Democrats Drill Republicans By Hitting Them In The Koch With Supreme Court Ethics Bill

[Uncle Joe]

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/07/23/democrats-introduce-supreme-court-ethics-bill-kochs-pass.html

Since America is supposed to be a nation of laws, even though those laws are not enforced universally, the people expect the judiciary to be impartial, transparent and adhere to the highest ethical standards. For all but nine American judges, the nation’s judiciary is held to high ethical standards because they have to adhere to a “judicial code of conduct.” Perhaps it is because they are appointed for life, or are completely exempt from adhering to any kind of ethics code, conservative Supreme Court Justices have blatantly flouted ethical standards every federal judge in America is required to follow.

For the second time in as many years, Democratic legislators in Congress are calling on the Supreme Court to finally, at long last, adopt a code of ethics for Supreme Court Justices to rein in conservative Justices working for conservative, corporate, and religious groups. The bill, “The Supreme Court Ethics Act of 2015? that was recently reintroduced would to media silence, if passed by the Koch brothers’ Congress, requires the Supreme Court to adopt a code of the ethics within 180 days. There is little hope the Koch brothers will allow Republicans to be party to legislation eliminating their substantial influence over at least two, and likely three, of the High Court’s conservative Justices.

In the latest polling from Gallup, the American people’s faith in the High Court as an independent, transparent, and fair entity is a despicable 30 percent; likely because of a recent rash of conservative rulings based on the demands of powerful special interest and religious groups. The solution is a simple fix requiring the Supreme Court justices to recuse themselves from cases where they have a blatant, often monetary conflict of interest, and finally restrict them from engaging in political activities to raise money and awareness for conservative causes; specifically corporate and religious causes.

(snip)

Slaughter was referring to Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas Koch-funded attendance at a highly-secret Koch brother strategy meeting and corporate fundraiser with Citizens United plaintiffs prior to hearing and ruling that corporations are exempt from campaign finance laws according to their 1st Amendment right of free speech. She also noted that Clarence Thomas deliberately concealed hundreds-of-thousands of dollars paid to his wife by the “anti-Obamacare” conservative Heritage Foundation to lobby against the Affordable Care Act; even while the Supreme Court was taking up the Constitutionality of the healthcare insurance reform law. Last year, Justice Samuel Alito was the featured guest speaker at a $25,000-a-head political fundraiser for a conservative magazine group, American Spectator. There is no way of knowing whether or how much Alito earned as a featured speaker because there is no Supreme Court Code of Ethics. Regardless of whether he earned one penny, Alito like Scalia, did use his status and position as a Supreme Court Justice to raise money for conservatives.

There is much more on the link, I had a tough time narrowing it down to just 4 paragraphs.

[Uncle Joe]

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