Documentation of the blackmail scheme has surfaced proving Thomas and Scalia told Republican members of congress that if they didn’t raise their compensation in 2000 they would leave the court. At the time, after over a decade on the court at $175k (in the 80s and 90s that was a lot), Thomas’s lavish spending had him millions in debt.

Republicans couldn’t get the votes to raise their pay significantly, but they COULD hook them up with billionaires that would gift them millions per year. As soon as the donors stepped up, he suddenly had millions in the bank and all debts wiped clean. Now he’s worth tens of millions. Republicans are firmly against imposing ANY ethics requirements for the Supreme Court and are actively blocking imposing any as long as they have the majority in the court and the deepest pockets to bribe them with.

Today he takes home a half million on top of millions in bribes every year, and you turn the other way and put blinders on to cling to your tenuous political power instead of acting to save the nation. Shows where MAGAs heads are.

No, you fuckwit. You are always releasing the paper tigers you love to fight. Heroically battling windmills. 😂

They should only be allowed to accept minor gifts they report like a normal under $100 meal, not $1 million vacations that are specifically barred by law, not sale of properties at extreme profits that’s intentionally hidden from financial reports which require their report by clear unambiguous law.
It’s not one bit about “hanging out”, it’s about selling access to justices to people with cases before the Supreme Court in secret, about buying opportunity to present your argument to justices away from the court with no rules or opposition and prejudice them towards your position, and to pay them to accept those positions.

(Side note, it’s not illegal but this also 100% destroys the fake “Everyman” persona Thomas has lied about for decades….saying he prefers Walmart parking lots to expensive beaches and old RVs over luxury travel, but spending all his vacations on private luxury beaches, exclusive luxury resorts and retreats, and globetrotting on private planes. Every word you’ve ever heard from this man is a lie. Every. Single. Word. Ever.)

News flash, these billionaires had no interest in being friends with the justices before hey were on the highest court…they aren’t old friends, they’re new benefactors found after they became powerful justices mislabeled as “friends”. Guaranteed, if Thomas is removed, he will never hear from Crow again….not once.

News flash, Justices are only rich because they illegally take bribes in the million dollar range for the sale of their decisions in court. They were not rich before becoming justices. Do you think American justice should be for sale to the highest bidder…should Soros be in control of everything because, as you believe, he bribes everyone everywhere. (Hint- you would clearly call for prison nonstop if you could prove he bribed anyone).

No, you don’t think, you just defend every righty crime no matter what it is and make up lefty crimes out of thin air.

You fuckwit. He hid EVERYTHING. Tens to hundreds of millions unreported, every penny of which he absolutely knew must be reported by law, he reported most before finding out Scalia had gotten away with not reporting tens of millions and over 70 million dollar international hunting trips, one of which he died on….today it was revealed Crow secretly, totally unreported, paid for Thomas’s ward/child’s tuition at hyper expensive (Tuition at the exclusive Hidden Lake Academy cost more than $6,000 a month) private schools….on top of million dollar vacations for the entire family, businesses created for his wife and huge salary for his wife unreported, property sold by Thomas above market value then handed back for free with major improvements, the list of bribes discovered from this one billionaire grows daily….hint, he’s not the only one.

Yes, dumbshit. If as a judge you sell your decisions about the law in America for a cash bribe, that’s secret personal enrichment. I know, two 3 syllable words together is way above your comprehension level.

Edit: Maybe that’s the problem. Let’s try this….
He big steal lots of times…lots big steals two. Big lies to. Him sell law four cash bribe. Your thinks say that ok fine, he MAGA hero, so he can no bad. That dumb.

Big surprise….because conservatives were caught taking them over and over and over and over and over you now have absolutely no problem with bribery at the highest levels….but you’ll lose your shit and start screaming “hypocrisy! Criminals! Lock them up!” if any non MAGgot gets caught accepting a sandwich.

You must be fucking kidding.
You think this makes your party look sane? Or fair? Or even 1% honest?
I guess he expects no one to remember all the threats righty politicians make against the court, the left, and each other…usually involving a “second amendment solution”, not a threat of basic ethics rules.

Then you think listing some working lecture trips some justices took that were publicly reimbursed by law schools that never had cases before the court and which they reported equates to tens of millions in hyper luxury international trips for the entire family by people with cases before the court that were hidden and not reported as specifically and unambiguously required by law helps make the right seem LESS criminal. 😂

Clarence Thomas delegitimized himself by selling access to himself in secret, selling his decisions in secret, by not recusing himself from cases involving his “friends” (that he only met after becoming a justice), not recusing himself from cases involving his wife, her political movement/business, and pretending that he, the top legal authority in the country, didn’t know it was illegal despite it being incredibly clear in the law…laws he is 100% aware of and followed until corrupt Scalia told him he could get away with it by just not reporting it anymore (like Scalia did with million dollar hunting retreats over 70 times).

It makes you all look criminally unethical and moronic.
Why would anyone want no rules for the highest court unless they are complicit in the bribery schemes?
Self regulation has clearly completely failed, it’s never once worked in human history, but it’s Graham’s/the right’s only plan. Keep bribery legal at the highest levels. 🤦‍♂️

The problem remains the Supreme Court. Ginsburg is 83, Kennedy is 80, and Breyer is 78... So the next 4 years is likely to see up to 4 replacements in the court. While Scalia was a conservative, and a conservative replacement wouldn't be overly bad, Ginsburg and Breyer, were they to be replaced with a far right justice... and the Republicans would push as far right as they can, would bring about the end of most of the progress this nation has seen. We'd see them retake on abortion and rule it out, gar marriage illegal again... all this is not only possible, but most likely with any Republican in the Presidency... the Conservatives know this, in fact it is the main reason they are going out and voting this election, even if they hate Trump. They will not only hold onto the lead the Conservatives have in the court, they will be able to tilt it very far in a Conservative direction that will be that way for a very long time as they serve for life (or until they want to step down). Every President of late has done 2 appointments (Obama would have done 3 had Congress done it's job and moved on his nomination for Scalia's replacement), and the next likely has 3 to 4 in the next 4 years counting Scalia. This is the long term danger... beyond the rhetoric making it far more likely for lone wolf attacks, which I'd put up with if it meant a better turn in the Supreme Court.

Nothing is going to get done in Congress because the animosity between the two parties at this point in Congress is at Defcon 1. Bipartisanship is completely DOA. Both sides are just looking to criticize the other while crafting the narrative that their side is the one that knows what's best for the American people.

I think what you're going to see more of are things like what's happening in Hawaii. State representatives are going to realize the untapped voter potential that's out there by crafting gun laws before Congress does. In fact, probably the best solution to this problem right now is for States to work with each other and standardize all disparate gun laws across the U.S.

The real question here is how the Supreme Court is going to view these state laws when they (inevitably) get challenged on 2nd Amendment grounds. Scalia is gone now, so I honestly don't know how the Court will decide. But if you look at how gay marriage was essentially legalized in the U.S. state-by-state, I think you can see a road-map to how gun control laws could follow a similar path.

What's missing right now is an advocacy group that cares as much about this issue as the NRA does about "gun rights." It's easier to get people behind the legalization of gay marriage because it's a human rights issue and at the end of the day most people have a relative or friend (or several of each) who is affected. Sadly, it may take a day to come when everyone has a relative or friend who has suffered from gun violence to get the same kind of groundswell necessary to nudge things meaningfully forward.

Wait...you don't vote for corruption, but you'll vote for Trump? That does not compute. Trump has been involved in 3500 lawsuits over the last decades and often doesn't pay his bills, so often he had to address it and actually said 'if I don't think you did a good job, I don't pay'...that's theft of services, a crime of moral turpitude. You think he doesn't have experience placing obstacles to his adversaries? That's an insane hypothesis, he's shown thousands of times that he does know, and he wrote a book about it. EDIT: In fact, it seems that, in large part, he's made his money by extortion, making it far more difficult and expensive to fight him than it is to just let him rip you off and walk away.
He has clearly and repeatedly said HE is one of the people that paid off politicians to make laws that favor him (he said this in an effort to paint Clinton as corrupt for taking his money). HE is the ROOT of corruption in Washington....how on earth can you convince yourself he's not corrupt.

Trump will absolutely make an unfair system worse. He's a megalomaniac, and will do everything in his power, legal or not, to grab as much power as possible and put it into the hands of the president with no thought to what that does after he's out of office, and no one will stand up to him in any meaningful way out of fear of certain disproportionate reprisal.

Yes, maybe eventually the damage he does could be fixed, but that damage is FAR worse than you seem to imagine. The rest of the world sees him as a completely unstable, unpredictable person, and if he's the president, there's absolutely no question that world markets would fail due to that uncertainty, causing another world recession at best just from his election without a single act. As was mentioned, our standing on the world stage will also be destroyed, as it would be a clear signal to the world that America is not a partner, but an adversary to cooperation and reason.

Most non republicans would certainly disagree with your description of Scalia's record, as would many republicans. Some progressive laws got past him, yes, but the more progressive ones were usually stymied by him for completely insane reasons.

True, a smart corrupt person could do more damage than an upstanding idiot, but a bullying corrupt idiot with power can do the most damage of all without even trying...and holy shit are we all doomed if he gets upset and tries to do damage.

Scalia - They passed shit despite him

What an epitaph. Not sure if you should be making it a yardstick.

I think Hilary is a weathercock. Corrupt or no, I have a hard time imagining Trump as a sort of paragon of virtue. Conman might be too strong, but only just. He is, err, pretty economical with the truth when he is selling himself. He is egotistical, insecure and power hungry. If he isn't corrupt it's because he hasn't been a politician long enough.

...Only 4 years - true, America will still be there and walls might come down... but burnt bridges may take longer to repair. The rest of the world will not forget who gave him those 4 years, which party members fell in behind him despite their personal convictions.

You don't think that Trump won't make an unfair system even worse? Do you know what kind of scam operations he runs? Read up on Trump University, and if you don't think a mind like his won't immediately start eroding the as of yet intact elements of our government, then I have a bridge in the bay area to sell you. Not to mention that Scalia is not my definition of 'bright' by any standard. Bloviating quasi intellectual douchenozzle, sure, but not exactly a contributor to constitutional scholarship.

Hillary will be a boring drag; an uninspired and predictable apparatchik, but not remotely as harmful as the narcissistic psychopathy that's absofuckinglutely going to get us into severe confrontations around the globe that a Trump administration would bring.

Think about it. Yesterday the Russians put out a sabre-rattling presser about a US destroyer in the Black Sea (its international waters). Under Obama or Clinton, I can be pretty confident that any ruffled feathers will be smoothed and that things won't escalate. With Trump, if he has a bad morning because the viagra didn't kick in on time, or Ivana talks back or whatever, god knows what his decisions would be.

As a Republican that switched to Democrat for Bernie, screw that!

First off, I'm not a Bernie Bro. That's a derogatory term coined by the Clinton campaign to marginalize the Sanders followers.

Secondly, I don't vote for corruption. There's far too much evidence that Hillary's done twisted stuff, and I'll not be party to it. The problem is that when corruption wins, it makes fighting future corruption all the more difficult. Hillary has enough political experience that she can put into place obstacles for future progressive movements like Bernie's, and that's a problem.

Trump may have his own issues, but at very least he won't make an already unfair system even worse, which would have a longer term impact on the democracy of this country.

Walls can be torn down, Muslim immigrants can start entering again after 4 years, and not all conservative Supreme Court Justices are terrible. (Scalia actually was a pretty bright guy that passed quite a number of laws that had positive effect, for example. And despite him, the more progressive laws were still passed.)

I'm not saying I'll vote Trump, as Stein and Johnson are still options, but I certainly won't help Hillary in any way.

A smart person can do more damage than an idiot.

It should be expected that Republican block any Obama appointment because any of his picks would only measure up to a distant shadow of Scalia.

What exactly did Scalia do that is so horrible people feel the need to shit on him after he is dead? Serious question. Because, from what I can tell from the comments on the Internet, it consists mostly of "I didn't agree with what he said so he should burn in hell."

Fuck that noise. That's partisan bullshit, the same kind the Republicans are pulling now (saying they won't allow any legislation to pass until Obama is out of office).

The man was a human being. He was a brilliant legal scholar. He viewed the law from a particular perspective and stayed true to that perspective until the very end. No, I don't agree with a lot of the arguments he made, but I do agree with some of them, like the argument that video games are a form of speech protected by the Constitution (read the majority ruling that he wrote for that case, it is brilliant).

As has been pointed out, he couldn't do jack shit without getting a majority opinion from the other justices on the court. And I've never read a legal opinion of his that wasn't grounded in a reasonable interpretation of the law. I don't need to agree with his interpretations to recognize them valid.

So again I ask, what did he do that was so atrocious that it warrants the hatred that's being direct at him. If it were Donald Rumsfeld or George Bush Jr., people who can (and should) be seen as directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, maybe I could understand the vitriol.

Your video, Judge Dead, 2016 (RIP(?) Antonin Scalia dead at 79), has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Legal historians will use Scalia's legacy as a communal toilet.

I agree, but I think Scalia stands out for the truly atrocious things he's said in the media, hence more vocal hate.
At the same time, he could have just been drawing the media, or a scapegoat all along, because for all I know those 4 other judges agreeing with him could have said equally as terrible things that didn't reach the general populace.

Not that I agree with Scalia's politics, but those who have so much hate for him have to remember - it takes a majority to reach decisions on the Supreme Court, and that means at least 4 other justices agree with Scalia on every single 5-4 decision that was "the end of the world".
Their only duty is to determine the Constitutionality of a case, not to change the Constitution.
(so all that hate should really be pointed at Congress and/or Executive Actions)