Poor Clarence Thomas...

Now Clarence Thomas is whining that people don't respect institutions anymore.

It's not that the public doesn't respect institutions. It's that the public doesn't trust the hacks on the Supreme Court who have prostituted the institution to conservative authoritarians who want to turn the United States into a copy of Russia.

Let's look at the decisions that the court that Thomas is a member of has made.

In 2000 he voted to stop Florida from recounting ballots, handing George W. Bush the election. The election was extremely close, and Florida's ballots consisted of computer cards that voters had to punch tiny holes through to cast their votes.

He voted to overturn the Voting Rights act, allowing states to pass laws that have disenfranchised millions of voters.

He voted to overturn campaign finance reform, allowing oligarchs like the Koch brothers, Peter Thiel and foreign nationals to buy American elections.

He voted to allow companies to exclude birth control from insurance coverage, which has likely resulted in thousands of unintended pregnancies because women can't afford contraceptives, and their boyfriends still want sex.

He voted to overturn local gun control laws, allowing whack jobs like the guy who shot up a supermarket yesterday, killing 10 people (mostly Black), to continue their racist gun rampages across the country.

That guy, as it turns out, is a devotee of "replacement theory," the idea that whites are going to be replaced by Muslims and Blacks. This theory has been pushed by Stephen Miller, who has been called "Trump's brain."

On a more personal note, Thomas's wife Ginny sent dozens of email messages to Trump's chief of staff, repeating baseless (and ridiculous) lies about the election being stolen for Biden by Republican election officials in states like Georgia and Arizona. States in which Trump lost, but other Republicans mysteriously won.

How are we supposed to believe that Thomas can be trusted to rule fairly on anything involving elections when he lives with a crazy woman? She's quite possibly involved with the January 6th coup attempt. And how the hell does she have the cell phone number of the president's chief of staff?

Now the Supreme Court is going to decide the fate of Roe v. Wade, invading the privacy of millions women across the country, forcing them to bear children they can't afford and don't want. These women will be forced further into poverty. (These same women will not be able to feed the babies the Republicans are forcing them to bear because of the baby formula shortage.)

And Thomas is whining about demonstrators invading his privacy by protesting outside his house.

Finally, seven out of nine members of the court are Catholic. It's preposterous to claim that has nothing to do with their apparent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The Republicans have now stolen two or three Supreme Court seats, depending on how you count. When Antonin Scalia died in 2016 Republicans refused to hold hearings, claiming that they couldn't appoint a judge in an election year. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020, less than two moths before the election, Republicans rushed their nominee through the process in six weeks.

Then there's the case of Anthony Kennedy. He resigned under pressure from Trump. Kennedy's son Justin was involved in Deutsche Bank's lending of millions of dollars to Trump's failing businesses when no one else would. It's not exactly clear what went on to get Kennedy to resign, but the whole affair stinks to high heaven.

This is why people have no faith in the Supreme Court. It's become a tool of anti-democratic elements in the conservative movement. These decisions are clearly made for conservative political reasons, not what makes legal sense or what is best for the country.

Thomas is just another political hack trying to turn the clock back to the dark ages.