Although I agree with this bill, the NYT calling it “strict new ethics rules” is a bit much. Reading the requirements in the bill itself, it struck me as legislating that SCOTUS justices do the bare ethical minimum required of most every other judge - in other words, it’s the type of bill that shows up when an organization demonstrates that it is incapable of self-policing.
What’s shocking is 100% opposition by Republicans to a bill requiring a Justice to recuse if a close family member receives a large gift from a litigant - literally, that’s in the bill.
How is this controversial? Senator Graham says why - requiring the court to act ethically will “destroy” the court. He’s saying, we don’t care if justices are ethical so long as they’re partisan.
Congress needs to step up here.
Money isn’t speech because me buying crack isn’t protected by the constitution. If I can’t do illegal things with my money why can they?
Edit: forgive the over simplification
It is an oversimplification. The supreme court distinguishes between nonverbal acts that are political speech, and acts that are just acts. It’s not the money, it is the act of giving the money. Just like burning the flag is political speech. I’m not saying that Citizens United is correct, or that we are on the right path. Even if we had a honest acting Supreme Court ready to fix everything, they’d have to tread carefully to avoid fucking everything up.
That doesn’t fit on a t-shirt. /s
If burning a flag is political protest, why not burning crack into your lungs? It’s political speech to protest the government and its world wide drug war!
P.S. Stay away from crack and coke, dopamine exhaustion is real and fucked