So Antonin Scalia is skippin the SOTU, but isn’t too busy to attend a lecture series with teahadist Michelle Bachmann:
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told The Hill on Monday evening that he does not plan on attending the State of the Union address on Tuesday.
The conservative-leaning jurist said that he hasn’t “gone to the State of the Union in at least 10 years, and I’m not starting tomorrow night either.”
All eyes are focused on whether members of the Supreme Court intend to sit front and center at the State of the Union spectacle on Tuesday night after the president used last year’s speech to criticize one of their decisions. The criticism prompted Justice Samuel Alito to mouth the words “not true.”
Scalia wouldn’t say whether his colleagues on the high court planned to attend Tuesday night’s address.
Scalia spoke to The Hill briefly following an hour-long closed-door meeting with 30 to 40 House lawmakers on the Constitution’s separation of powers. The event was organized by Tea Party Caucus founder Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)
Meanwhile, Clarence Thomas is busy amending tax returns financial disclosure forms for TWO DECADES that conveniently left off his wife’s overt political activism and his clear conflicts of interest:
Under pressure from liberal critics, Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court acknowledged in filings released on Monday that he erred by not disclosing his wife’s past employment as required by federal law.
Justice Thomas said that in his annual financial disclosure statements over the last six years, the employment of his wife, Virginia Thomas, was “inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions.”
To rectify that situation, Justice Thomas filed seven pages of amended disclosures listing Mrs. Thomas’s employment in that time with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy group, and Hillsdale College in Michigan, for which she ran a constitutional law center in Washington.
The justice came under criticism last week from Common Cause, a liberal advocacy group, for failing to disclose Mrs. Thomas’s employment as required under the 1978 Ethics in Government Act. While justices are not required to say how much a spouse earns, Common Cause said its review of Internal Revenue Service filings showed that the Heritage Foundation paid Mrs. Thomas $686,589 from 2003 to 2007.
The group also asserted that Justice Thomas should have withdrawn from deciding last year’s landmark Citizens United case on campaign finance because of both Mrs. Thomas’s founding of another conservative political group in 2009 and Justice Thomas’s own appearance at a private political retreat organized by Charles Koch, a prominent conservative financier.
This is, of course, all on the heels of Alito’s well-publicized behavior in a previous SOTU address.
As is always the case, when the Republicans scream about something, you can be damned sure they are engaging in it. When they scream about judicial activism, you can be assured that they are the worst offenders.
cathyx
I am appalled by these Justice’s behavior. If Roberts were any kind Chief Justice, he would address this.
cathyx
You left out the story of Thomas and Scalia attending a teaparty fundraising event, which is in direct violation of the rules.
Michael
Leave Justice Kreskin alone – he does a fine job of channeling the Founders.
There’s nothing quite like reaching into your ass and pulling out interpretations based upon your subjective belief of what the drafters actually meant, as opposed to what the drafters wrote.
YellowDog
There’s an old saying…
Throw a brick at a pack of dogs; the one that yelps is the one you hit.
(No animals were harmed in the production of this comment.)
Redshift
And if Republicans are screaming about Democrats “secretly” doing something, you can be sure they are openly doing it themselves. I often wonder whether that’s projection, of if they’re consciously blunting criticism by priming the media to declare that “both sides do it.”
Nicole
But..but..but… John Kerry parked his boat in Rhode Island to avoid paying taxes on it, therefore both sides are just as bad!
Michael
@cathyx:
Yeah, but he’s the lying cocksucker that’s calling the balls and strikes, all while Scalia holds his hand out for lecture money from wingnut circles.
Strandedvandal
Scalia = Conservative leaning. Yeah, that’s a bit of an understatement I think.
Dave
This bothers me more than anything else we hear about coming out of Washington. The very foundation of this country is built on the idea of an independent and fair judiciary.
It is to be expected that SCOTUS judges will have their viewpoints as to how the law should be applied. But we have a right to expect that every case will be given a fair hearing. When judges attend fundraisers, confab with members of the House and lie on their financial statements to hide their spouse’s political job…that expectation is ruined. And that bodes ill for us all.
suzanne
@Redshift: Yanno, I’ve had that same thought, too. I mean, GOP hypocrisy is as reliable as the sunrise at this point, so they must see some strategic advantage in all the sturm und drang. At least if they have any brains, that is.
Am I allowed to call the Thomases tax avoiders now? Or is that “over the line”?
Ash Can
@cathyx: He’s Tony, Sam, and Clarence’s kind of Chief Justice, just as W and the rest of the Republican crime syndicate intended.
Downpuppy
Financial disclosure forms, not tax returns.
signed,
D. P. noodge
Short Bus Bully
I know jack shit about this level of the law. Is there any way to appeal Citizens? Or to attack it based upon the fact that Justice Thomas is a liar and should have recused himself? Citizens is going to ruin our country faster than anything else ever could.
Zifnab
God bless our modern media. Even the indies can’t help but fall into the same-old “Disputes exist!” frame of reference.
Who cares what Obama said or why Alito responded, much less which one of them was most accurate? Controversy! We’ll just put this out here and hope everyone is too busy screaming at each other to sort out exactly what is going on.
Davis X. Machina
Look at it from their point of view.
A higher, natural law requires that we, saddled and ready to be ridden, be governed by our betters, booted, spurred and ready to ride.
You can’t make that go away by having constitutions and laws and such.
In the strangest inversion of language since ‘manufactured’ meant ‘made by hand’, “Republican” now means “monarchist”.
If the could agree on which family gets to be the Royal Family, we’d really be boned. The squabbling over the crown keeps them from uniting.
cathyx
@Ash Can: I know that but what I meant was that as a person in his position, he should put aside his personal feelings and uphold the law as it is. It’s his job.
ericblair
I suppose this is useful as ammunition if (a decade or two down the road) we as a country ever get tired enough of these reactionary assholes on the Court to actually have the political will to impeach a couple of them.
These guys sure seem to be awfully thin-skinned even though they’ve decided to start dishing it out politically now. Good thing is they don’t seem to be terribly good at actual politics.
ulee
Clarence is such an obviously unhappy person, that the ways he punishes us is remaining mute on the bench and withholding income tax information.
David Hunt
@cathyx:
It’s my understanding that the rules prohibiting such fundraising activities specifically exclude supreme court justices. We are therefore left depending on their ethics and integrity to do the right thing. So, short of a highly partisan House of Representatives impeaching them and two thirds of the same Senate that has Republicans filibustering Mother’s Day resolutions convicting them for this trash, they get to continue their asshatery without consequence.
Wait! I know! The press could cover this cover this highly unethical behavior that would get a lawyer who wasn’t on the Supreme Court disbarred. (Hollow laugh)
Villago Delenda Est
Downpuppy
So Thomas misunderstood the rules.
It’s not like his job has anything to do with the ability to understand rules.
Villago Delenda Est
@Davis X. Machina:
The French dealt with this attitude in a rather, um, “vigorous” manner some 222 years ago.
agrippa
That phrase, ‘judicial activism’, means very little to me. The law has to be applied by mortal men [ called judges], to legal problems. Of course judges are going to be ‘active’. Is that not their function? To apply the law?
The issue is not ‘activism’; it is the political fact that a judge will, at some time and at some place, a a decision that is disagreeable to someone.
mikefromArlington
I don’t get it. These bozo’s have time to go to right wing fund raisers and conservative strategy sessions but don’t go to the SOTU because it’s below them?
What arrogance.
Ash Can
@cathyx: You know that, I know that, and any conscientious individual in the nation knows that. It’s just too bad Roberts was given this job with the understanding that he wouldn’t do this. (Unless, of course, it were Ginsberg or Kagen or Sotomayor doing this kind of thing; then he’d bring the hammer down.)
mikefromArlington
I always wondered.
When did conservative become so well bonded to corporate sell out?
Ash Can
@mikefromArlington: Hey, they can’t let Democratic speechifying get in the way of their politicking.
liberal
Hmmm…reminds me of one of Obama’s cabinet secretaries…
ericblair
@mikefromArlington:
It would be fine for me if they stayed away from the SOTU since it is an inherently political matter and they decided they shouldn’t be involved. Here, the reason seems to be explicitly political. Alito got his nose out of joint from the reaction to his little stunt last year. Fuck them little babies.
liberal
@ericblair:
A reasonable “to do” list would start with (a) the majority in Bush v. Gore, (b) Roberts, for lying during his confirmation re respecting precedent.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@agrippa:
This phrase originally referred to an accusation that judges were usurping legislative functions from the bench. Whether the accusation was warranted or not is another matter, but at least there was something resembling a consensus on what sort of cookie jar the accused was said to have improperly put their hand into before dinnertime. Now the phrase means nothing more than “stuff rightwingers don’t like”. Just another chapter in the GOP’s war against language, logic, and any other form of higher cognition postdating the Pliocene.
Davis X. Machina
@Villago Delenda Est: They wound up with Napoleon, eventually, instead.
People have been whoring after kings, knowing full well the consequences, since the days of the Judges.
Democracy requires hard work, and an alarming amount of cock-eyed optimism.
Poopyman
@Ash Can: I kinda wish they would do something similar, just to see if Roberts would do something. But they’re, ya know, ethical.
theconstituent
Was I the only one entertained by the idea of a private, closed door meeting about the separation of powers with members of the both the judicial and the legislative branches in attendance?
Roy G
Well, they can do whatever the fuck they want now, because they delivered our elections to their corporate $ugar daddie$ via Citizens United.
This is what advanced corruption looks like. I’m surprised that Uncle Clarence even bothered to make up such a silly excuse.
Poopyman
@mikefromArlington:
At least since the rise of corporations. J.D. Rockefeller during the Civil War comes to mind, though it surely preceded him.
Villago Delenda Est
@Davis X. Machina:
That is the problem with that process. You have no idea how things are going to turn out.
Eventually, though, the French did find their way out of that particular mess. It took them well over a century to do so, with a lot of other things happening along the way.
kay
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I like “black-robed” to preface “judges”. I don’t remember when they started using it, but it is absolutely textbook fear-mongering. It’s got everything scaaaaary in there!
Villago Delenda Est
@mikefromArlington:
Conservatives have always been about protecting power, wealth, and privilege. Modern “conservatives” also toss in a bunch of nihilist idiocy to make it even more repulsive.
Poopyman
@kay: Ya know who else is black-robed? College grads. That’s really scary to most of them, too.
Xecky Gilchrist
John @ OP: I don’t think it’s judicial activism so much as just plain crime perpetrated by judges.
Southern Beale
Scalia is skipping the SOTU as well? I heard that Alito was. He got his fee-fees hurt last year and Mrs. Alito probably cried again.
Ana Gama
@Southern Beale:
She’s missing her opportunity to sit with John Boehner. She’d be quite comfortable, provided he brought the tissues.
Chad N Freude
@Villago Delenda Est: Stop! References to the F****h R********n are uncivil and create the threat of guillotine attacks on politicians and innocent bystanders.
kay
@Poopyman:
I think is has some obscure meaning to conservatives. There are people sitting up and taking notice when they hear that phrase, with some hard-wired rage-reaction.
But I don’t pursue those typa questions anymore. I don’t care. I don’t want to know what it “signifies”.
I’m with you. It means, maybe,”graduation robe”, and possibly refreshments, later?
Poopyman
@kay: I gotcher black robes right here.
PurpleGirl
@agrippa: You are being way too logical and realistic here. You definitely have not had enough Republican kool-aid.
(But I agree, you are correct.)
kay
@Poopyman:
Hah! I don’t follow sports, but I’m in favor of you following sports.
I watched a whole world series game, and then wouldn’t shut up about it. I went a month on that one game. Perhaps you’d like to hear my analysis. It’s riveting!
Now that I saw that one, I figure I’m good for this decade on the whole “sports” category.
PurpleGirl
@theconstituent: Shush and hush your mouth. We’re not supposed to acknowledge that information.
TOP123
@Villago Delenda Est: I thought recent serious scholarly research had decisively proven that Mussolini was a fascist liberal.
PurpleGirl
@Poopyman: LOL. Very good call.
cyntax
If the damn Chiefs of Staff have to show up for the SOTU, so do the Supremes. I see it as part of their job. Don’t like it? Don’t take the damn job.
TOP123
@kay: Great catch.
Think back to the old days, before Buchanan and Buckley and S*ntorum happened to the GOP, and before the convenient arrival of all those terrible Mexicans stealing everyone’s jobs (and beheading people in the desert), when the Whore of Babylon and the Pope of Rome and his black-robed minions were the go to line in conservative immigrant bashing…
Villago Delenda Est
@cyntax:
The Chiefs of Staff are members of the Executive Branch. The Supremes don’t answer to the Commander-in-Chief, like the Joint Chiefs do.
Despite the deserting fratboy’s assertions to the contrary.
aimai
@kay:
I believe ” black robed” is an atavistic throwback to protestant feelings of rage against the Catholics and the Pope. “Black Robed” makes the judges sound like they are some kind of illuminati/theocratic cabal appointed by a distant leader. Its not that America’s right wing christians object to black robes per se, or theocracy for that matter, but they have a long history of only recently buried anti-catholic language and feeling.
aimai
Mike in NC
At the way things are going now, we’re probably only a few years away from some Supreme Court justice attending the State of the Union address with a pistol hidden under his robe. You know, just in case somebody hurts his feelings.
Davis X. Machina
@Chad N Freude: We offshored our already limited tumbrel-manufacturing capacity back in the ’80’s and Ames closed its West Virginia pitchfork plant in 2002.
Torches we can still do.
cyntax
@Mike in NC:
Yeah, too true. It’s amazing how delicate the sensibilities are of these people who have so much power.
Reminds me of that line from The Usual Suspects about how the Devil’s best trick was convincing the world he didn’t exist. The oligarch’s best trick was convincing everyone how special they are (necessary yet at the same time fragile).
Poopyman
@aimai: No doubt there’s a lot of that mixed in. And don’t forget “black helicopters”. I suspect that black-xxxx imagery is all mixed together intentionally to amp up the fear and anger.
TOP123
@aimai: Or specifically, Jesuits!
I’m in agreement, the objection is more to the (once “Romish”, now “Muslin”) foreigner and ‘dual allegiance’ than to the theocracy… and you’ve got me thinking now, how would the modern conservative envision his theocracy? I’m thinking less Torquemada, and more along the lines of Calvin’s Geneva–but with elastic waistbands and Hoverounds, and lachrymose fund drives on television.
kay
@aimai:
Thank you. I started giggling reading your explanation. I swear, aimai, it’s laugh or cry. I got this vivid mental picture of a “conservative language studies” program, rows of liberals, all earnestly highlighting and such.
It would be offered at a for-profit university! I’ll quit now, I promise.
aimai
@TOP123:
Yeah. I think you are right. That’s my memory, too. I believe the Jesuits were, in fact, called a “black robed army” or a “black robed regiment.”
As for what a modern protestant theocracy would look like–I think you are on to something. The sanctified elders would all be on scooters, for sure.
And Kay, I agree with you about the “conservative language studies program”–it would be great! I doubt if it will be offered at a for profit university but maybe we could interest those darned liberals in the ivies in offering it.
aimai
Buck
Yeah, and ANITA HILL was a big, fat liar.
TOP123
@aimai: Yes, and it’s strange how often military imagery gets used in Christian contexts.
Speaking of black, St. Ignatius himself, in his exercises or rules, said something to the effect of seeing something white as black if the Church said it was black. Now that’s the kind of mind control El Rushbo could really aspire to!
I’m saving my tuition money for the new CLS course already…
T
(Edit: I stopped being lazy and looked it up: the quote is from the Spiritual Exercises, Thirteenth Rule: “To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it”. Thanks, Fordham U. Medieval Sourcebook online!)
aimai
What pisses me off is that the Conservative judges are simply destroying any semblance of comity and honesty and impartiality by their actions. They turned up for Bush but they won’t turn up for Obama? That’s a level of insolence and contempt for the institution and office of the presidency, and for the rituals of governance, that is just disgusting. And what is worse, by withdrawing one by one from the ritual they leave those justices who remain in the awkward position of somehow being labled “liberal” or “activist” by *conservatively* following tradition and being in their seats for the SOTU.
I really think it is incumbent on the remaining honorable members of the court to speak out–both privately adn publicly, and to criticize the behavior of the justices who are refusing to appear. I also think they should publicly demand to re-examine the “rules” governing the behavior of the Supreme Court. Ever since Cheney went hunting with Scalia (I think it was Scalia) and Scalia explained that the Supreme court exempted itself from all the rules applied to lesser judges I’ve been pissed off. But I think we really have to demand some pushback and the only place it can come from are the remaining liberal judges. They won’t do it, of course, but they should.
aimai
aimai
@TOP123:
Yeah, one of my friends wrote a paper on the Jesuits entitled “The Marines of God” of course he was kind of a right wing guy himself.
aimai
TOP123
As to Clarence Thomas, here’s what’s really burning me up:
“inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions.”
The big question I would love to ask if trapped in a dentist’s waiting room with Justice Thomas, is: how does the ‘whoopsie’ excuse, applied here, square with the carefully considered conservative judicial philosophy of ‘tough sh*t’, the response when a death row inmate is denied an appeal based on new exculpatory evidence, because his counsel filed the paperwork late? I mean, I’m not a lawyer, just asking.
kay
@aimai:
I’m glad they’re not going. If they don’t have the self-control to sit politely without OPINING, they maybe should decline.
Alito doesn’t get enough chances to express himself, with those nationally binding opinions he hands down? He needs to rebut the political branches, on television?
You know, Obama understands his role. He was asking for legislation to remedy Citizens. I think there’s some doubt about these other folks. Maybe Scalia should be holding those closed-door separation of powers classes closer to home.
Svensker
@Buck:
Which DOUBLE proves that global warming is a hoax!
TOP123
@aimai: That’s a good one. And then, of course, there is the order St. Dominic founded to hunt down heretics, whose name made a nice Latin pun for ‘the Lord’s Hounds’, domini canes. (Hey, they were also called the ‘Blackfriars’… more Black Robes!)
TOP123
@kay: At least if they’re not there, it’s less likely one of them will ask the President for ID on the way to the rostrum.
Seriously, though, I agree with Aimai. It is disgusting. There is a certain level of dignity that should be accorded the office of the President–and the halls of Congress hosting the event–and for that matter, their own jobs as Justices of the highest court. This basic dignity would show a respect for their beloved country, and for the Constitution which they’re always droning on and on about, my precioussss.
kay
@TOP123:
I just cannot watch Obama be constrained and polite and gracious and dignified while some asshole is blatantly rude again.
He has enough on his plate without this heckling at the SOTU, and everyone watching his response to the heckling, which has to be ten times more restrained and “Presidential” or the mean-spirited scorekeepers in the cheap seats will be sniping.
What conservatives see as “arrogance” I see as enormous and self-denying discipline. It’s hard to watch. I think they hold him to a different standard.
TOP123
And while he maintains his dignity and that of his office–when he, as you said, is polite, gracious and dignified in the face of rudeness, while Republican Congressmen check their Blackberrys or Twitter in the seats in front of him–the Villagers prepare inane columns for their next deadline about whether he is too cerebral, or too detached, whether his dispassionate style fails to connect with real Americans.
Yes, he is held to a very different standard.
Jonny Scrum-half
Why all the bitching about the justices not attending Obama’s SOTU? The excerpt cited in the post quotes Scalia as saying that he hasn’t gone to a SOTU in 10 years — which means he didn’t go for Bush, either.
Also, “judicial activism” doesn’t have anything to do with judges being “activist” in their personal lives, but rather (as another commenter noted) with judges “legislating” from the bench.
There are enough real reasons to criticize Republicans and their appointees. It doesn’t help when you have to manufacture outrage about some non-issue.
handy
I’m kind of surprised one of the resident BJ trolls hasn’t showed up with some quip about how this post is hypocritical on the foundation that there was that one time when the “liberal” justice Kennedy went to that fundraiser dinner also attended by that guy who used to be an intern at the Clinton WH ergo BOTH SIDES DO IT shut up libs!
TOP123
@Jonny Scrum-half: So Justice Scalia’s been in the wrong for ten years running. Certain aspects of our system are symbolic, the SotU being a good example, and help maintain a system based on separation of powers. It’s counterproductive for a member of one of the coequal branches (and as one of only nine, Scalia carries more weight than some backbench Congressman) to publicly ignore the established relationship his office has to the other parts of the system.
Look at how the Senate has nearly fallen apart under the abuse of individual powers and the lapsing of customary restraint. Is a system based on custom and collegiality ideal? No, but it’s what we’ve got, and it should be taken care of unless something better comes along. The State of the Union, calling a top judge Justice rather than Tony, flying the flag in a certain way are all meaningless customs, sure. But someone like Scalia or Alito (not so sure about Congressman You Lie) is making a conscious decision to disrespect these rules for a reason, and I think it’s worth talking about what that reason might be. The greatest threat to our Republic, no… but not a non-issue.
aimai
@Jonny Scrum-half:
You know, I saw that “ten years” thing too but I just doubt it. I mean, I used to hesitate before calling anyone, a priori a liar but recently I’ve discovered that I’m never wrong if I assume that a Republican is lying. Take the case of the newly elected Maine Governor who asserted that his “adopted black son” was a defense against accusations of racism. Come to find out less than 24 hours after this novel Chewbacca defense that he did not have an adopted black son although the son of his black Jamaican golf caddy had lived in the house for a while. I mean, you simply can’t believe a word these people say.
aimai
tisalaska
Thomas needs to resign now. If you didnt catch this well written article on it http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2011/1/27/939173/-Clarence-Thomas-should-be-INDICTED