Unfettered Non-democratic Privacy for Me, Impeachment for Thee

I lied earlier–Charles Pierce’s comments at Altercation are highly necessary:

I’ve made peace with the fact that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court once served the cause of white supremacy at polling stations in Arizona, and that Justice Thomas probably did everything of which he was accused, and that Justice Scalia spends his odd moments dressing up as Pope Julius II, and that, as an ensemble, they treated the last presidential election as though it was a $2000 claiming race at Suffolk Downs. I long ago became painfully aware that a majority of the nine members of the current Supreme Court should be charging $50 an hour in some truck stop outside Laughlin, Nevada. But, consider this gem from Thursday:

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Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said the federal district court judge who ordered records opened to the public had issued too broad a release of documents, without giving appropriate deference to the White House.

The president is not above the law, Kennedy wrote, but there is a “paramount necessity of protecting the executive branch from vexatious litigation that might distract it from the energetic performance of its constitutional duties.”
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Holy Mother of God.

So, a spurious sexual harassment complaint can proceed ahead at full throttle, dragging the country through a ridiculous Kabuki impeachment driven in part by a sniggering passel of adulterous hypocrites, because, God knows, that couldn’t possibly distract the president from the duties of his office. But an attempt merely to obtain documents that might shed light on a second-story job masquerading as a national energy policy would overly inconvenience the inside man on an inside job. And not only was Jones v. Clinton unanimous, which means Kennedy then thought the Jones decision wouldn’t be too much of a drag on the president’s time, but that decision was read by John Paul Stevens, a putative “liberal” who joined with the majority in this most recent foolishness.