Sacrificing your intellectual dignity for a powerful life-tenured public official
By 
If you have any doubts about whether the routine corruption being revealed at the nation’s most pampered-by-billionaires court is serious, check out the howlingly specious defenses of Alito and Thomas’s conduct being thrown out by reactionary legal academics:
Providing some plastic eggs for a neighborhood Easter egg hunt, taking advantage of a minor, universally available public benefit, is this really any different from the bribes minor favors Alito received?
In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.
Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.
[…]
ProPublica’s investigation sheds new light on how luxury travel has given prominent political donors — including one who has had cases before the Supreme Court — intimate access to the most powerful judges in the country. Another wealthy businessman provided expensive vacations to two members of the high court, ProPublica found. On his Alaska trip, Alito stayed at a commercial fishing lodge owned by this businessman, who was also a major conservative donor. Three years before, that same businessman flew Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, on a private jet to Alaska and paid the bill for his stay.
Such trips would be unheard of for the vast majority of federal workers, who are generally barred from taking even modest gifts.
Participate in your neighborhood’s holiday celebrations, make some adjustments to your commuting schedule, and you too could get a six-figure luxury vacation from a neighbor who by pure coincidence has a direct interest in your decisions as a powerful public official. Everybody’s doing it!