TOM THE DANCING BUG: Judge Scalia Rescues His Faithful Sidekick From a Nefarious Attack!

• [Dave Faris]

  You can tell this is a comic strip because Clarence Thomas actually speaks.

• [Anonymous]

  How funny. Hey, are you going to mention in your next cartoon how Scalia wrote the opinion defending the First Amendment in BROWN v. ENTERTAINMENT MERCHANTS ASSOC. while Breyer dissented?

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-moshman/children-violence-and-the_b_886606.html

• [Anonymous]

  Commies! Socialists! Liberals! OBAMA!

  Whew! Now I feel better. Time to catch Fox News and wait for death.

• [Anonymous]

  I’m a little concerned. We haven’t heard from Percy in a while. Did he get trapped somewhen in time?

• [Baron Karza]

  Thomas speaks:
  “Hmm, I wonder who put this pubic hair on my can of Coke…”
  Right, THAT Clarence Thomas!

• [glaborous immolate]

  well, there needs to be some level of trust. Impeachment is always appropriate if someone does something unethical

  Also

  “could make removals a common occurrence, leaving the court without its full complement of nine justices in the case, and might encourage gaming the system by litigants who wanted to get rid of an unsympathetic justice.”

  seems like a valid balancing concern.

  • [Sagodjur]

    I agree, there does need to be a level of trust. But it needs to be “trust, but verify” not just blind trust.

    A law firm employing a relative of a justice bringing cases to the Supreme Court seems like it’s ripe for concern about a litigant gaming the system.

    They seem far less inclined to dump a potentially conflicted justice from a case than they are to pretend that there is no conflict of interest because of simple little loopholes.

    • [Anonymous]

      “A law firm employing a relative of a justice bringing cases to the Supreme Court seems like it’s ripe for concern about a litigant gaming the system.”

      Back when anyone cared about “conflict of interest.” How quaint.

• [glaborous immolate]

  Scalia seems way more interested in legal arguments than convoluted schemes to make his kid some extra bucks.

• [Anonymous]

  I just like that one of the tags for this comic is “eagle egg-stealing.” Is that a recurring theme in TTDB comics?

• [GreenJello]

  I think he’s trying to say something, but what?

  • [hooch66]

    Most likely that we’re all screwed. We already knew that, though.

  • [Neon Tooth]

    Perhaps that a good portion of the hacks that decided the supreme law of the land are completely corrupted (owned) by wealthy partisan interests. He’s correct.

• [irksome]

  This is an insult to my intelligence. Justice Scalia would NEVER ride an early ’80s Suzuki GS 1000.

  • [mordicai]

    & Clarence Thomas, having opinions? OUT LOUD? & asking questions? Silent from the bench for the last five years? No way.

• [Jorpho]

  Did anyone else here think of Mr. Bolling after reading about Scalia’s prominent comments on that court ruling about violent video games?

• [JamesMason]

  The eagle’s wing in the second panel is a little off – therefore the implications it suggests are invalid.

  Also, it is the eagle’s “RIGHT WING” – that can hardly be a coincidence.

  Lastly, “You liberals!”

• [glaborous immolate]

  Dancing Bug Thomas says

  “I ruled in favor of my friends groups”

  but the NYT says

  “Mr. Crow has not personally been a party to Supreme Court litigation, but his companies have been involved in federal court cases, including four that went to the appellate level. ”

  so….?

  Citation needed.

• [Anonymous]

  @irksome

  You’re thinking more along the lines of a ’70s Benelli?

• [glaborous immolate]

  also this:

  “Eugene Scalia is a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a law firm based in Los Angeles. Partners share in the income from all the firm’s cases, but when Scalia became a partner in 2003, the firm sent a letter to the court saying that he would not receive any earnings from any cases that reached the Supreme Court.

  That was in response to a letter signed in 1993 by seven justices, including Scalia, who had children, spouses or other close relatives who were practicing law or studying to become lawyers. The letter addressed a law that requires federal judges to recuse themselves if a close relative is “acting as a lawyer in the proceeding” or has “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome.”

  The justices said they would interpret the law literally, to require removal only when a close relative is currently involved in the case or was the lead attorney at another stage of the proceedings. Reading the law more broadly to cover all members of a law firm, they said, could make removals a common occurrence, leaving the court without its full complement of nine justices in the case, and might encourage gaming the system by litigants who wanted to get rid of an unsympathetic justice.

  On the other hand, the justices said law firm partners stand to benefit financially when the firm appears before the Supreme Court. So they promised to bow out of any case argued by a firm in which one of the justices’ close relatives was a partner, unless the firm barred the relative from receiving any income from the case — the very arrangement that the Gibson Dunn firm announced for Scalia’s son a decade later.”

  • [Sagodjur]

    So the law firm can still get a favorable ruling from the justice whose relative works for it, as long as the relative doesn’t get funds directly from that case. So the relative can just get a nice fat bonus check at the end of the year for “good performance” in the same amount they would have gotten from the case and it’s all okay. It’s only unethical to receive funds that are said to come from that specific case. Got it.

    • [Kieran O’Neill]

      Or, even if there’s no direct financial incentive, there should still be a broader incentive for the supreme court justice to rule in favour of his/her relative’s firm, in that the victory would improve the firm’s overall reputation and hence business.

      But what astonishes me is that, in a country of 308 million people, the legal profession is so closed that the supreme court justices are seriously worried about this being a common problem.

• [Anonymous]

  glaborous immolate@14:

  What makes you think those things are mutually exclusive?

  Also removals from the court being more commonplace would be a good thing.

  In general, not letting lawyers run our country would be a good thing.

• [Neon Tooth]

  We should just trust these two. Certainly being paid by The Federalist Society to attend weekend Palm Springs retreats with The Koch Brothers wouldn’t have any influence on how they decide things like Citizen’s United……..

  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/us/politics/15thomas.html