As usual, Bernie is right on the money. In this email message, he lays out some of the best reasons for forgiving student debt.

We are in a war with a sleazy but relatively small segment of our society and they cheat and want nothing to do with democracy. It is time to take the gloves off and treat them like the traitors and enemies of our country and democracy that they are!

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#EndRunAroundDemocracy

"Earlier today, the Supreme Court voted to overturn a Biden Administration program forgiving up to $20,000 of student debt per-person in this country.

In my view, this decision is not only deeply flawed legally but it is way out of touch with where the American people are. Student debt forgiveness has the support of the majority of people in this country, and for good reason.

Now, I would love to tell you that the Supreme Court is an impartial judicial institution whose decisions are above politics. That was perhaps once true, but it is certainly not the case any more.

Remember. Thirteen years ago, in the disastrous Citizens United decision, this Supreme Court ruled that billionaires can legally buy elections. And now, the Supreme Court has made it clear that they will continue doing everything possible to protect the big money interests against the needs of struggling working families. This right wing ideology is consistent with their recent decisions denying women the right to control their own bodies, ending affirmative action, attacking LGBT rights and limiting the government's ability to address climate change.

In my view, if right wing Supreme Court justices want to make public policy they should quit the Supreme Court and run for political office. Frankly, I do not think their extremist views will gain much traction with the average American voter.

Let’s be clear. Their decision on student debt is not only a disaster for millions of working class families, but it will do great harm to the future of our economy and our country’s economic competitiveness.

The United States used to lead the world in the percentage of people who graduated college, which is one of the reasons that we have the strongest economy in the world.

Today, tragically, that is no longer the case.

Today, we are penalizing our children and saddling them with decades of debt just for doing just what we tell them they need to do in order to be successful: get a college education.
...
Today, as a result of this decision, there are millions of Americans who may put off their dream of entrepreneurship and starting small businesses. This, in turn, will slow economic growth. And less growth means fewer jobs and less tax revenue to pay for services Americans want and deserve.
...
Today, as a result of this decision, a message has been sent to bright young people who have the desire and the ability to get a higher education but cannot do so because their families lack the money. That message is: either forget about your dream to get higher education or accept the reality that you will be paying off debt for the rest of your lives.

How many great doctors, scientists, and teachers are we losing as a result of this decision?
...
This ruling is not just a tragedy for the people carrying student loans and their families, but it is also a great loss for our nation.

Unless you are a member of the oligarchy in this country.

Because the children of oligarchs don’t go to community colleges, or struggle to figure out how to afford public universities in their states while taking on overwhelming loads of student debt.

And after graduation, the children of oligarchs don’t send out résumés or put off chasing their dreams because of their outrageous loads of student debt.

No.

In my view, it is profoundly unfair that other students, simply because they had the good fortune to be born into wealthy families, can graduate college without a cent of debt.
...
Today, I am urging the Biden Administration to implement a Plan B immediately to cancel student debt for tens of millions of Americans who are struggling to pay the rent, put food on the table, and pay for the basic necessities of life.
...
If Republicans could provide trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the top one percent and profitable corporations, if they could cancel hundreds of billions in loans for wealthy business owners during the pandemic when Trump was President and if they could vote to spend $886 billion on the Pentagon, please don’t tell me that we cannot afford to cancel student debt for working families..."

Judge Aileen Cannon needs to recuse herself from Trump documents case https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/13/judge-cannon-recuse-trump-documents-indictment/

#GOPIsLikeTheMafia
#CannonIsATrainWreck
#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary

"A judge whose credibility is shot cannot handle the most important trial in U.S. history.

Democracy defenders and advocates for the rule of law were elated when the indictment of former president Donald Trump was unsealed, revealing a damning array of evidence that should finally vindicate the principle that the law applies to presidents and ex-presidents just as it does to all other Americans. Elation was tempered, however, when Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s name appeared on court documents. She infamously botched a civil case brought by Trump to recover the very same documents now at issue in the criminal case, a decision so lacking in logic and precedent that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit swiftly repudiated her ruling and sent Trump packing.

The 11th Circuit’s ruling was particularly dismissive in reversing Cannon: “The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.” Specifically, the panel held she didn’t have jurisdiction and should not have ruled on the case.

To make matters worse, in the civil case, Cannon posited that Trump deserved special treatment because he is a former president (“[a]s a function of Plaintiff’s former position as President of the United States, the stigma associated with the subject seizure is in a league of its own”). A judge who begins with the unconstitutional premise that Trump is not subject to the law like any other defendant would have a hard time sustaining public faith in the process. Any rulings for Trump would be regarded as evidence of bias; rulings against would be seen as efforts to restore her shattered reputation.

Because Cannon seemed to be leaning over backward and/or operating untethered to basic criminal procedure, some lawyers have questioned if she should recuse herself under the U.S. code that requires a judge to “disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Legal scholars have pointed to precedent for recusal “if facts connected to the judge’s actions in the case would cause an objective observer to doubt the fairness of the proceedings," as Norman L. Eisen, Richard W. Painter and Fred Wertheimer wrote in Slate.

Constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe told Newsweek: “Judge Cannon’s rulings in favor of Donald Trump’s motion to suspend the criminal investigation … including her appointment of a special master to undertake a review that had no basis in law, certainly fits that test by establishing a strong basis for questioning her impartiality, entirely apart from the aggravating factor that she was appointed to her lifetime position on the federal bench by defendant Donald Trump.”

Other legal scholars agree. (As Stephen Gillers put it, “Now, the fact that a judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned doesn’t mean that the judge is partial. The public may simply not trust the impartiality of the judge. Because public trust in the work of the court is a value as important as the work itself, the rule says that the judge should not sit when we can’t fairly ask the public to trust what the judge does.”)
...
A trial judge has immense discretion on everything from pretrial rulings excluding evidence to empaneling a juror to dragging out the proceedings. In the case of delay, Cannon could deny the American people a verdict in advance of the 2024 election. Some erroneous decisions might be reversed on appeal, but others (e.g. seating a juror who practices jury nullification) could be hard to correct on review. Moreover, the need for consistent intervention by the 11th Circuit could turn the case into a multiyear affair. None of this benefits the federal bench (specifically the 11th Circuit), the rule of law or the American people.
...
But the risk that a wildly misguided and slipshod judge could have reformed is far too great to entrust her with the most important criminal case in our lifetimes. She and the 11th Circuit owe both Trump and the American people an expertly run trial free from the appearance of bias."

This is how you get your way when democracy doesn't give it to you. You do an end-run around democracy so you can have minority rule forever! Who needs democracy, congressmen, senators or presidents when you own the judiciary?

Court decision in clean water case is more legislating from the bench https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/26/supreme-court-clean-water-kavanaugh/?

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPIsTheRichsBitch
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"The Supreme Court’s decision gutting the Clean Water Act isn’t just a disaster for efforts to control pollution, although it is that, too. It is yet another illustration of the conservative supermajority’s aggressive willingness to rewrite statutes to its liking, abandon precedent and lunge to intercede in disputes that could be easily sidestepped.
...
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh (good for him!) joined the court’s three liberal justices in a far more reasoned interpretation of the Clean Water Act that would have respected text and precedent while still finding for the Sacketts.

Once again, the conservative justices reveal themselves to be textualists of convenience. The Clean Water Act requires a permit for dumping pollutants — and this includes the backfilling that the Sacketts were doing to prepare their lot — into the “waters of the United States.” Such waters are explicitly defined to include “wetlands” that are “adjacent” to streams, rivers and other navigable bodies of water covered by the law.

The majority agrees on all this but then waves its magic statutory wand to redefine, and narrow, the meaning of “adjacent.” It transforms the definition to apply solely to wetlands that are actually adjoining — that have a “continuous surface connection” — to the larger body.

This disrespects — actually, it ignores — the law’s text and traditional methods of statutory interpretation. As Kavanaugh noted, dictionary “definitions of ‘adjacent’ are notably explicit that two things need not touch each other in order to be adjacent.”
...
No longer, according to the majority, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Kavanaugh charitably labeled the majority’s approach “unorthodox” and “atextual.” Another word might be lawless. The majority’s approach blithely dismissed some 45 years of consistent interpretation through eight presidential administrations, Republican as well as Democrat. Even the Trump EPA thought adjacent meant adjacent.
...
Sackett reinforces what we already knew: This is a court that doesn’t like government regulation and it is going to do what it can — text and precedent be damned — to neuter it. Thus the majority, in last year’s West Virginia v. EPA, invented a “major purpose” test to limit the reach of another major environmental law, the Clean Air Act. In this case, it adopts another new test — when Congress exercises such power “over private property” it must use “exceedingly clear language” — to rewrite the Clean Water Act to its liking.

As Justice Elena Kagan explained in a concurrence joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, this is nothing short of another judicial power grab. “The vice in both instances is the same: the Court’s appointment of itself as the national decision-maker on environmental policy,” Kagan wrote.

And why? Not because the law compels it, but because the majority doesn’t like the law. “Congress, the majority scolds, has unleashed the EPA to regulate ‘swimming pools and puddles,’ wreaking untold havoc on ‘a staggering array of land-owners,’” Kagan observed. “Surely something has to be done; and who else to do it but this Court? It must rescue property owners from Congress’s too-ambitious program of pollution control.”

More judicial power-grabbing to follow. The court next term will consider whether to ditch the four-decade old practice, known as Chevron deference, of having courts defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the laws they administer when the statutes are ambiguous. If Chevron falls, as seems all but inevitable, courts will be even more firmly in the driver’s seat to control policymaking.

This isn’t right, and it is also unnecessary. When the court reached out to take Sackett, the Biden administration was in the midst of rewriting the rules on how the Clean Water Act applied to wetlands. But the majority had its votes. Why wait? Why hold back? That could be the motto of this radical and impatient court."

The neutering of our government so it only works for them has been the goal of the obscenely rich for decades. They finally have the judicial, political and media pawns all lined up to do their bidding so our "democracy" only serves them.

Neil Gorsuch is Preparing His Revenge: Gutting America's Protective Agencies https://hartmannreport.com/p/neil-gorsuch-is-preparing-his-revenge?

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"Fulfilling Bannon’s and Trump’s promise to dismantle — or eviscerate — most of America’s regulatory agencies, leaving us all subject to the tender mercies of the country’s billionaires & CEOs…

Republicans on the Supreme Court are, it appears, planning to gut most of America’s regulatory agencies, in what could be the most consequential re-write of the protective “deep state” since it was largely created during the New Deal in the 1930s.

If they pull it off, they could destroy the ability of:

— the EPA to regulate pollutants,
— the USDA to keep our food supply safe,
— the FDA to oversee drugs going onto the market,
— OSHA to protect workers,
— the CPSC to keep dangerous toys and consumer products off the market,
— the FTC to regulate monopolies,
— the DOT to come up with highway and automobile safety standards,
— the ATF to regulate guns,
— the Interior Department to regulate drilling and mining on federal lands,
— the Forest Service to protect our woodlands and rivers,
— and the Department of Labor to protect workers’ rights.

Among other things on the rightwing billionaire wish-list: virtually the entirety of America’s ability to protect its citizens from corporate predation rests on what’s called the Chevron deference (more on that in a moment), which the Court appears prepared to overturn with a case they just accepted last week.
...
Far-right conservatives and libertarians have been working for this destruction of agencies — the ultimate in deregulation — ever since the first regulatory agencies came into being with the 1906 creation of the Pure Food and Drugs Act...

Gutting these agencies is what Steve Bannon meant when Trump brought him into the White House and he said one of the main goals of that administration was to “deconstruct the administrative state.” If there’s any coherent explanation of the phrase “deep state” as used by Republicans, it’s our nation’s regulatory agencies.

The modern effort to destroy or at least neuter America’s protective agencies began when Ronald Reagan put Anne Gorsuch in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

She directed the agency to dial back restrictions on expansion of factories and other operations that were already polluting the atmosphere. That provoked a challenge to the Supreme Court, Natural Resources Defense Council, v. Gorsuch, where the Court overruled the Reagan administration.

Gorsuch nonetheless continued her efforts to gut the EPA. In her first year heading the agency, there was a 79 percent decline in enforcement cases, and a 69 percent drop in cases the EPA referred to the Justice Department for prosecution. She pushed a 25 percent cut in her own agency’s funding into Reagan’s first budget proposal.

It took Congress years to overturn her cuts to the Clean Air Act “on everything from automobiles to furniture manufacturers,” according to Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust.

She took a meataxe to President Carter’s renewable energy programs and “set solar back a decade” according to Clapp.

Gorsuch finally resigned her office to avoid prosecution for what Newsweek described as “a nasty scandal involving political manipulation, [Super]fund mismanagement, perjury, and destruction of subpoenaed documents, among other things.”

Her son, Neil Gorsuch, was devastated by his mother’s resignation. In her memoir Are You Tough Enough? she tells the story of how Neil confronted her when she resigned:

“Neil,” she wrote, “got very upset. Halfway through Georgetown prep and smart as a whip, Neil knew from the beginning the seriousness of my problems. He also had an unerring sense of fairness, as do so many people his age.

“‘You should never have resigned,’ he said firmly. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. You only did what the president [Reagan] ordered. Why are you quitting? You raised me not to be a quitter. Why are you a quitter?’

“He was really upset,” she added.

Now, it appears, her son is preparing his revenge.

To get there, he and at least three other Republicans on the Court (the number required to accept a case) appear hell-bent-for-leather to turn regulatory agency rule-making upside-down."

Clarence Thomas is an unethical, despicable, self-serving, resentful, mentally imbalanced and grudge-holding piece of work that is not qualified or worthy of being on the supreme court. He was only nominated to further the right's long-orchestrated attempt to use the judiciary to seize power from the democratically elected branches of government so that the GOP and their obscenely wealthy donors could get their way even if they can't via elections.

How the Clarence Thomas Scandals Explain His Right-Wing Rulings – Mother Jones https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/05/video-clarence-thomas-scandals-harlan-crow-billionaire-black-nationalism/

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#EndRunAroundDemocracy
#TheRichHateAvgAmericans
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"“Live through Jim Crow, so you can live off of Harlan Crow.”

That’s how MoJo’s Garrison Hayes archly summarizes the hypocrisies of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in light of recent blockbuster revelations that he accepted elite private school tuition money from the real estate mogul for his grandnephew, alongside other lavish, all-expense-paid holidays and gifts from the Texas billionaire.

“If these things are true,” Garrison observes, ironically, in his new video about the many contradictions of Thomas, “your favorite Black conservative appears to be the most exaggerated version of a welfare queen, feeding off the generosity of a wealthy white benefactor who showers him and his family with unlimited trips.”

Since discovering that Thomas once identified as a Black nationalist, Garrison has been fascinated with better understanding the events that led him to become one of the most prominent figures in right-wing politics. Garrison has spent the last few weeks diving deeply into Thomas’ on-the-record speeches, biographies, interviews, and judicial opinions. In this video, he highlights instances where Thomas has opposed programs designed to help Black communities, despite personally benefiting from similar programs. Thomas attended Yale’s law school in 1971 through an affirmative action program but later opposed a similar program in a judicial opinion. When he couldn’t find a legal job after graduation, he saw affirmative action as the reason for his difficulties, writing in his 2007 memoir, “Now I knew what a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference. I was humiliated—and desperate.”

Despite receiving extraordinary opportunities and assistance throughout his life, Justice Thomas, Garrison concludes, seems committed to subjecting other groups—particularly Black people—to a rigid “bootstrap” individualism. In other words: opportunity for me, but not for thee.

Watch Garrison’s latest video below:" Click on the link to the article to watch this very informative, interesting video...

First of all, people who invested enough time and energy into merely acquiring obscene amounts of money, are imbalanced, warped and dysfunctional in some way. Then you see these same emotionally warped people certain that the world would be better if they were in charge and committed to making even more money by gaming control of our political system, and the extent of the problems they are causing for all of us begins to come into focus.

Time to clamp down on all donations/legalized bribery and reduce the excess money they have lying around that they feel they can use to by our system by taxing the hell out of them and their estates!

Clarence Thomas' Citizens United vote enabled billionaire benefactor to boost political power
"The Crows used their fortune to buy access to and curry favor" with elites, one advocate said
https://www.salon.com/2023/05/03/clarence-thomas-citizens-united-vote-enabled-billionaire-benefactor-to-boost-political-power_partner/

#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#TheRichBoughtTheGOP
#CampaignFinanceReform
#TheGOPIsTheBitchOfTheRich
#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary

"A report published Monday highlights potential connections between the political influence of Harlan Crow's family and the billionaire GOP megadonor's yearslong endeavor to shower U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with lavish vacations and other undisclosed gifts.
...
In "Travel Rewards: What the Crow Family May Have Bought by Hosting Those Luxury Trips for Justice Thomas," ATF shows how Thomas' vote in the 5-4 decision that effectively legalized unlimited political spending has allowed the Crows to increase their average annual campaign contributions by 862%, from $163,241 pre-Citizens United to $1.57 million post-ruling.
...
"The Crows used their fortune to buy access to and curry favor with one of the most powerful officials in Washington, then benefited from his central role in loosening rules meant to limit the influence of money over politics and policy," said ATF executive director David Kass.

"It's a vicious cycle that can only be short-circuited by restoring meaningful campaign finance rules and by demanding a much fairer share of taxes from billionaires, which, among other good results, will leave them less money to distort our democratic process," Kass added.

"The Crows' influence-buying and political spending are emblematic of a larger problem: the ongoing attempt by billionaires to purchase our democracy."
...
In a report published last summer, the group documented how "billionaires are increasingly using their personal fortunes and the profits of connected corporations to drown out regular voters' voices and elect hand-picked candidates who further rig the nation's economy—especially the tax system."

Not counting dark money contributions, billionaires dumped $1.2 billion into the 2020 elections, 65 times more than the $16 million they donated in 2008, the report found. By last June, a few dozen billionaires had already pumped tens of millions of dollars into the 2022 midterms—mostly to support Republican candidates, including several election deniers—in a bid to ensure that Congress is full of lawmakers willing "to make their wealthy benefactors even richer."

"Billionaires shouldn't be able to buy political access and influence with their enormous fortunes," ATF tweeted Monday. "It's well beyond time for Citizens United to go, and to put real action towards making billionaires pay their fair share in taxes. Our democracy depends on it."
...
For instance, four years after Thomas helped deliver a victory to U.S. oligarchs in Citizens United, Crow purchased a property owned by Thomas for $130,000 and made improvements to it while the judge's mother continued to live there.

Thomas is not alone when it comes to conflicts of interest on the high court. Last week, Politico revealed that just days after his April 2017 confirmation, Justice Neil Gorsuch and his business partners sold a 40-acre Colorado ranch for almost $2 million to an undisclosed person. The buyer, Brian Duffy, is the CEO of a law firm that has since been involved in 22 cases before the court.

Despite growing evidence of possible corruption, Chief Justice John Roberts has refused to accept an invitation to testify at an upcoming Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on potential reforms to the Supreme Court, which is currently controlled by six far-right justices, most of whom were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote.

Progressives have demanded far-reaching changes to disempower the country's "rogue" justices, including adding seats—a move that has been made seven times throughout U.S. history—and enacting robust ethics rules."

Thomas always seemed like an asshole, selling out his people to the white men that have held them down, but the incredible amount of corruption and bribery he has taken is astounding! Is he dumb enough to believe that conservative crap or is he just sold out and in it only for himself. Either way, he should never be a judge, let alone on the Supreme Court!

Article: Thomas benefactor Harlan Crow covered tuition, too

"Clarence Thomas benefactor Harlan Crow revealed to have paid for relative's private school tuition.

Crow paid for private school for Thomas' great-nephew. Yet that fact remained previously undisclosed"

https://flip.it/wtjbYl
#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#SupremeCorruption

Those right wing Supreme Court Justices were Republican partisans before they were nominated and they are still hopelessly Republican partisans now. They lied and misrepresented themselves to get on the court, they've made bizarrely rationalized, nonsensical, partisan rulings, why should we be surprised they are still incorrigibly, ethically compromised now! They aren't going to step down and stop being Republican partisans because they got caught with their whole arm in the cookie jar, unless we force them to!

Article: Details around the income of Chief Justice Roberts' wife raise more ethical red flags at the Supreme Court

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary

https://flip.it/RvsJv_

The leaders of the right are becoming ever more aligned around autocracy and oligarchy as their preferred outcome. They have increasingly given up on democracy and no longer have any interest in sharing power or governing from the center. Part of this is attributable to their imbibing far too much of their own kool-aid and part is due to their power-hunger and greed.

They have been working toward their goal of single-party, oligarchic rule for decades--with a touch of Christian nationalism thrown in for "moral" cover. Their ongoing, and now relatively successful, capture of the judiciary as an end-run around democracy, is just one prong of their overarching plan. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, allowing unlimited money/bribery into our elections, eroding the security of the middle class, and propagandistic indoctrination of the susceptible, are all parts of this same plan.

They have been patiently moving toward dismantling our democracy and then fortunately for us, Trump came along and coopted many of the pieces of their plan, for his own, selfish, narcissistic purposes, before it was fully ready to be rolled out. They fought him initially, concerned that he would ruin their well-planned strategy, but then eventually went along with him in the hopes that their desired outcome could be achieved even more quickly than they had hoped. All the pieces were not in place, some of our democratic checks and balances and guardrails held, and that is what saved us.

Make no mistake about it, they wanted to put together an Orban-like, illiberal "democracy-in-name-only" but it wasn't fully successful. Recognizing that this was their plan all along and that they haven't abandoned it but instead doubled down, is what we need to wake up and work together to protect our democracy from this ongoing insurrection. The GOP is not a partner in our democracy any longer!!

American Autocratic Threats: Ted Cruz and John Roberts https://politicususa.substack.com/p/american-autocratic-threats-ted-cruz?

#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPIsThePartyOfTheRich
#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#ImprisonSeditionists

"The U.S. is facing ongoing pressure from the right to become an autocracy, as proven by the secret Ted Cruz tapes and Justice John Roberts' refusal to testify regarding SCOTUS' ethics challenges.

It’s been a banger of a week so far, with sexual harassment scandals bringing down major TV news stars and a CEO and then on Tuesday more breaking news as we heard the secret Ted Cruz (R-TX) tapes in which he laid out the plot to steal America. At the same time, news broke that Republican Chief Justice John Roberts refused Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) request to testify regarding the massive ethics scandals infecting the Supreme Court.

Both sides of this coin are a symptom of an oppressive, out-of-control reactionary and right-wing patriarchy that feels so threatened by change that it is working to seize power and actively escalating democratic backsliding. This is not normal.

The Secret Authoritarian Plot Hatched at the Highest Levels of U.S. Government
The secret recordings of Cruz revealed his coup plot to overturn Biden’s 2020 win and kept Trump in the White House. Cruz is a U.S. Senator, who is supposed to be loyal to the United States and her government. Plotting a coup is the opposite of loyalty.

It was a deeply somber moment as Ari Melber, on whose MSNBC show the Ted Cruz tapes debuted, warned Americans not to dismiss the threat of rising autocracy evidenced by the Republican plan to steal an election.

Melber made the most important point from all of this news when he warned not to underestimate authoritarian plans. I’ve been warning about this since the Right started taking lessons from Hungary’s PM Viktor Orban — they are serious about turning the United States into a democracy in name only and the takeover isn’t going to be a violent Civil War, but rather what you see right now: using the courts to steal power, culture war propaganda and media dominance.

Melber said, "There are also those who would look at this tape with this plan and say, Ari, this sounds pretty farfetched. That sounds unlikely to get anywhere. They might want to dismiss it. They might say, hey, Ari, this wasn't going to really happen. And it didn't happen, we didn't see a fake commission popped up to do this. Let me tell you this tonight -- underestimating authoritarian plans hatched at the highest levels of your government would be a mistake. This was hidden for a reason they don't want to you know about it, don't want to you take it seriously."

It's not like these breaches of ethics are going to stop occurring. The whole court has been gamed to give partisan advantage to the GOP. They can't effect the policies they want through democracy, so they have abandoned democracy and created a court that undemocratically has resorted to creating and changing laws and policies that are outside its purview. The court keeps accruing to itself power it should never have and making decisions that aren't just or well-reasoned but purely partisan in nature. it is a rightwing attempt to end-run around democracy and seize power.

'This defines the Roberts Court': Chief justice's wife earns millions placing lawyers at firms that argue cases - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/this-defines-the-roberts-court/

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#PartisanSupremeCourt
#SupremeCourtEthics
#JudiciaryEndRunAroundDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPHatesDemocracy

"The highly controversial and highly unpopular U.S. Supreme Court isn’t just facing a historic loss of confidence, it’s now facing yet another ethics scandal that is likely to lower even further public opinion of the far-right institution that in under two decades has seen its approval rating slashed.

Although it will not hear arguments, the issue before the Supreme Court and the American people’s view of it, is, should a justice’s spouse – in this case the spouse of Chief Justice John Roberts – be able to make millions of dollars recruiting attorneys who are placed into top law firms that argue cases before it?

That’s the latest allegation, and already a spokesperson for the Court has issued a statement denying any ethical violations.

The New York Times reports that “a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice. Seeking an inquiry, the ex-colleague has provided records to the Justice Department and Congress indicating Mrs. Roberts has been paid millions of dollars in commissions for placing lawyers at firms — some of which have business before the Supreme Court, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.”