While Democrats and leftist activists whine and scream about the off-bench activities of originalist Supreme Court Justices — things these radicals say require norm-shattering changes to the highest court in the land — it turns out, yet again, that the left is using selective outrage to demand certain standards for justices who dared to rule against Democrat interests while ignoring liberal justices' activities.
As revealed in a new report from The Associated Press, it turns out Justice Sonia Sotomayor has benefitted "from schools’ purchases of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of the books she has written over the years."
From AP:
Sotomayor’s staff has often prodded public institutions that have hosted the justice to buy her memoir or children’s books, works that have earned her at least $3.7 million since she joined the court in 2009. Details of those events, largely out of public view, were obtained by The Associated Press through more than 100 open records requests to public institutions...
In her case, the documents reveal repeated examples of taxpayer-funded court staff performing tasks for the justice’s book ventures...
In 2019, as Sotomayor traveled the country to promote her new children’s book, “Just Ask!,” library and community college officials in Portland, Oregon, jumped at the chance to host an event.
They put in long hours and accommodated the shifting requests of Sotomayor’s court staff. Then, as the public cost of hosting the event soared almost tenfold, a Sotomayor aide emailed with a different, urgent concern: She said the organizers did not buy enough copies of the justice’s book, which attendees had to purchase or have on hand in order to meet Sotomayor after her talk.
“For an event with 1,000 people and they have to have a copy of Just Ask to get into the line, 250 books is definitely not enough,” the aide, Anh Le, wrote staffers at the Multnomah County Library. “Families purchase multiples and people will be upset if they are unable to get in line because the book required is sold out.”
It was not an isolated push. As Sotomayor prepared for commencement weekend at the University of California, Davis law school, her staff pitched officials there on buying copies of signed books in connection with the event. Before a visit to the University of Wisconsin, the staff suggested a book signing.
At Clemson University in South Carolina, school officials offered to buy 60 signed copies before a 2017 appearance; Sotomayor’s staff noted that most schools order around 400. Michigan State University asked Sotomayor to come to campus and in 2018 spent more than $100,000 on copies of her memoir, “My Beloved World,” to distribute to incoming first-year students. The books were shipped to the Supreme Court, where copies were taken to her chambers by court workers and signed by her before being sent to the school.
Well, how about that. Will Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) run to find a camera in the Capitol to decry the corruption of Justice Sotomayor using her official office for personal profit and demand the Court be packed with liberal justices? Will ProPublica run a scathing dark money-funded exposé on Sotomayor's book tours? Of course not.
Sheldon Whitehouse right now https://t.co/48T4gX7nCH pic.twitter.com/RHKMGEkj6v
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) July 11, 2023
The left's current crusade against the legitimacy of the Supreme Court has nothing to do with what justices do on their own time when not considering the nation's prominent legal matters and everything to do with fear that the current Court is returning to originalist roots. Adhering to the Constitution's vision for the federal government is a direct threat to the administrative state and executive overreach that has allowed Democrats to mold the country to their will without relying on the consent of the governed or their elected representatives.
In response to that threat, the same radical leftist activists and Democrats who tried to intimidate justices into upholding Roe v. Wade in last summer's Dobbs decision are now ratcheting up their opposition to target not just individual justices with whom they disagree but the entire Supreme Court as an institution.
Threats to pack the Court have been made before, but there's little doubt that the leftist dark money groups which funded previous opposition to Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett have now realized these principled jurists won't be intimidated by unhinged lunatics' antics. Instead, they must turn to again calling for the Supreme Court to be drastically changed in order to rig the balance in favor of big government proponents who view the Constitution as an obstacle to their power-grabbing policies.