We’ll make great pets

Remember that story from way back when about how a billionaire bought Clarence Thomas’s mother’s house, fixed it up, and maybe got rid of a troublesome neighbor in the same transaction?

Well it turns out that Mom still lives there:

According to ProPublica, Crow purchased Williams’ home in 2014, along with two nearby vacant lots in Savannah, Georgia. All three properties were co-owned by Thomas, Williams, and the family of Thomas’ late brother. Crow paid $133,363 for the properties. That’s substantially more than Thomas’ valuation. On a 2009 financial disclosure form, Thomas said his one-third stake in the three properties amounted to $15,000 or less. Once Crow assumed ownership, the billionaire paid for $36,000 worth of improvements to Williams’ home, including a carport, a roof repair, a new fence, and gates.

Thomas’ failure to declare the sale of his Savannah properties is a violation of federal disclosure law, several experts told ProPublica. Justices and other public officials must disclose real estate sales over $1,000.

In response to ProPublica’s new reporting, Crow said he bought Williams’ home to “preserve it for posterity,” with a goal of eventually turning it into a museum dedicated to Thomas. The justice did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about the property sale to Crow.

There is one critical detail ProPublica left slightly open: Does Leola Williams still live in her Savannah home? The reporters noted that they were certain Thomas’ mother lived in this house through 2020, per public records and social media, and that her neighbors said she still lives there.

But Slate can confirm that she resides in the house to this day. Two weeks ago, Joel Anderson interviewed her there for the upcoming season of Slow Burn. 

Anybody want to guess how much she’s paid in rent over the last nine years?

This got me a-ponderin’ about the fact that Thomas, who will be 75 in June, still has a living parent. So I did some googling and discovered that apparently BOTH his parents, who are aged 96/95 and 93/92 respectively, are still around. (Thomas’s mother divorced his father back in 1950).

Over the years I’ve heard endless speculation about how Thomas was going to drop dead any day now because he is fat or whatever. Yet the best single predictor of how long somebody is going to live, generally speaking, is how long their parents lived (Note in this light that Fred and Mary Anne Trump, responsible for the demon spawn that possessed the White House between 2017 and 2021, lived to 94 and 88, unfortunately.)

And another thing: Remember when some anonymous LIBERAL — cough, Sam Alito, cough — leaked the draft of the Dobbs opinion, and Western Civilization teetered on the edge of collapse because of this breach of the Omerta protecting the Inner Sanctum of the One Holy and Apostolic Court? And how John Roberts put more resources into finding the culprit than were devoted to finding the real killers in the OJ Simpson murders?

What sort of investigation is John Roberts undertaking now that it’s been revealed that a billionaire owns one of his associate justices as a kind of semi-expensive New Gilded Age pet? I bet you can guess the answer.