Dem
51
GOP
49
These are the stories that just keep giving. Or the stories that we just can't get away from, we can't decide which. In any case, there was "news" yesterday relating to the two judges that are very much under the microscope right now, namely Clarence Thomas and Matthew Kacsmaryk.
The reason that we put news in quotation marks is that while the specific details of these two stories were not well known before yesterday, any thinking person (and even many USC grads) could have predicted them. To start, Clarence Thomas' "benefactor," the billionaire Harlan Crow, insists that he never had any business before the Supreme Court, and that he therefore could not possibly have been trying to purchase influence. Thomas, to the extent that he's spoken up, had said the same.
Turns out—wait for it—that's not remotely true. Sure, there's never been a Harlan Crow v. United States before the Court. But Crow is a politically active billionaire. And consistent with that, he's closely involved in all sorts of right-wing activist groups. He is part of the leadership of the anti-tax Club for Growth (CfG). He's also an active member of the NRA, the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute. And, as you can imagine, Crow has donated generously to each of these entities, in addition to being a member.
These groups have business before the Supreme Court all the time. Some of them, most obviously CfG, are in the habit of instigating lawsuits in hopes of getting the Supreme Court to establish favorable policies that cannot possibly make it through Congress. All of them are in the habit of filing amicus briefs in cases they have an interest in. So for Crow and Thomas to claim there was absolutely no way that the vacations and the other benefits could have been lobbying is an outright lie. It is improbable that the quid pro quo was explicit, but it didn't need to be. And keep in mind that Crow did not become Thomas' "friend" until several years after the Justice was seated on the Court.
As to Kacsmaryk, the latest news about him is that he appeared on multiple far-right radio programs and—surprise!—shared far-right views about things like LGBTQ people and abortion. For example, he lamented "the homosexual agenda" and "permissive policies on contraception" and spoke of the need to return to a "traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of marriage." It is not against the rules to express strong political views prior to becoming a judge, of course. However, a candidate for a federal judgeship is required to disclose all the things they wrote and all the interviews they did in advance of their confirmation hearing. And Kacsmaryk didn't.
You know who is to blame for this? It's not Kacsmaryk, at least not really. Yeah, he might have conveniently "forgotten" about the interviews. But it's also entirely possible, and really more likely, that he didn't remember them. Remember, he was a dedicated, active, far-right activist for years before he became a judge. Someone like that does hundreds of these things, especially since there are so many right-wing "news" programs on TV, and radio shows and podcasts that are hungry for content.
No, the people to blame for this are members of the Senate who did not infer that, by virtue of his job and his politics, Kacsmaryk must have publicly said many extreme-right-wing things. We're talking about people like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who said yesterday that she was "duped" by Kacsmaryk, and called it "the ultimate bait and switch." Either the Senator is lying, or was willfully naive (in other words, she took steps to keep herself ignorant, so she had plausible deniability). Whatever the case may be, it does not reflect well on Murkowski. The vote on Kacsmaryk was 52-46; the 46 were all the Democrats and independents there that day, along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Had Murkowski and two other Republicans who claim to care about an independent, "balls and strikes" judiciary voted against Kacsmaryk, who clearly does not fit the bill, then he would have gone down to defeat. The fact that only Collins actually did vote against him tells you where the "balls and strikes" Republicans really stand, despite their protestations, because the Judge's politics were not a secret. They are why he got nominated in the first place. (Z)