Today is Friday, April 14, 2023. The voices of dissent are crying out in the swirling scandal surrounding Associate Justice Clarence Thomas who seems to have violated actual laws in receiving largesse from one of his richest best friends, repugnican megadonor Harlan Crow. An article in today’s late edition of the Daily News covers the controversy now revolving around Thomas written by Michael Macagnone entitled “Asking Thomas to testify in Senate could spark showdown.” In it, Macagnone writes that “Advice groups have urged the Senate judiciary Committee to call Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to testify about his relationship with a billionaire GOP donor, a move experts would say would escalate conflict between two branches of government and could lead to a separation-of-powers showdown.”

Senate Judiciary Chair Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and other Democrats on the committee are now putting the onus on the Supreme Court to address the conduct of one of its own who is now looking not very reputable in the public’s eye. Durbin said the committee would hold a hearing “regarding the need to restore confidence in the Supreme Court’s ethical standards.” Durbin has called on Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. to conduct an investigation, a hint of the underlying political and separation-of-powers concerns at play.

However, there are more calls for action out there. Gabe Roth, the executive director of Fix the Court, a nonpartisan group that has pushed for transparency at the Supreme Court, called for Thomas to testify before Congress and said lawmakers have the power to subpoena him.

Common Cause and an array of liberal-leaning advocacy groups also called for testimony from the ethically clouded jurist. Even The New York Times editorial board today said the Judiciary Committee should call on Thomas to testify if Roberts doesn’t conduct an investigation.

Though groups are calling for Thomas to testify, it’s really rare for Supreme Court justices to testify before Congress voluntarily, it seems. The only congressional subpoena for a sitting Supreme Court justice was in the 1950s, as noted by Josh Chafetz, who is a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center and has studied legislative branch power under the Constitution. He said there is nothing that insulates justices from being called to testify.

Back in the 1950s, the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed Justice Thomas Clark, who refused to comply, and lawmakers dropped the issue and pursued the matter no further.

Noting the current atmosphere at the Supreme Court, Common Cause copresident Marilyn Carpinteyro said this in a news release, “The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly proven itself incapable of policing itself without a code of ethics.” She demanded that “It is time for Congress to hold hearings and pass legislation to establish a code of ethics for Supreme Court Justices to hold them to the same standards as every other federal judge in the nation.”

One critic of this extraordinary step of forcing a justice of the Supreme Court to testify before Congress is Josh Blackman, a law professor at the South Texas College of Law at Houston who said that he doesn’t see Thomas voluntarily testifying before the Senate under oath. Issuing a subpoena to Thomas would likely end up at the Supreme Court and would “put his colleagues in a very weird situation” by forcing them to judge their colleague’s case or recuse themselves.

Blackman also said that if the Senate takes actions investigating Thomas or with the intent of establishing evidence to impeach him, it would create a “DEFCON one” standoff with the judiciary. He predicted that if Thomas would be forced to testify, this could spur repugnicans to question Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson or other Democratic appointees to the court, as well as lower-court judges.

I’m no lawyer or constitutional expert, as you might know, but I sincerely believe something has to be done with these new revelations concerning this justice. Other scandals surrounding his association with his fruitcake wife have gone nowhere, it seems, but this potential violation of the law must be investigated further by the powers to be. The faith Americans have in the Supreme Court is at its lowest because of its partisan, conservative rulings, especially in the wake of its overturning a 50-year precedent in the land, last June. This is not the time to sweep this latest news concerning Clarence Thomas under the rug. It must be pursued with the vigor it demands.

Who thinks that repugnicans aren’t committing political suicide with its most extreme positions on abortion in which a majority of Americans actually want, given new terrible decisions by a Texas federal judge who just ruled on the abortion pill mifepristone that has been used for at least 20 years without ill effects? This restricted access to the drug was expected to go into effect tomorrow at 1 a.m. ET, but it has been put on hold by a decision by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito – the father of the June overturn of Roe v. Wade – for now. This is a temporary move meant to give the justices more time to consider the issue. Alito said the order is stayed until 11:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday. This decision has been met with total condemnation by women’s groups throughout the country. The name of the dick that imposed this restriction on this primarily safe drug was U.S. Court Judge Matthew Kaczmaryk of Texas. Of course, it had to be a judge from Texas that did this ridiculous thing. People are deservedly outraged over this ruling.

Another repugnican dickhead is Florida’s Ron”Demented” who just signed without fanfare a six-week abortion ban overnight, meeting behind closed doors with a select group of invited guests to give final approval to a bill that just passed the state legislature earlier in the day. To me, this signifies a death wish for the alleged 2024 presidential candidate. Already, critics are saying this ban is going to cause a lot of problems for him going forward. Since the Supreme Court ended a federal right to abortion access last June, the issue has energized Democrats and has left repugnicans grasping for a way to blunt the fallout. So far, this has not worked well for repugnicans who are seen as too extreme in all cases. The latest harbinger for them came last week from Wisconsin, a presidential swing state where liberals took control of the state Supreme Court in an election fought over the future of abortion access. With that stupid signing of this very restrictive bill, Florida will now become one of the hardest states in the country to obtain an abortion. Thank you, Mr. DeMented for understanding women’s concerns with regard to this issue. You stink!

Democrats should just seize what the jerk in Florida just did and thrash him over the head with this politically suicidal executive action all the time from now on. As I’ve said, this ban is making DeSant-ASS politically toxic already. He doesn’t have to worry anymore about what Herr Dumpf thinks of him. He’s out as a presidential candidate, in my opinion. Women will abandon him en masse. And many men as well.

Well, it’s getting late here. It’s also very warm sitting here and typing in this space. It’s too early to put on air conditioners, even though the temperature was close to 90 degrees today. In observance of this mini-heatwave, I drove to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, today to have brunch at Juliette, and to sit and read the paper in McCarren Park. I also browsed my usual bookstores on Bedford Avenue and North 3rd Street. At the second bookstore, I bought a book for $1; the book is called Tinseltown and it’s about the string of scandals that plagued Hollywood in the 1920s. One of them was the murder of director William Desmond Taylor, a crime that went unsolved for nearly a century. The book also provides information about Hollywood moguls Adolph Zukor and Marcus Loew, who are also featured in Neal Gabler’s book about the Jews that invented Hollywood, An Empire of Their Own that I also started reading after finishing Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake. So I couldn’t beat the price, even the cover is a little worn. Elliot stayed home this time. He went out with me earlier in the morning to have breakfast at the Austin Street Diner before going to the bank and running other errands.

Have a good weekend. The hot spell is leaving us, unfortunately, by tomorrow. The temperature is supposed to be only about 66 degrees and rain is expected. But no rain for Sunday.

Stay safe and be well.