Buh, buh buh Sotomayor, Kagan and Brown-Jackson have to be investigated too! They might have taken trips to the Soros space laser or ruled in favour of BLM or something! Or something!
The evidence keeps piling up and nothing changes with SCOTUS. ‘Murica and ‘Muricans can’t admit that ‘Murica is as corrupt as they come, third world level corrupt.
Buh, buh buh Sotomayor, Kagan and Brown-Jackson have to be investigated too! They might have taken trips to the Soros space laser or ruled in favour of BLM or something! Or something!
The evidence keeps piling up and nothing changes with SCOTUS. ‘Murica and ‘Muricans can’t admit that ‘Murica is as corrupt as they come, third world level corrupt.
Buh, buh buh Sotomayor, Kagan and Brown-Jackson have to be investigated too! They might have taken trips to the Soros space laser or ruled in favour of BLM or something! Or something!
The evidence keeps piling up and nothing changes with SCOTUS. ‘Murica and ‘Muricans can’t admit that ‘Murica is as corrupt as they come, third world level corrupt.
Buh, buh buh Sotomayor, Kagan and Brown-Jackson have to be investigated too! They might have taken trips to the Soros space laser or ruled in favour of BLM or something! Or something!
The evidence keeps piling up and nothing changes with SCOTUS. ‘Murica and ‘Muricans can’t admit that ‘Murica is as corrupt as they come, third world level corrupt.
Buh, buh buh Sotomayor, Kagan and Brown-Jackson have to be investigated too! They might have taken trips to the Soros space laser or ruled in favour of BLM or something! Or something!
The evidence keeps piling up and nothing changes with SCOTUS. ‘Murica and ‘Muricans can’t admit that ‘Murica is as corrupt as they come, third world level corrupt.
Hyperbole. I travel to third world countries for work occasionally. Much more corruption there. I have known that America and our government and armed forces and national security apparatus was corrupt since sometime in high school. Too many lies for too many years
Buh, buh buh Sotomayor, Kagan and Brown-Jackson have to be investigated too! They might have taken trips to the Soros space laser or ruled in favour of BLM or something! Or something!
The evidence keeps piling up and nothing changes with SCOTUS. ‘Murica and ‘Muricans can’t admit that ‘Murica is as corrupt as they come, third world level corrupt.
Hyperbole. I travel to third world countries for work occasionally. Much more corruption there. I have known that America and our government and armed forces and national security apparatus was corrupt since sometime in high school. Too many lies for too many years
You don’t need to bribe the customs agent to clear your luggage, or the postal clerk to retrieve a package or the tax collector to enter your taxes paid or the cop to forget about the speeding ticket they’re about to write you or take you to jail for because SCOTUS is bought and paid for and repub led efforts to disenfranchise voters, see Ohio, are doing the trick to keep you in your place. See also repub POTUS front runner, POOTWH.
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up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,934
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Buh, buh buh Sotomayor, Kagan and Brown-Jackson have to be investigated too! They might have taken trips to the Soros space laser or ruled in favour of BLM or something! Or something!
The evidence keeps piling up and nothing changes with SCOTUS. ‘Murica and ‘Muricans can’t admit that ‘Murica is as corrupt as they come, third world level corrupt.
What country you live in?
Why does it matter?
jesus greets me looks just like me ....
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Jeesh, I wonder how many vacations the NRA had to launder through their billionaire donors to obtain this ruling? What fucked up judicial philosophy is this, made up out of thin air? I know, the best ruling that money can buy!
OpinionHow the Supreme Court’s next gun case could deal a blow to originalism
The Supreme Court has some truly dangerous cases teed up as it starts its new term this week, but none threatens a more repugnant outcome than U.S. vs. Rahimi, the latest gun case the court has taken up.
As if the country’s gun laws weren’t absurd enough already, the court could make them even more so. In fact, if it wants to uphold the precedent established by Justice Clarence Thomas’s outrageous ruling in the 2022 case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, it would have no choice but to declare that the government can’t take guns out of the hands of abusive husbands and boyfriends.
The court’s conservatives have two choices: Tell violent abusers everywhere they can keep their guns, or strike a blow against their beloved principle of “originalism,” the idea that the Constitution must be applied today by divining the original intent of the men who wrote it and the values of the world they lived in centuries ago.
While oral arguments will give us a better idea of where the justices stand, for now most legal observers believe the plaintiff, Zackey Rahimi, is going to lose. The consequences of him winning — for both the court and the Republican Party — are just too grave.
Rahimi was involved in a series of shooting incidents, including one in which he fired at a bystander who observed him assaulting his girlfriend. She obtained a protective order against him, and when he was arrested for other crimes, he was also charged with violating a federal law prohibiting those under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing guns.
Rahimi argues that the Bruendecision means that law must be struck down. In Bruen, Thomas wrote that laws regulating guns are presumptively unconstitutional unless they are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” which he defined as meaning that they must have an “analogue” to regulations from the time of the country’s founding up until the passage of the post-Civil War amendments in the mid-1800s.
In the strictest terms, says Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” Rahimi is right. “We didn’t have restraining orders that took guns away from anyone in the 1700s and 1800s,” Winkler told me. While there were some laws punishing men for beating their wives and children, none involved confiscating guns. “So it’s very hard to say the domestic abuser ban is consistent with the history and tradition of American gun regulation.”
It’s important to understand that Thomas invented this unique test for gun regulation out of thin air. “There’s no other constitutional right that’s governed by an exclusive ‘history and tradition’ test,” Winkler says. It’s originalism taken to a surreal extreme.
But given the damage that overturning Roe v. Wade did to both the court’s credibility and the Republican Party’s political fortunes, siding with domestic abusers might not be a stance the justices want to take. The practical consequence of this case is obvious: If Rahimi prevails, more women will die.
More than half of female homicide victims are killed by current or former intimate partners. Every month, about 70 American women are shot and killed this way. One meta-analysis of 17 separate studies found that male domestic abusers who had access to guns were 11 times more likely than abusers without access to guns to kill their victims.
As the authors wrote, “The risk factor that increased the likelihood of [intimate partner homicide] the highest was if the male perpetrator had direct access to guns” — more than whether he had threatened her, strangled her, stalked her, had a criminal record, had a substance abuse problem or any other variable researchers could identify. Guns turn abuse into murder.
The justices might realize that, rather than providing clarity and preventing judges from imposing their own beliefs on the law, Bruen has created widespread confusionin lower courts as judges play amateur historians, with results varying dramatically depending on which court hears each challenge to a regulation. “The current Bruen test is a total mess,” Winkler says.
So it’s possible the court’s less extreme conservatives are looking for a way out. That could mean loosening the Bruen test to say a regulation doesn’t need a directlyanalogous law from two centuries ago, just a general justification — say, that sometimes guns were taken from certain people deemed dangerous, so it’s fine to take them from domestic abusers.
If Rahimi wins, laws on everything from carrying guns on planes to background checks to licensing gun dealers might have to be struck down. Even the court’s conservatives (apart from Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.) are probably hesitant to go that far.
Which is why, Winkler told me, “This case is the best case for gun-safety advocates that could come along.” The result might dial back Bruen and strike a blow against originalism, showing that when justices imprison the country in 18th- and 19th-century ideas and values, even this conservative court can’t live with the results.
It would be a partial victory. But at the Supreme Court these days, that’s about the best one can hope for.
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what? do they drug test justices cuz she must be high.....
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Did Clarence not pay taxes on his bribe, I mean “gift?” And did the repub administered IRS look the other way? The law and order party wants to know.
Grifting, grifting, grifting away, I saw a Winnebago and I didn’t give it away. Grifting. Grifting, grifting away, I was supposed to pay taxes but I shrugged them away………..
Clarence Thomas’s RV loan was forgiven, Senate committee report says
Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) called Wednesday on Supreme CourtJustice Clarence Thomas to tell the committee whether he declared more than a quarter-million dollars of loan forgiveness on his tax filings.
Wyden released a report by the committee’s Democratic staff that details a loan that Thomas received from a friend, Anthony Welters, to buy a luxury Prevost Marathon motor coach in 1999. The report said Thomas made some interest payments on the $267,230 loan, but that it was declared settled by Welters in 2008 without Thomas repaying a substantial portion — or perhaps any — of the principal.
The New York Times reported on the loan arrangement in August. Welters told the news organization at the time the loan had been “settled” in 2008, but would provide no details on what that meant.
But Welters supplied documentation of the loan to the Senate committee, and "now we know that Justice Thomas had up to $267,230 in debt forgiven and never reported it on his ethics forms,” Wyden said in a news release.
Wyden’s statement continued: “Regular Americans don’t get wealthy friends to forgive huge amounts of debt so they can buy a second home. Justice Thomas should inform the committee exactly how much debt was forgiven and whether he properly reported the loan forgiveness on his tax returns and paid all taxes owed. I have also directed the committee to share our findings with the Judiciary Committee to evaluate the ethics implications of this disclosure.”
Federal ethics law requires top officials from all branches of government, including Supreme Court justices, to file annual disclosures listing investments, gifts, outside income as well as their liabilities, so that the public can assess potential conflicts of interest.
A Supreme Court spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment after Wyden released the results of his investigation. The Times said Thomas did not respond to its submitted questions about the Wyden report.
Welters said in a statement: “I believed Justice Thomas satisfied the loan. Because the loan was made 25 years ago and completed 15 years ago, bank statements – which I sought – no longer exist. ... While I understand the attention given who this involves, the difference between what you’re comparing to and what happened here is that a friend lent another friend money. As anyone who has borrowed from or lent to family or friends, it’s simply not the same as a bank.”
The Supreme Court is facing intense criticism from Democratic lawmakers and transparency advocates because it does not have an ethics policy that applies specifically to the justices. The scrutiny has followed news reports primarily centered on Thomas’s failure over many years to report lavish vacations, private jet travel and other benefits from wealthy benefactors.
Thomas has said he did not think he was required to disclose the gifts from personal friends.
Four of the justices have in recent months said publicly that the Supreme Court should or will take steps to tighten its ethics policies.
Welters, a wealthy longtime friend of Thomas and his wife Virginia who made his money in the health care industry, voluntarily provided documents to the Senate committee, according to the report.
They show that on Dec. 6, 1999, he lent the Thomases the entire purchase price of the motor home with an annual interest rate of rate of 7.5 percent. That was comparable to market rates, but the agreement said that over the course of five years, Thomas would make only interest payments.
Welters was able to provide the committee one check of $20,042.23 from Thomas, which the staff calculated would be the annual interest payment on a $267,230.00 loan at the 7.5% rate. Welters was not able to provide other checks, the report said, although he said remembered Thomas making some.
The committee staff said it reviewed a handwritten note dated Nov. 22, 2008, from Welters to Thomas that said Thomas has been paying Welters interest on the loan.
The note said that after Thomas’s upcoming payment, Welters would no longer seek further repayment from Thomas. The report said “Welters believed that Thomas had paid interest greater than the purchase price of the bus, and that Welters did not feel it was appropriate to continue to accept payments even though he had the right to them.”
If Thomas had made the yearly payments through 2008, they still would not have equaled the original loan price.
“The new evidence obtained by the Committee raises a number of potentially serious tax questions for Justice Thomas,” the report said. “The revelation that Justice Thomas had up to $267,000 in debt forgiven and failed to repay the entire principal of the loan would have generated a significant amount of taxable income for Justice Thomas.”
The report continued: “The tax code makes clear that in instances where debt is canceled, forgiven, or discharged for less than the amount owed, the borrower must report the amount canceled or forgiven as income for tax purposes.s
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US Supreme Court Releases Nonbinding Code of Ethics After Public Pressure
By Paige Anderholm
November 13, 2023
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court issued a code of ethics earlier today following months of financial scandals tied to Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
The nonbinding code of conduct, undersigned by all nine justices,
“represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as
governing our conduct,” according to the Court.
The code outlines five canons that justices should abide by.
According to the document released, justices should (1) “uphold the
integrity and independence of the judiciary,” (2) “avoid impropriety and
the appearance of impropriety in all activities,” (3) “perform the
duties of office fairly, impartially and diligently,” they (4) “may
engage in extrajudicial activities that are consistent with the
obligations of the judicial office” and (5) should “refrain from
political activity.”
Given the milieu of the Court, the multiple sections guiding
financial and fiduciary activities are of particular note. Since the
start of the year, public polling has shown falling approval of the Supreme Court amidst repeated controversies surrounding transparency and ethics, including multiple ProPublica reports detailing undisclosed gifts from Republican billionaire Harlan Crow to Thomas and his family, which have spurred calls for change and reform at the nation’s highest court.
However, immediately apparent is the lack of an enforcement mechanism
in this new code of conduct. As Take Back the Court’s President Sarah
Lipton-Lubet pointed out
in a statement, there are “53 uses of the word ‘should’ and only 6 of
the word ‘must,’” and emphasized that “the Court cannot police itself.”
Professor Leah Litman, who teaches constitutional law and federal courts at the University of Michigan, criticized
the financial guidelines, which allow justices to fundraise for
law-related nonprofits, calling it “a hall pass for the Federalist
Society galas and Koch Network 501c3 and 501c4 [organizations] ”
At the beginning of the month, 66 organizations led
by the Alliance for Justice called for Thomas to resign from the Court
immediately, citing the justice’s “egregious” conduct that “undermines
the ordinary citizen’s faith in the rule of law, further destabilizing
our democracy.”
It remains to be seen if an enforcement mechanism will be rolled out.
Read the code of ethics here.
Read more about reforms to the federal judiciary here.
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Comments
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
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There are no kings inside the gates of eden
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Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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Opinion How the Supreme Court’s next gun case could deal a blow to originalism
The Supreme Court has some truly dangerous cases teed up as it starts its new term this week, but none threatens a more repugnant outcome than U.S. vs. Rahimi, the latest gun case the court has taken up.
As if the country’s gun laws weren’t absurd enough already, the court could make them even more so. In fact, if it wants to uphold the precedent established by Justice Clarence Thomas’s outrageous ruling in the 2022 case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, it would have no choice but to declare that the government can’t take guns out of the hands of abusive husbands and boyfriends.
The court’s conservatives have two choices: Tell violent abusers everywhere they can keep their guns, or strike a blow against their beloved principle of “originalism,” the idea that the Constitution must be applied today by divining the original intent of the men who wrote it and the values of the world they lived in centuries ago.
While oral arguments will give us a better idea of where the justices stand, for now most legal observers believe the plaintiff, Zackey Rahimi, is going to lose. The consequences of him winning — for both the court and the Republican Party — are just too grave.
Rahimi was involved in a series of shooting incidents, including one in which he fired at a bystander who observed him assaulting his girlfriend. She obtained a protective order against him, and when he was arrested for other crimes, he was also charged with violating a federal law prohibiting those under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing guns.
Rahimi argues that the Bruendecision means that law must be struck down. In Bruen, Thomas wrote that laws regulating guns are presumptively unconstitutional unless they are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” which he defined as meaning that they must have an “analogue” to regulations from the time of the country’s founding up until the passage of the post-Civil War amendments in the mid-1800s.
In the strictest terms, says Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” Rahimi is right. “We didn’t have restraining orders that took guns away from anyone in the 1700s and 1800s,” Winkler told me. While there were some laws punishing men for beating their wives and children, none involved confiscating guns. “So it’s very hard to say the domestic abuser ban is consistent with the history and tradition of American gun regulation.”
It’s important to understand that Thomas invented this unique test for gun regulation out of thin air. “There’s no other constitutional right that’s governed by an exclusive ‘history and tradition’ test,” Winkler says. It’s originalism taken to a surreal extreme.
But given the damage that overturning Roe v. Wade did to both the court’s credibility and the Republican Party’s political fortunes, siding with domestic abusers might not be a stance the justices want to take. The practical consequence of this case is obvious: If Rahimi prevails, more women will die.
More than half of female homicide victims are killed by current or former intimate partners. Every month, about 70 American women are shot and killed this way. One meta-analysis of 17 separate studies found that male domestic abusers who had access to guns were 11 times more likely than abusers without access to guns to kill their victims.
As the authors wrote, “The risk factor that increased the likelihood of [intimate partner homicide] the highest was if the male perpetrator had direct access to guns” — more than whether he had threatened her, strangled her, stalked her, had a criminal record, had a substance abuse problem or any other variable researchers could identify. Guns turn abuse into murder.
The justices might realize that, rather than providing clarity and preventing judges from imposing their own beliefs on the law, Bruen has created widespread confusionin lower courts as judges play amateur historians, with results varying dramatically depending on which court hears each challenge to a regulation. “The current Bruen test is a total mess,” Winkler says.
So it’s possible the court’s less extreme conservatives are looking for a way out. That could mean loosening the Bruen test to say a regulation doesn’t need a directlyanalogous law from two centuries ago, just a general justification — say, that sometimes guns were taken from certain people deemed dangerous, so it’s fine to take them from domestic abusers.
If Rahimi wins, laws on everything from carrying guns on planes to background checks to licensing gun dealers might have to be struck down. Even the court’s conservatives (apart from Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.) are probably hesitant to go that far.
Which is why, Winkler told me, “This case is the best case for gun-safety advocates that could come along.” The result might dial back Bruen and strike a blow against originalism, showing that when justices imprison the country in 18th- and 19th-century ideas and values, even this conservative court can’t live with the results.
It would be a partial victory. But at the Supreme Court these days, that’s about the best one can hope for.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/04/rahimi-supreme-court-guns-domestic-violence/
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Grifting, grifting, grifting away, I saw a Winnebago and I didn’t give it away. Grifting. Grifting, grifting away, I was supposed to pay taxes but I shrugged them away………..
Clarence Thomas’s RV loan was forgiven, Senate committee report says
Wyden released a report by the committee’s Democratic staff that details a loan that Thomas received from a friend, Anthony Welters, to buy a luxury Prevost Marathon motor coach in 1999. The report said Thomas made some interest payments on the $267,230 loan, but that it was declared settled by Welters in 2008 without Thomas repaying a substantial portion — or perhaps any — of the principal.
The New York Times reported on the loan arrangement in August. Welters told the news organization at the time the loan had been “settled” in 2008, but would provide no details on what that meant.
But Welters supplied documentation of the loan to the Senate committee, and "now we know that Justice Thomas had up to $267,230 in debt forgiven and never reported it on his ethics forms,” Wyden said in a news release.
Wyden’s statement continued: “Regular Americans don’t get wealthy friends to forgive huge amounts of debt so they can buy a second home. Justice Thomas should inform the committee exactly how much debt was forgiven and whether he properly reported the loan forgiveness on his tax returns and paid all taxes owed. I have also directed the committee to share our findings with the Judiciary Committee to evaluate the ethics implications of this disclosure.”
Federal ethics law requires top officials from all branches of government, including Supreme Court justices, to file annual disclosures listing investments, gifts, outside income as well as their liabilities, so that the public can assess potential conflicts of interest.
A Supreme Court spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment after Wyden released the results of his investigation. The Times said Thomas did not respond to its submitted questions about the Wyden report.
Welters said in a statement: “I believed Justice Thomas satisfied the loan. Because the loan was made 25 years ago and completed 15 years ago, bank statements – which I sought – no longer exist. ... While I understand the attention given who this involves, the difference between what you’re comparing to and what happened here is that a friend lent another friend money. As anyone who has borrowed from or lent to family or friends, it’s simply not the same as a bank.”
The Supreme Court is facing intense criticism from Democratic lawmakers and transparency advocates because it does not have an ethics policy that applies specifically to the justices. The scrutiny has followed news reports primarily centered on Thomas’s failure over many years to report lavish vacations, private jet travel and other benefits from wealthy benefactors.
Thomas has said he did not think he was required to disclose the gifts from personal friends.
Four of the justices have in recent months said publicly that the Supreme Court should or will take steps to tighten its ethics policies.
Welters, a wealthy longtime friend of Thomas and his wife Virginia who made his money in the health care industry, voluntarily provided documents to the Senate committee, according to the report.
They show that on Dec. 6, 1999, he lent the Thomases the entire purchase price of the motor home with an annual interest rate of rate of 7.5 percent. That was comparable to market rates, but the agreement said that over the course of five years, Thomas would make only interest payments.
Welters was able to provide the committee one check of $20,042.23 from Thomas, which the staff calculated would be the annual interest payment on a $267,230.00 loan at the 7.5% rate. Welters was not able to provide other checks, the report said, although he said remembered Thomas making some.
The committee staff said it reviewed a handwritten note dated Nov. 22, 2008, from Welters to Thomas that said Thomas has been paying Welters interest on the loan.
The note said that after Thomas’s upcoming payment, Welters would no longer seek further repayment from Thomas. The report said “Welters believed that Thomas had paid interest greater than the purchase price of the bus, and that Welters did not feel it was appropriate to continue to accept payments even though he had the right to them.”
If Thomas had made the yearly payments through 2008, they still would not have equaled the original loan price.
“The new evidence obtained by the Committee raises a number of potentially serious tax questions for Justice Thomas,” the report said. “The revelation that Justice Thomas had up to $267,000 in debt forgiven and failed to repay the entire principal of the loan would have generated a significant amount of taxable income for Justice Thomas.”
The report continued: “The tax code makes clear that in instances where debt is canceled, forgiven, or discharged for less than the amount owed, the borrower must report the amount canceled or forgiven as income for tax purposes.s
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/25/clarence-thomas-rv-loan-forgive/
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
US Supreme Court Releases Nonbinding Code of Ethics After Public Pressure
By Paige Anderholm
November 13, 2023
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court issued a code of ethics earlier today following months of financial scandals tied to Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
The nonbinding code of conduct, undersigned by all nine justices, “represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct,” according to the Court.
The code outlines five canons that justices should abide by. According to the document released, justices should (1) “uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary,” (2) “avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities,” (3) “perform the duties of office fairly, impartially and diligently,” they (4) “may engage in extrajudicial activities that are consistent with the obligations of the judicial office” and (5) should “refrain from political activity.”
Given the milieu of the Court, the multiple sections guiding financial and fiduciary activities are of particular note. Since the start of the year, public polling has shown falling approval of the Supreme Court amidst repeated controversies surrounding transparency and ethics, including multiple ProPublica reports detailing undisclosed gifts from Republican billionaire Harlan Crow to Thomas and his family, which have spurred calls for change and reform at the nation’s highest court.
However, immediately apparent is the lack of an enforcement mechanism in this new code of conduct. As Take Back the Court’s President Sarah Lipton-Lubet pointed out in a statement, there are “53 uses of the word ‘should’ and only 6 of the word ‘must,’” and emphasized that “the Court cannot police itself.”
Professor Leah Litman, who teaches constitutional law and federal courts at the University of Michigan, criticized the financial guidelines, which allow justices to fundraise for law-related nonprofits, calling it “a hall pass for the Federalist Society galas and Koch Network 501c3 and 501c4 [organizations] ”
At the beginning of the month, 66 organizations led by the Alliance for Justice called for Thomas to resign from the Court immediately, citing the justice’s “egregious” conduct that “undermines the ordinary citizen’s faith in the rule of law, further destabilizing our democracy.”
It remains to be seen if an enforcement mechanism will be rolled out.
Read the code of ethics here. Read more about reforms to the federal judiciary here.
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14