Five House Democrats led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York wrote to the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, to demand a federal investigation of the conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, over his acceptance of undeclared gifts from billionaire rightwing donors.

“We write to urge the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into … Clarence Thomas for consistently failing to report significant gifts he received from Harlan Crow and other billionaires for nearly two decades in defiance of his duty under federal law,” the Democrats said.

  • Jordan Lund@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Nothing will come of it. The only guardrail on the Supreme Court is impeachment and the Republican led House will not start impeachment hearings on a Republican Judge.

    Want to change that? Here’s what needs to happen in 2024:

    A Democratic President
    A Democratic majority in the House
    At LEAST a 60 vote Democratic majority in the Senate.

        • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Kennedy died several months after Obama took office. What were Democrats doing during this time, aside from bailing out bankers and dronestriking weddings?

          • Jordan Lund@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            Kennedy died in August of 2009, in those 8 months they (and Obama) kind of saved the American economy?

            You have to remember, when Obama took office, we were losing 700,000 jobs a month and the stock market had PLUMMETTED TO $6,500.

            They managed to get the Recovery act passed in February, fought by the Republicans every inch of the way:

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009

            Which enabled the Tea Party movement and set the stage for the losses in 2010.

            Followed by the “Cash For Clunkers” act in July to prop up the American auto industry, an industry many Republicans (including Mitt Romney) at the time said we should just let die.

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System

            https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html

            Then Kennedy died, we lost the 60 vote majority, and Republicans proceeded to use the filibuster more times than all the other Presidential terms combined.

            • silent_water [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              saving the economy by throwing poor homeowners under the bus. smdh why can’t leftists just appreciate how much Obama saved the bankers economy

            • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Kennedy died in August of 2009, in those 8 months they (and Obama) kind of saved the American economy?

              “The economy” meaning rich people’s yacht money?

              Which enabled the Tea Party movement and set the stage for the losses in 2010.

              You can tell that the Democrats made a massive positive difference in the way that voters threw their asses out of power within two years of Obama’s inauguration, replacing him six years later with a game show host. If that isn’t victory, I don’t know what is!

              Can you name a bill the Democrats have passed within the last fifty years that has made a positive difference in your material life as well as the material lives of the people around you? Without doing research?

              Why has Biden refused to use the defense production act to pass universal health care? Why hasn’t he packed the courts? Why is it so hard for him to do these things but so easy for him to send tens of billions of dollars to Nazis in Ukraine?

    • h3doublehockeysticks [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Actually you only need 50 senators and then you just put in 50 judges. And oh hey what’s this, the DC statehood bill passed the house?

      Actually doing something would be easy. But they don’t actually want to.

      • Jordan Lund@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        We aren’t talking about Democratic leadership, we’re talking about AOC.

        p.s. “Democrat Party” gives your bias away, it’s the Democratic Party.

          • Jordan Lund@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            No it’s a “I’m not letting you be a sea lion and hijack the conversation.”

            If you have something on point to say, great. If you don’t? Exit’s over there…

              • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                did you not see that he is in charge of internet conversations and is using his legal authority to quash this entire line of inquiry?

                our only recourse is to wait for the next election and vote out his Pedantic Liberal Party in favor of a nebulous alternative and hope their platform includes a plank to revisit this issue at a later date.

        • SweaterWeather [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          So if the Democratic party leadership won’t commit to impeachment how is voting for them going to change the status quo of not impeaching judges?

          You said if you want to change this, you need this many Democrats. But the Democrats aren’t saying they’re going to change it. And presumably they know more about their intentions than you.

          Also you need 2/3 majority to convict. So you might want to revise your numbers.

          Edited to fix a typo

        • macabrett [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          p.s. “Democrat Party” gives your bias away, it’s the Democratic Party.

          Is the bias that they’re a communist or an anarchist? Because that’s what most people on our instance are. It’s not like we’re hiding it.