News bits: Clarence Thomas is corrupt; Eric Trump is a liar; etc.

ProPublica just dropped a nasty into Clarence Thomas' punchbowl. For years Thomas has received gifts apparently worth millions of dollars and not reported it. We can all rest assured that Thomas will dismiss this as a mere minor oversight, a tiny tempest in a teapot and a partisan socialist witch hunt packed full of slanderous lies. ProPublica writes:

IN LATE JUNE 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.

If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.

For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.

The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.  

These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts, two ethics law experts said. He also should have disclosed his trips on the yacht, these experts said.  

[As would be 100% expected] Thomas did not respond to a detailed list of questions.

In a statement, Crow acknowledged that he’d extended “hospitality” to the Thomases “over the years,” but said that Thomas never asked for any of it and it was “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.” 

Through his largesse, Crow has gained a unique form of access, spending days in private with one of the most powerful people in the country. By accepting the trips, Thomas has broken long-standing norms for judges’ conduct, ethics experts and four current or retired federal judges said.

“It’s incomprehensible to me that someone would do this,” said Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge appointed by President Bill Clinton. When she was on the bench, Gertner said, she was so cautious about appearances that she wouldn’t mention her title when making dinner reservations: “It was a question of not wanting to use the office for anything other than what it was intended.”

Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who served in administrations of both parties, said Thomas “seems to have completely disregarded his higher ethical obligations.”  

In his statement, Crow said that he and his wife have never discussed a pending or lower court case with Thomas. “We have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue,” he added.  

“I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” Thomas said. “I come from regular stock, and I prefer that — I prefer being around that.” [What an effing liar!]

That is about as corrupt, morally disgusting and insulting as it can get for a Supreme Court justice. Thomas and Crow never once discussed a pending or lower court case with Thomas? Yeah, sure. 

This corrupt sleaze is just more to add to a mountain of evidence showing that America’s radical right elites are corrupt authoritarians (full-blown fascists, IMFO), are in open contempt for the rule of law and are immoral grifters and liars, both by endless lies of commission (I like Walmart parking lots) and endless lies of omission. Lies of omission here apply both to Thomas’ “oversight” in not reporting his gifts and to his refusal to answer questions in accordance with standard and effective radical right KYMS propaganda tactic.

KYMS = keep your mouth shut

Yes, good government types wring their hands and despair over the demise of any shred of respect for ethics and real or apparent conflicts of interest. But by now, the radical right has gutted ethics and normalized conflicts of interest as merely business as usual.

Maybe someone will call for impeachment of Thomas, but we all know what a useless farce impeachments are.

Ugh, I gotta take a shower to get the slime off.

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In other radical right sleaze news, Eric Trump lied about the T**** supporter crowd size in both New York and Florida. The thug claimed ‘tens and tens of thousands’ came out to support his father, but that was gross exaggeration. One snarker commented that Eric was not good with maths or big numbers. He really intended to say ‘tens and tens of thousands’ came out to support his father.

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From The Chatbots Are Fun Files: This artificial intelligence thing looks like it is going to be an endless source of mischief and misery for some, but lots of entertainment for the public. The WaPo writes:

ChatGPT invented a sexual harassment scandal 

and named a real law prof as the accused

The AI chatbot can misrepresent key facts with great flourish, even citing a fake Washington Post article as evidence

One night last week, the law professor Jonathan Turley got a troubling email. As part of a research study, a fellow lawyer in California had asked the AI chatbot ChatGPT to generate a list of legal scholars who had sexually harassed someone. Turley’s name was on the list.

The chatbot, created by OpenAI, said Turley had made sexually suggestive comments and attempted to touch a student while on a class trip to Alaska, citing a March 2018 article in The Washington Post as the source of the information. The problem: No such article existed. There had never been a class trip to Alaska. And Turley said he’d never been accused of harassing a student.

No doubt that the Republican Party is going to unleash its chatbots after intensive training on slandering liberals, socialism, and Democrats, and attacking everything woke, and inconvenient truth and history.

Q: Is it just me, or have the wheels come off the cart? It feels like a surprisingly bumpy ride.