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We don’t expect Sen. Tom Cotton to act in good faith, but the Arkansas Republican’s complaint about the news media ignoring the latest Supreme Court ethics story — involving Justice Sonia Sotomayor — is almost too dumb to believe.
In case you missed it — but if you consume media, you probably didn’t — The Associated Press (a media organization) reported this week on Sotomayor’s staff pushing colleges and libraries hosting book events to buy the justice’s books.
It’s the latest in a series of stories, varying much in severity, about justices’ apparent ethical lapses. Leading the pack, of course, is Justice Clarence Thomas, whose years of previously unreported gifts from GOP billionaire Harlan Crow are now the stuff of legend. Thomas was joined recently by Justice Samuel Alito, a fellow Republican appointee who also seems to enjoy the odd unreported private jet ride from a conservative billionaire.
Somehow, the latest entry led Cotton, a Harvard Law School graduate, to make the following statement on purpose: “The media ignores Justice Sotomayor receiving gifts while attacking Justices Thomas and Alito. Once again, there is a different standard for conservatives.”
Of course, the reason we know about the Sotomayor story is the AP reported it. (And if you read the story, it’s not really about her “receiving gifts,” a la Thomas and Alito.)
And if you listen to the audio Cotton included in his tweet, from an appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s show, you’ll hear the Senate Judiciary Committee member say he bets “it’s not the lead story on CNN or MSNBC.” Alas, readers who checked out our homepage Thursday morning likely saw this thoughtful piece on the subject, from my colleague Zeeshan Aleem, literally in the lead position.
Indeed, Aleem wrote about the issue not only in depth, but also from a critical perspective:
Sotomayor’s recently revealed conduct isn’t even close to the worst of the things we’ve learned about how justices have inappropriately used their power. But an error is an error. That it’s a liberal Supreme Court justice doesn’t make me more inclined to dismiss it — it makes me less so: I expect more from people whose ideology should make them more vigilant against misuse of power.
He concluded that the solution “is not to point the finger elsewhere, but to call with even more urgency for Supreme Court ethics reform through Congress.”
Likewise, my colleague Steve Benen was characteristically all over the Sotomayor news when it emerged Tuesday. While noting the story “seems relatively benign, all things considered,” Benen observed that “for those eager to overhaul the Supreme Court’s approach to ethics — and those who lament the lack of a judicial code of conduct that applies to sitting justices — the Sotomayor angle could create a new opportunity for bipartisan policymaking.”
Of course, Cotton isn’t joining Democratic calls for ethics reform but instead is railing that there is a double standard. If he views the Sotomayor and Thomas/Alito stories the same, then he’s correct about that, just not in the way he means.
But if the senator really wants to own the libs and finally take down the notorious Sotomayor children’s book syndicate once and for all, he should push for reform.