We have learned now that the right wing’s mole on the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas, has been on the take for many years. No, he did not take monetary bribes, but favors, lavish vacations, paid for by right-wing bag man Harlan Crow. 

I cannot imagine a Supreme Court justice being so stupid as to do this, unless he feels that the public is a fool or that his accepting such pay-offs in kind is none of the public’s business. Complaints have been renewed about the lack of a formal ethics code for the Supreme Court, and one is surely needed. But even without a code, he ought to know that a Justice should not take bribes, should not take anything that could be construed as a bribe.

I guess we are supposed to assume that Justice Thomas’ work on the Court is uninfluenced by the generosity of Mr. Crow, just as we are expected to believe that he does not talk politics with his wife. But either we are to credit Thomas with a superhuman ability to compartmentalize, or we ought to be very suspicious of judge who hobnobs with and receives extravagant gifts from a known agent of the right wing and with others of the super-rich. There’s an old saying that probably could be applied to Justice Thomas: “If you lie down with a dog, you get up with a flea.”