If Clarence Thomas were a Democorat, he'd already be gone

It's now clear, thanks to the investigative reporting of Ian Millhiser on Think Progress (and others), that Clarence Thomas is guilty of multiple serious ethical violations, which would have landed an ordinary judge or Appellate justice out of a job. See this. You'd have to have just arrived here from Tralfamadore not to have noticed the double standard in American politics when it comes to ethics; in Rachel Maddow's epithet: It's OK if you're a Republican. What Thomas is clearly guilty of is far worse than what former Chief Justice Rehnquist, then a political operative for Nixon, drummed up as a case against Johnson appointed Justice and Chief Justice appointee Abe Fortas in 1968.

But will there be any consequence for Thomas? Will feckless congressional Democrats commence an investigation, much less impeachment proceedings? Will Thomas even acknowledge that there is a controversy? Likely none of these. Let's just say it: if a Democrat on the court had done these things, he'd already be gone. What we're likely to see from Thomas instead is more veiled threats, like the speech he gave earlier this year in which he said that an attack on him was an attack on the court. It's not too much of a stretch to read his comments as "mess with me, and I'll mess you up even worse, America."

Sometimes I wonder if the motivation of many right wingers isn't some sort of deep seated desire for vengeance, as hateful and destructive as their actions (and words) are. Certainly there's almost never a hint of any sense of responsibility to the public as a whole, or that the laws and morés of society apply to them.