#shorts Senator Kennedy said, “I think all this heated rhetoric about ethics, about Clarence Thomas being an Uncle Tom, I mean, come on, I think it just destroys the institution. And again, this bill isn’t going to pass, and I think we all know that, and I still believe my Democratic colleagues, if they had the votes, wouldn’t bring it, just like if we got down to it, they wouldn’t get rid of the filibuster, they wouldn’t get rid of the blue slip; we’d given away enough power. I get why they have to advocate for it, but when it came down to the lick log, they wouldn’t do it. But all this rhetoric has consequences; that’s my only point.”
On 7/20/2023, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted, 11-10 along party lines, to approve Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-R.I.) bill that would overhaul ethics and transparency requirements for the Supreme Court, a move Republicans regard as an erosion of separation of powers and an attack on the conservative court. Whitehouse, one of Congress’ leading critics of the court, said Congress must act because the justices have failed to implement any meaningful reforms on their own. “You don’t have to be Oliver Wendell Scalia to figure out that this legislation is meant to be a court-killing machine,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said. “This thing’s dead as fried chicken on the Senate floor and it’s dead as fried chicken in the House.”
Republicans said the entire Democratic effort was an act of retaliation aimed at the high court’s 6-3 conservative supermajority and its decisions last year. Republicans repeatedly referenced Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s impassioned statement on the steps of the Supreme Court in March 2020 warning Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh that they “have released the whirlwind.” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights, explained the danger that the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act of 2023 poses to the U.S. Supreme Court and the constitutionally-mandated balance of powers.
other clips of this published longer video is here: https://youtu.be/ipAG4grA7hE
Kennedy: heated rhetoric about ethics? Uncle Tom? wouldn’t get rid of filibuster