The sweaty desperation of the Supreme Court’s apologists

For decades Republicans had a very sweet deal in which they they have controlled the median vote of the Court since early in the Nixon administration and seen it move steadily to the right, but liberals liked the Court more and were less likely to be politically mobilized around it. This convenient arrangement was severely undermined by the Kavanaugh hearings and ended for the foreseeable future by the Court’s decision to issue a “glorified blog post that eradicated a right that had existed for 50 years and that threatens even more basic rights.” As the Court representing a party that has won the popular vote once since 1988 prepares to take over more and more aspects of national policy on the one hand while curtailing cherished liberties on the other, the chorus from the Court’s reactionary defenders that the Court is entitled to a fixed and high level of institutional legitimacy irrespective of what any of the justices do collectively or individually.

None of these arguments will be good. But as conservative pundits try to defend revelations of corruption substantially worse than the ones that forced Abe Fortas off the Court and gave Republicans a hammerlock on the Court they have yet to relinquish, some of them will be deeply, deeply hilarious:

Look, Harlan Crow did not pay the tuition of Clarence Thomas’s grandnephew (who had been in his legal custody since he was six) without public disclosure except for the years in which he paid his tuition without public disclosure CHECKMATE LIBS!

This is, alas, all too representative of the, for lack of a better term, intellectual movement that has gifted us with Shelby County and so many more decisions that are doing more to undermine the legitimacy of the Court than even the best-reported ProPublica story could hope to accomplish.

…More about this latter, but yet another Clarence Thomas scandal has appeared, so his lickspittles will have another opportunity to humiliate themselves.