The Democrats hate him with a passion that is an order magnitude hotter than the surface of the Sun. They hated him when Joe Biden chaired the US Senate Judiciary Committee at the time and the heat has never stopped.
Now US Senator Angus King (I-ME but caucuses with Democrats) and Lisa Murkowski (Extreme RINO – AK) decided on an attempt to keep the political attacks going with a bill demanding that the Supreme Court institute a Code of Ethics:
Two U.S. senators will introduce a bipartisan bill on Wednesday requiring the Supreme Court to create a code of conduct for its justices following recent media questions concerning the full disclosure of some financial activities, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The bill being introduced by Angus King and Lisa Murkowski, called the Supreme Court Code of Conduct Act, would require the court to name an official in charge of reviewing any possible violations of the code or federal laws by Supreme Court justices, the newspaper said.
And as always, I have thoughts:
And WHERE does the US Senate have the Constitution Power to do this to a co-equal Branch of Government? Nowhere! Only in Article 1, Section 8:
To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
meaning lower level court systems (appellate, circuit, district) and, of course, approve Presidential nominations to SCOTUS. However, there is nothing in the US Constitution itself that grants the Congress the Power to determine anything else concerning SCOTUS. However, with the Federal Judiciary Act (1789), Congress gave itself the Power to regulate, among other things, the number of Justices that would sit on the Court. However, there is nothing in that Act, nor in the 1866, 1869 ones changing the number of Justices, that gives Congress the ability to enforce a Code of Ethics.
As I have written before, been there, done that when then Town Administrator Evans Juris and Financial Director Debra Shackett tried to put a Code of Ethics in place that ALL elected Budget Committee would be forced to sign – it’s purpose was to shut me up as I aired the town’s dirty laundry which the CoE was meant to shut me up. While I now know that they didn’t have the Power to do so, that effort was shut down when I discovered that, contra to their self-promotion of all their hard work on it, they had plagiarized it from the City of Sunnyvale, CA. That effort then disappeared in a heartbeat.
This effort by by King and Murkowski is no different in that it isn’t about “better government”, it is a Democrat political cudgel meant to further destroy Thomas.
