Item one: Clarence Thomas broke the law. Dick Durbin, what are you prepared to do about it? |
Remember this scene from The Untouchables? |
Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) says he wants to get Capone. Malone (Sean Connery) responds: “What are you prepared to do?” It’s a simple but emotionally powerful scene. Malone goes on to recommend certain extralegal courses of action that I hasten to point out I do not endorse in the current instance, but: We now know, thanks to the heroic trio at ProPublica (Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski) that Clarence Thomas violated the law. Their earlier reporting on Thomas from two weeks ago was stunning enough, about all the trips and gifts Thomas accepted from megadonor Harlan “Hey, they’re just World War II souvenirs!” Crow. But even that jaw-dropping report had to be qualified: Crow’s “apparent” gifts to Thomas, whose failure to disclose them “appears” to violate the law. Now there is little such ambiguity. Crow bought a house Thomas owned in Savannah, Georgia, in 2014 for $133,000. A federal law passed after Watergate requires officials—including Supreme Court justices—to disclose the details of most real estate transactions worth more than $1,000. There is an exception in the law for primary residences, but that doesn’t apply here—Thomas didn’t live there, and neither did his wife. The law says Thomas was required to provide “a brief description, the date, and category of value of any purchase, sale or exchange during the preceding calendar year which exceeds $1,000.” He did not. As responsible journalists and not lawyers, ProPublica’s reporters don’t say outright that it’s a violation of law. But they quote legal experts who do say so. “He needed to report his interest in the sale,” said Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer now at the watchdog group CREW. Interestingly, Thomas filed a disclosure for 2014 that, ProPublica reports, got rather specific: “Thomas’ financial disclosure for that year is detailed, listing everything from a ‘stained glass medallion’ he received from Yale to a life insurance policy. But he failed to report his sale to Crow.” Hmmm. Why would that be? It’s hard to imagine a legitimate excuse. A major donor who’d been giving Clarence and Ginni Thomas lavish gifts for years finally went so far as to purchase a house he owned (Thomas shared ownership with his brother and mother). Thomas obviously made money from the sale. He didn’t disclose it. Clearly, the intent of the law is for the public to know about such matters. Thomas decided the public had a right to know about his stained-glass medallion but not this house. |
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This brings us to the Democrats. Earlier this week, I wrote in response to ProPublica’s first report that the Democrats need to destroy Thomas’s reputation by holding hearings on his dealings, which of course is something they’ve never done. “Have a long hearing that lays bare every instance of his and his wife’s corrupt activities in a high-profile venue that Americans will watch,” I wrote. “Make the case to swing-voting Americans that he is dishonoring the court’s name and reputation; drive his approval ratings into the toilet (in a 2022 YouGov poll, Thomas already had the highest ‘very unfavorable’ rating of the nine justices, at 32 percent); and force the Republican senators to vote to keep this clearly undeserving, mediocre, arrogant, unscrupulous hornswoggler on the court.” Now the case for action is even clearer. But action by whom? There’s only one serious contender: the Senate Judiciary Committee. It’s controlled by the Democrats, and they can do whatever they are prepared to do. But what exactly is that? Last Monday, after the first ProPublica report, committee Chairman Dick Durbin vowed that the committee “will act.” He did not elaborate on that. Later, he urged Chief Justice John Roberts to investigate Thomas. Then I saw on cable news Thursday night (I can’t find anything online Friday morning) that he called on Merrick Garland to do something. Mr. Chairman: Stop tossing the football around. You have a gavel, and you have subpoena power. Subpoena Clarence Thomas. Next week. What? Horrors! Subpoena a Supreme Court justice? Can that even be done? Yes. Congress can subpoena anybody it wants to. In fact, it has been done, at least once. In 1953, the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed Associate Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, who had been Harry Truman’s attorney general. It also subpoenaed James Byrnes, who had been Truman’s secretary of state—and Truman himself! This was all prompted by charges leveled by Herbert Brownell, Dwight Eisenhower’s attorney general, that Truman had knowingly as president appointed a Russian spy to an International Monetary Fund position (this was the economist Harry Dexter White; the general historical verdict is that White did pass some classified information to the Soviet Union but was not a Communist or Marxist dedicated to Soviet triumph in the Philby-Burgess sense). None of them ever appeared before the committee, and sure, HUAC does not represent one of our country’s proudest moments by a long shot. I admit that gives me a moment’s pause. But we are not in the middle of a Red Scare here. There is no witch hunt taking place of prominent right-wingers (well, if you live on normal Earth, there’s not). No careers are being destroyed. All we have here is a man, one man, one very corrupt man, who is supposed to be one of this nation’s nine most preeminent lawgivers, but who clearly thinks he is above the law. And this returns us to Malone. Senator Durbin: What are you prepared to do? |
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The Dawn of Everything—the New York Times bestseller by David Graeber and David Wengrow—now in paperback |
It’s time to change the course of human history, starting with the past. |
“[The Dawn of Everything] took as its immodest goal nothing less than upending everything we think we know about the origins and evolution of human societies.” —The New York Times |
“Iconoclastic and irreverent … an exhilarating read.” —The Guardian (U.K.) |
“A lively, and often very funny, anarchist project that aspires to enlarge our political imagination by revitalizing the possibilities of the distant past.” —The New Yorker |
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Item two: “Midnight Ron” DeSantis strikes It was around 11 o’clock Thursday night when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed his state’s new abortion law, and while I allow for the chance that this was mere coincidence, it’s telling, nevertheless. He could, after all, have held out for a big and flashy signing ceremony in the light of day. That he didn’t signals that he, or someone advising him, understands the downsides here. It’s an appalling law. In general, a six-week ban, with exceptions for rape and incest and the life of the mother, but those exceptions come with conditions (women will have to provide police reports of rape, for example). The state’s current ban is 15 weeks. It is the subject of an ongoing legal challenge before the state Supreme Court, which is conservative. Assuming the state’s high court upholds the current ban, the new, shorter ban will take effect. In other words, it will. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre laid out the stakes: “This ban would prevent four million Florida women of reproductive age from accessing abortion care after six weeks—before many women even know they’re pregnant,” she said in a statement after Thursday’s vote. “This ban would also impact the nearly 15 million women of reproductive age who live in abortion-banning states throughout the South, many of whom have previously relied on travel to Florida as an option to access care.” So it’s going to have profound ripple effects across the South. And here’s hoping it will have profound ripple effects on DeSantis’s putative presidential candidacy. Here’s Politico this morning: |
“We’re going to make him own this, and his agenda, everywhere he goes,” said a national Democratic operative granted anonymity to discuss party strategy. “Goes to Michigan? Abortion ban. Goes to Ohio next week? Abortion ban. And that will take different forms but we’ll hang this incredibly toxic abortion ban and his agenda around his neck with different tactics.” The operative added that this is one of many points on which to attack DeSantis who has taken several stances on social issues that Democrats believe won’t sit well with swing voters. |
I like to hear Democrats talk like that. Too bad it took such a cataclysm as this for them to catch on. |
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Item three: So long, Dan Snyder Along comes news that Dan Snyder is selling the Washington Commanders football team. The most hated owner in American sports will walk away with $6 billion (he bought the team for less than $1 billion in 1999). Also, in all likelihood, the investigations into sexual and fiscal improprieties at the franchise during his tenure will be quietly dropped.
Snyder has been a disgrace for years. Though he finally did change the team’s clearly offensive name and logo, he spent years insisting he would never drop the Redskins moniker (“We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER—you can use caps”). As owner, he had to know the history of the name, a history I laid out in an essay for The New York Review of Books in 2011. It was coined by former owner George Preston Marshall, an open racist and segregationist whose early 1960s Redskins were the last team in the NFL to integrate (they were forced to, interestingly, by the Kennedy administration, whose Interior Department owned the land Marshall had eyed up for a new stadium and agreed to build it only on the condition that the team follow all federal nondiscrimination laws).
Over the years, Snyder’s attempt to put a good face on all this became tragicomic. At one point he announced the founding of something called the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation, which would dole out grants to Native tribes thither and yon. That was 2014. I remember at the time one wag writing on Twitter: I don’t understand. If “Redskins” is inoffensive, why doesn’t he just call it The Washington Redskins Redskins Foundation? In any case, a Sports Illustrated investigation found that grantmaking dwindled from $3.7 million that first year to about one-tenth of that by 2018.
I live in the suburban Washington neighborhood where Snyder grew up. Shortly after we moved in, elderly neighbors asked us to brunch. Chat came around to Snyder somehow. Ah yes, they said; our kids went to high school with him. In fact, when his ownership of the team was announced, they all called their kids and asked, Do you remember a Dan Snyder? Snyder … no, doesn’t ring a bell.
That, to me, about summed him up. History now returns him to the anonymity that was his intended fate.
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Last week’s quiz: London calling … because I vacationed there last week. |
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1. The great architect Christopher Wren is responsible for which London landmark? |
A. St. Paul’s Cathedral B. Westminster Abbey C. The Tower of London D. Buckingham Palace |
Answer: A, St. Paul’s. So glad the Nazis didn’t hit it. Or maybe they grazed it, but no serious harm done. |
2. In October 1834, the painter J.M.W. Turner sat across the Thames and watched which landmark burn down, an event he later committed to canvas? |
A. Kensington Palace B. The Tate Britain C. The National Gallery D. Palace of Westminster (i.e., the Houses of Parliament) |
Answer: D, Houses of Parliament. That was a real highlight last week. We walked into this huge room, and the guy said, “Henry VIII had a banquet here once.” Oh. OK then. |
3. What became perhaps the indelible London image during the Nazi blitz of 1940–41? |
A. Winston Churchill standing in front of No. 10 defiantly shaking his fist at the sky B. Londoners waiting out the bombs and sleeping in Tube stations C. King George VI welcoming De Gaulle to Buckingham Palace D. A young Princess Elizabeth visiting children at Great Ormond Street Hospital |
Answer: B, Londoners in Tube stations. I kept thinking of that while riding last week. They’re pretty narrow, you know. |
4. You can take the 139 or 189 bus or the Jubilee Line to the St. John’s Wood stop to see what famous 1960s landmark? |
A. Mary Quant’s clothing boutique B. The place where Dudley Moore and Peter Cook met C. The place where Eric Idle and John Cleese met D. Abbey Road Studios and the world’s most famous zebra crosswalk |
Answer: D, Abbey Road. Didn’t make it up there this trip, but I did hit 3 Savile Row. |
5. Rank these six countries in terms of how many natives thereof lived in London in 2020, according to the Trust for London, most to least: |
Nigeria, Jamaica, India, Pakistan, Poland, China |
Answer: India, Nigeria, Poland, Pakistan, Jamaica, China. Answers here. India should have been easy. The rest, hard to say. The middle four groups are pretty close to one another numbers-wise, with China trailing. |
6. What is the most visited tourist site in London, according to CheapHotels4UK.com? |
A. The Victoria and Albert Museum B. The British Museum C. Shakespeare’s Globe D. The Tate Modern |
Answer: B, British Museum. Wouldn’t you know it, they were on strike last week. |
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This week’s quiz: _____, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet. On early baseball lore, in honor of the start of the new season, for a game I used to play (and quite well!) but hardly ever watch anymore, although I am encouraged by these rule changes. |
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1. Which of these teams is the oldest in Major League Baseball? (Note: I mean when the club was founded, if perhaps under a name previous to the current one.) |
A. Cincinnati Reds B. Chicago Cubs C. New York Yankees D. Boston Red Sox |
2. What’s the origin of the name Brooklyn Dodgers, i.e., what were they named after? |
A. Coney Island bathers who dodged the ocean waves
B. Gangsters who, according to lore, were able to dodge police officers’ bullets
C. The fact that pedestrians had to dodge the faster electric trolley cars that replaced horse-drawn cars
D. The annual dodgeball competition between Brooklyn and Manhattan firefighters |
3. The famous Cubs trio of Joe, Johnny, and Frank, the greatest double-play combo of the early game, became immortalized by their last names in a 1910 poem by a forlorn Giants fan, which began, “These are the saddest of possible words”: |
A. “Martin to Barton to Fish” B. “Dolenz to Nesmith to Tork” C. “Kristol to Glazer to Bell” D. “Tinker to Evers to Chance” |
4. The four winningest pitchers in MLB history all played in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rank them in order: Grover Cleveland Alexander; Walter Johnson; Cy Young; Christy Mathewson. |
5. Match the old ballpark to its home team. |
Forbes Field Shibe Park Sportsman’s Park Griffith Stadium |
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Philadelphia Phillies St. Louis Cardinals Washington Senators Pittsburgh Pirates |
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6. “Murderer’s Row” was the nickname given to the first six hitters in the New York Yankees’ 1920s lineup. It included Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, most famously. Who of the following was not among the other four? |
A. Tony Lazzeri B. Earle Combs C. Rogers Hornsby D. Bob Meusel |
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I used to read these baseball books when I was a kid. Maybe you did too. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com. —Michael Tomasky, editor |
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