Democratic Lawmakers' Attempt to Take Out Clarence Thomas Gets Slapped Down by Judicial Conference
Democrats often sound miserable and crazy, but if you really want to hear them come unhinged, try two things.
First, remind them that conservatives control the Supreme Court. And second, tell them that a black man has defied them.
According to NBC News, the Judicial Conference, a group of more than two-dozen jurists who meet bi-annually to address administrative and policy issues, as well as to advise Congress on potential legislation relevant to the Judicial Branch, decided on Thursday not to indulge Democratic lawmakers’ fantasies of punishing longtime conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.
“Because the Judicial Conference does not superintend the Supreme Court and because any effort to grant the Conference such authority would raise serious constitutional questions, one would expect Congress at a minimum to state any such directive clearly,” Judicial Conference Secretary Robert J. Conrad Jr. wrote in a pair of identical letters addressed to Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia.
“But no such express directive appears in this provision,” Conrad added.
Whitehouse, Chair of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on federal courts, and Johnson, ranking member of the House Judiciary subcommittee on courts, had asked the Judicial Conference to refer Thomas to the attorney general over allegations of ethical misconduct stemming from an April 2023 report by the liberal news outlet ProPublica.
Thus, Whitehouse and Johnson became the latest Democrats to experience disappointment in their crusade against Thomas.
Of course, Democrats’ obsession with the black conservative justice dates back to his 1991 confirmation hearings. In fact, President Joe Biden, then a Democratic senator from Delaware, played a leading role in that particular drama.
The latest manifestation of Democrats’ anti-Thomas obsession, however, began with the ProPublica report. That report chronicled a series of trips that Thomas and his wife, Ginni, took with Texas real estate developer Harlan Crow and his wife, Kathy.
ProPublica printed the report not because the law prohibits such trips but because the Crows paid for the Thomases’ travel and accommodations, and the justice neglected to report those items on his federal financial disclosure forms. Never mind that the judiciary’s financial disclosure regulations did not require said reporting at the time the trips occurred.
More than a year later, in June 2024, another high-ranking Democrat targeted Thomas over that same financial disclosure issue. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Chair of the Judiciary Committee, demanded “an enforceable code of conduct.”
Then, less than a month later, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York introduced futile articles of impeachment against Thomas and fellow conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who together had committed the unpardonable crime of joining a 6-3 SCOTUS majority that issued a ruling favorable to then-Republican presidential candidate and now-President-elect Donald Trump.
Thus far, Democrats’ tactics have failed, and rightly so, for two reasons.
First, as Conrad’s letter made clear, the Constitution does not support Democrat legislators’ assault on Thomas. Article I, Section 8 authorizes Congress to “constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court.” But it does not allow Congress to enlarge or diminish the scope of judicial power. Only the sovereign people may do that through a constitutional amendment.
Democrats, of course, have barely bothered to conceal the fact that their war on Thomas stems from political motives. They do not like his opinions, so they wish to punish him. And that qualifies as an attempt to enlarge or diminish the scope of judicial power.
In other words, asking the Judicial Conference to refer Thomas to the attorney general implies an authority that Congress lacks. Hence Conrad’s observation that the Democrats’ request “would raise serious constitutional questions.”
Second, on a visceral level, Democrats seem to hate Thomas more than any other justice because of what he represents.
For one thing, he reminds them of their relative powerlessness. Liberals have always loved judicial power. They love, for instance, the fact that a court ruling carries the weight of an edict, at least in many Americans’ minds. It tempers or even bypasses democracy altogether. That element alone appeals to their authoritarian sensibilities.
Moreover, elitist Democrats tend to treat dissenting, freethinking black men the way Democrats once treated their runaway slaves. When black men refused to get with the program, for instance, by supporting Trump in the 2024 election, Democrats trotted out former President Barack Obama to scold them.
In sum, thanks to the Constitution, Democrats’ latest unhinged crusade against Thomas — a crusade motivated by both authoritarian resentment and characteristic liberal racism — has failed.
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