Support among the few Republican senators who might cross the aisle and vote for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is shrinking, The Hill reports. President Biden’s nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer needs only the Senate’s 50 Democrats, but as Politico reported yesterday, Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Krysten Sinema, of Arizona, are among nine perceived swing-votes.
This Just In
Friday morning, Manchin has announced he will vote to confirm Brown Jackson to SCOTUS.
Timing: With Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) having constantly grilled Brown Jackson over her child pornography case sentencing – a line of attack some pundits are connecting to QAnon conspiracy theories that conflate child sexual abuse with liberal Democrats -- and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) complaining that the nominee is not J. Michelle Childs, a federal judge in his home state, Republicans may be looking at a way to at least stretch out the vote on Brown Jackson beyond the three-week goal set by the White House.
Meanwhile, in the Thomas Household
Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, exchanged text messages with former President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to “pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 elections,” according to The Washington Post and CBS News. The two news organizations obtained 29 text messages exchanged between “Ginni” Thomas and Meadows beginning November 10, 2020 – a week after the election and three days after Joe Biden was declared the winner – from among 2,320 texts obtained by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger III, confirmed the texts’ existence, but said “nothing about the texts messages presents any legal issue.”
Such As?
Meadows texted Thomas on November 24; “This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs.”
Note: Conservative religious evangelicals, including many who adhere to QAnon conspiracy theories, comprise Donald J. Trump’s most loyal base.
Meanwhile, in English 101
Let’s put aside the fact that Virginia “Ginni” Thomas is married to Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. Ms. Thomas is an attorney in her own right. She received her undergraduate and law degrees from Creighton University, a private Jesuit college in Omaha. The Jesuits, among other things, are known to be a highly intellectual order in the Catholic Church.
Which brings us to wonder how the faculty at Creighton feel about the grammatical performance that has been made public by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in reporting related to Ms. Thomas’ series of text exchanges with Meadows in her efforts to have the 2020 presidential election overturned on behalf of Donald Trump (which could lead to a bit of wondering about how Jesuits feel about the moral leadership of that man, but that’s a question for another time).
Excerpts of the texts include:
· “I hope this is true; never heard anything like this before, or even a hint of it. Possible???”
· “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!! The Left tastes their power!!!”
· “Those who attacked the Capitol are not representative of our great teams of patriots for DJT!!”
· “Tearing up and praying for you guys!!!!”
While Ms. Thomas says that she and her husband never discuss their work, one of the things that they evidently don’t talk about is the use of punctuation marks.
This seems to be the stuff of a teenager with a crush on someone rather than communication between two adults about something of immense importance.
“Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”
Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Thomas spend their time talking about bad movie remakes.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Charles Dervarics