In an interview with former Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki that aired over the weekend on MSNBC, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi echoed the Left's bogus, manufactured "ethics" panic over members of the United States Supreme Court -- only the conservative ones, that is. She's endorsing term limits for the justices, which is pretty rich coming from an 83-year-old in her 18th Congressional term. In a typically ugly performance, Pelosi not only smeared Justice Clarence Thomas, but in the process, painted two prominent progressives on the Court as naive idiots.
Let's start with the clip:
Nancy Pelosi tells Jen Psaki: "I had one justice tell me he thought the other justices were people of integrity, like a Clarence Thomas. I'm like, 'Get out of here.'" pic.twitter.com/mGeAsITcQM
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 25, 2023
She doesn't mention Justice Stephen Breyer, a retired leftist, by name -- but her reference to him is not subtle, given that he's said this publicly:
Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer called Justice Clarence Thomas a "man of integrity" as his former colleague faces an onslaught of criticism from Democrats over his relationship with a wealthy Republican donor...“As far as I’m concerned, I sat next to him on the bench for 28 years. I like him. He’s a friend of mine. I’ve never seen him do anything underhanded or say anything underhanded,” Breyer said, according to Bloomberg Law. “My personal point of view is he’s a man of integrity,” Breyer told attendees at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit event.
Sitting Justice Sonia Sotomayor -- beloved by progressives (who oddly refrained from shrieks of outrage and demands for 'reforms' when she made this recusal decision) -- offered a similar endorsement of Thomas' character last year:
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke highly of colleague Justice Clarence Thomas during an event on Thursday, saying, “He is a man who cares deeply about the court as an institution.” Sotomayor, who is liberal, acknowledged during remarks at the American Constitution Society that while she often disagrees with the conservative justice, she believes that “we share a common understanding about people and kindness towards them” ... “Justice Thomas is the one justice in the building that literally knows every employee’s name, every one of them. And not only does he know their names, he remembers their families’ names and histories,” she said. “He’s the first one who will go up to someone when you’re walking with him and say, ‘Is your son okay? How’s your daughter doing in college?’ He’s the first one that, when my stepfather died, sent me flowers in Florida,” she added.
Pelosi, by contrast, does not know Justice Thomas, but she feels confident enough in her belief that he lacks integrity to attack both him and her ideological allies who do know him. Get out of here, she sneered. As I've written, the "ethics" "reforms" are rooted in garbage facts and selective standards, the real purpose of which is to further attempt to delegitimize an institution the Left is angry it doesn't control. The most recent effort may have been the most pathetic to date, which is really saying something:
The latest target of this smear campaign is Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Citing CNN’s investigative journalism, the left-wing advocacy group Common Dreams notes that, “months after she was sworn in in October 2020,” Barrett sold her home to a Notre Dame professor who occupied a leadership role in the advocacy organization Religious Liberty Initiative (RLI). “RLI has filed at least nine briefs with the court since the sale of Barrett’s home,” Common Dreams’ Julia Conley wrote...As is common now with these campaigns, these scant details serve as a platform from which left-wing advocates of Court “reform” allege that Barrett — like the rest of the Court’s conservatives — plays fast and loose with ethics rules. The judgments they render are therefore suspect. “Chief Justice Roberts has the power to change that, but so far he hasn’t shown the courage,” said one activist with the group that uncovered the sale of Barrett’s house. “If he fails to do his job, Congress must do theirs.” Surely Conley hopes you don’t click through and read the CNN report on which her advocacy is based. If you did, you’d have read the following: “Neither Barrett’s real estate deal nor Alito’s appearance in Italy appear to violate any of the court’s ethics rules, according to several experts interviewed by CNN.”
Even CNN didn't try to make this one stick, but that didn't stop other activists from beating the 'problematic' drum for nakedly political reasons. Conservatives should respond aggressively to the smears, on the merits, and treat the partisan machinations with deserved contempt.
