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Backward and Forward
January 21, 2022
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After the ace Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg of NPR explained why Justice Sonia Sotomayor participated in a recent session by Zoom and related it to the fact that Neil Gorsuch, the Justice usually in the chair next to hers, refuses to wear a mask, there were flurries (no, really a blizzard) of other reports emphasizing that no masking demands had been made or refused by anyone, and that all the judges were "good friends."
Really?
Then perhaps it's time for a vigorous adaptation of the long-recognized moral judgment that "Friends don't let friends drive drunk."
Why is that? Because drunk drivers are a mortal danger to themselves and to the lives of anyone else out on the roads.
Thus, Justice Gorsuch, listen up: "Friends don't endanger friends by potentially exposing them to a deadly disease."
No fool defends the "freedom" of inebriates at the wheel. There is no "free choice" to threaten the lives of others.
Masking up does protect the wearer, but its real purpose is to inhibit the spread of contaminated COVID-19 aerosols to other human beings. It is not an infringement on "freedom" any more than laws against DWI. It is an expression of civic responsibility. It's what "friends" do to protect their "friends."
Here's something else friends should not do: cover up the dangerous deficiencies of their friends at the expense of public order. If a bartender serves more drinks to an already drunk customer and then sends that customer off to drive his or her car home, he is justifiably liable to criminal prosecution.
For decades now, Clarence Thomas' "friends" on the Supreme Court have ignored his consequential liabilities in intelligence, expression and public service. "Silent Sam" struck again last week, failing to inform the public of the "thinking" behind his latest misdecision, his outlier choice to justify former Donald Trump's hiding of his presidential record from Congressional investigation.
Justice Thomas' consistent auto-eradication of his own public record, his refusal to ask aloud a question anyone else might hear and judge, his pathetic underperformance in quality and quantity of judicial opinions, should long ago have disqualified him from office. If this history is a choice, it is a willful dereliction of duty. If it is involuntary, it suggests issues of mental health.
No one can know this better than the Justices who see him in inaction.
That his "friends" on the Big Bench continue to cover it up, let it slide, shows they are no friends of America or the rule of law. And to the degree that history will ultimately judge Justice Clarence Thomas, his enabling "friends" are doing him no favors, even as they do the nation great harm.
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THIS WEEK: CALLING OUT RACISM IN THE MEDIA, SUBSIDIZING INEQUALITY IN CONGRESS; ACQUIESCING TO THE POISONING OF NATIVE AMERICANS AND A LOOK BACK AT THE NEWEST GLOBAL RESOURCE RACE.
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 The river of denial is a big one. May would-be nullifiers of Critical Race Theory drown in it. There's no denying the stream of racism that runs through the history of the American news media, but what to do about it? Journalist Damaso Reyes of the New York Amsterdam News shared some serious and nuanced thoughts on the subject on this Monday's HERE & THERE. It may not be easy being diverse or just, but Reyes suggested ways to meet both challenges.
You can find the show here. |
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 On Tuesday's HERE & THERE the New York Times' great investigative reporter Jesse Drucker examined one way in which the federal tax code has been written to make the insanely rich even richer. One video game designer's family seems to be pocketing more than $100 million in tax breaks you and I will have to pay for. Like most endemic abuses, this typical comfort for the comfortable is the product of Congressional bi-partisanship.
You can find the show here.
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 Elizabeth Miller of New Mexico in Depth is one of our favorite guests. Her recent reporting on the Jackpile mine, once the biggest open-pit uranium mine in the world, is a tale of environmental destruction and human abandonment. You don't need a "race theory" to see this as an example of white plutocrats and national security alarmists sticking it to Native Americans and walking away. This Wednesday's HERE & THERE.
You can find the show here.
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 On Thursday, we revisited a fine conversation with Ivan Penn of the New York Times on the complications of "greening up" our energy sources. Out with coal, down with oil and gas — yes, for sure. But to make solar and wind power work is going to take a lot of lithium and cobalt. Mining them isn't "green" at all.
You can find the show here.
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NEXT WEEK: THE FLOODS OF SEDITION, CORRUPTION AND KLEPTOCRACY AND THE DROUGHT IN THE AMERICAN WEST.
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How 'bout those sedition-enabling Republican representatives on the lam from subpoenas from the committee investigating the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol? Not only are they hiding their collaborations with the violent scum who tried to disrupt the transfer of power from the Devil Trump to President Joe Biden, they're undermining their own institution and the Constitution that defines it. The state of play on investigating what happened and holding the perpetrators criminally responsible, one year later, as seen by Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. That's next Monday's HERE & THERE.
Next Tuesday, the first of two HERE & THERE’s looking at kleptocracy, crime organized by and for government leaders pillaging their own people. On Tuesday, the guest will be Alexander Cooley of Columbia University and the British think tank Chatham House. Back in the days of the Soviet KGB, London was a favorite hidey-hole for ill-gotten gains. Today, Russia and its tyrant Putin are still banking with the Brits. Hear why and how.
On Wednesday, we wide the focus on kleptocracy to a global scale with Frank Vogl, one of the founders of Transparency International and the author of a fine new book, The Enablers. Meet the people and systems that lubricate a system of steal-hide-spend, and see how it runs when those old family business partners Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdogan are coming to agreement. The good news: the Devil could promise; but he couldn't deliver. Oh, by the way, all the corruptions Cooley found in London, Vogl finds, to corrosive effect, in New York City.
Thursday's encore turns the clock back to 2020 and a talk with John Fleck of the University of New Mexico, an acknowledged expert on the issue of water resources in the American West. Fleck's book Science Be Dammed limned out a century of denial, of mis-overestimations of how much water the Colorado River system could provide. Today's water update: not as much as "experts" thought has become simply not enough.
— dmarash
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