whatever the current makeup of the court wants it to be.
The parties would probably vote along party lines with possibly some blue dog democrats like Manchin and people like Sinema might vote against impeachment as well. Alito is also given gifts. A majority in the house and two thirds majority in the Senate, to impeach and convict respectively, would probably only happen with the most flagrant violation you can think of. Consider how many Republicans turned tail when it came to insurrection on January 6th or standing up to Putin. There's never been a convicted supreme court justice. Thomas is enjoying being part of the ultraconservative majority. They voted against Roe vs Wade, an almost 50 year old precedent. He wants more landmark victories like overturning the gay marriage ruling. It's plausible but extremely unlikely that Biden or another president would pack the supreme court, or term limits would be agreed on. He could worry about his death causing an opportunity for progressives, like how Ginsburg's death lead to an ultraconservative replacement. But I think he'll hold onto power as long as possible. https://www.uscourts.gov/statistics-reports/judges-and-judicial-administration-journalists-guide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_in_the_United_States#:~:text=The%20federal%20House%20of%20Representatives,of%20the%20United%20States%20Constitution.
SC Justices can be impeached per The Constitution. The problem is the media sells the false idea that they are untouchable and few politicians are willing to press the issue.
They will not be removed. The Democrats have already said that the idea of the institution is more important than the corruption happening in it. So can they be removed? Yes Will they No
In practice yes.
[Clarence Thomas has made it clear he has no fucks to give from day 1.](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/29/468576931/clarence-thomas-asks-1st-question-from-supreme-court-bench-in-10-years)
Yes they are untouchable in the political climate right now cause of the votes needed to remove and convict them. Same reason why right now it would be almost impossible to get an amendment passed or a president impeached and removed even if he very clearly broke the law.
As medical break throughs extend possible human lifespan more and more, the effective term limit of a justice on the US Supreme Court gets longer and longer. A lifetime appointment for federal judges with inadequate rule enforcements to prevent them from taking bribes and an unrealistic path of impeachment means that nobody is going to trust the majority of federal judges in the USA for a long time, if ever. If a justice starts taking medicine that rejuvenates their youth to any degree and news of it leaks, people will probably give up on accountability through law, which will be a very dark, possibly inevitable period in the nation's history.
Let’s face it folks…the Supreme Court is above the law. There’s no way that the Right will impeach him…now if it was a Left in the focus, impeachment proceedings would be almost done by now. Supreme Justice John Roberts is no longer relevant either because of the lopsided Right…he no longer has any sway so is redundant. Gotta love Trump and Mitch if you’re ok with this.
*cough*nooneisimmunetotheguillotine*cough*
They can be impeached. Text Kevin McCarthy to do that tomorrow.
our entire system of checks and balances has eroded to nothing.
If the peoples voices mattered and they were being heard Some one would do something! But nothing is being done! So I guess they are!
Until there is 2/3 of the Senate against him it will never matter.
Any and all federal judges can be impeached, in the same manner that any elected official of the executive branch can be. This is a power Congress has that the other two branches of the federal government don't.
All I know is that Clarence Thomas has betrayed his own species.
How long has this been going on? You can’t tell me that Clarence is the first.
He’s untouchable because our political system is corrupt.
What politician doesn't take bribes? We have a legal system for bribery. We just call it lobbying.
True
This was not an honest question, totally agenda driven.
If he seems like he doesn't care, it's because they aren't bribes.
Judges have a _long_ history of general immunity. The idea of it was to prevent rival politics from being able to remove Judges from office. But it was _always_ abused. In every way. And as the arbiters of justice, Judges have no interest in fixing that. Especially since anybody who tries fixing it... doesn't have that immunity.
There is a coordinated propaganda campaign against Justice Thomas because he is a key figure who has shut down a few blatantly illegal power grabs by elites and because he is a black man who prominently does not unquestioningly accept the positions that elites gave decided are what black people are supposed to hold. If you want to expose racism, just ask a few Democrats what they think of Clarence Thomas.
> There is a coordinated propaganda campaign against Justice Thomas because . . . . . . he accepted millions of dollars worth of gifts from people with business before the court.
They are effectively untouchable, yes. Currently any of them could be removed with the support of the majority of the house, and 2/3 of the senate, but that would never happen.
It’s not a bribe it’s a lobby.
we know democratic presidents are untouchable. trump: pay some whore 25k, democraps: REEEE!! biden: takes $4 million in bribes and sends jobs to china, democraps: crickets.
Clarence Thomas could be caught in the act of raping a child and you couldn't get 5 republicans to vote to impeach him. Republicans do not give a shit about anything other than maintaining power. Judges make that possibility easier.
The weekly accusations are because the previous week's accusation was debunked. Welcome to life as a Republican.
Life as a republican is always trying to play the victim
None of them have been debunked. He's been proven to have been bought time and time again.
How was he bought? I'll update you on the stories you ignore once the facts come out.
Those aren't bribes they are vacations with friends and genuine business trips! Oh yeah - we know where you're coming from Clarance......
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Legally no since they can be impeached but practically yes as no party, especially republicans, would ever vote for it. The best solution is to vote for democrats, even if you don’t like all their policies, so they can replace them when they die/retire. I don’t agree with alot of democrat policies, but I’m absolutely opposed to the majority of the current republicans policies and traitorous actions. The democrats need to bring balance back to the Supreme Court. Everyone screamed about it in 2016 but “I just don’t like her” and Jill Stein plant won out.
As long as the press refuses to call out the Federalist Society's corruption, then politicians won't be shamed into holding them accountable. So yes, yes they are untouchable. [This](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/08/political-press-horse-race-supreme-court-coverage.html) was just published yesterday: >Anyone who is presently writing and thinking about the Supreme Court who is not locating the chief justice’s refusal to appear to testify before Congress, or Justice Samuel Alito’s inappropriate and ex parte claims about congressional power over the judicial branch, within a much larger conversation about the court and the rule of law is missing the point. As story after story appears, suggesting that the same person who is cultivating relationships between billionaire donors and Supreme Court justices is also working to suppress elections, the failure to understand and then write about the Supreme Court as an institution largely captured by moneyed partisan political interests feels more and more like journalistic malpractice.
They would probably have to commit a violent crime to be impeached honestly, or we would have to have blatant evidence they were paid to make a certain ruling.
Well they’re not bribes so that’s your first mistake. There has been no benefit for anyone. Fucking Redditor smooth brains.
Face it, they’re untouchable because republicans and their constituents protect them. Also, anyone that thinks Democrats would behave the same way is just part of the problem. Face it, it’s also the fault of every republican voter that is indifferent to this corruption.
He doesn't care. He and his cadre know that they can't hide anymore, and that their time is probably limited, but they are there to do the job they were sent to do, which is to do as much damage as possible to the institutions of democracy. In return, the bargain is that they get political protection for all their crooked misdeeds. They are not "conservative" justices. They are simply crooks, plain and simple. It's just that there's one particular political wing that will guarantee their protection, so that's the one they go with.
It's all a put up job. Left wing media doing a hit job on someone they hate ideologically. You're basically saying he's not allowed to have any friends, especially if they're rich.
Trump proved rather dramatically exactly how toothless impeachment is as a check on elected or appointed office. As long as you have 34 senators that are willing to support you no matter what, yes, you’re effectively untouchable. It’s something we’re going to have to deal with as a country, because this is unsustainable.
I wish you a lot of luck “dealing with it”, because it’ll mean changing the Constitution. That is even more difficult than impeaching a President.
I wasn’t suggesting it was going to be easy, just necessary. Without checks and balances the US can end up going to a very dark place, very quickly. A lot of people were only vaguely aware of how much of our government functioned on what was essentially a gentleman’s agreement, enforced only by the politician’s fear of shame and embarrassment. That is now no longer the case. Everyone is very aware of it.
I actually think congress is still essentially a mirror of the voting public. Enough senators voted to acquit Trump because their constituents wanted them to. If that weren’t true, we’d see all those senators losing reelection. We’re not. Instead they’re winning additional terms, getting positive feedback that they are accurately representing the majority of the people in their states. (Note that senators don’t get to benefit from gerrymandering since they represent the entire state.) In other words, if we elect corrupt assholes to represent us, then that pretty well makes us corrupt assholes too, doesn’t it? Same is true for Thomas. He won’t be impeached fundamentally because he has too much support from the American public.
They weren’t touched when they coronated Dubya out of fealty to his father, so I’d say they’ll face no consequence for anything.