Sen. Kennedy: Democrats’ Supreme Court ethics bill is as ‘dead as fried chicken’
Emily Jacobs
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Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) says the Supreme Court ethics bill Democrats will pass through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday is “dead as fried chicken” if and when it reaches the floor for a vote.
Kennedy made the quip during a Wednesday afternoon presser on Senate Judiciary Democrats’ planned vote on Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-RI) Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, which is expected to pass through the committee on a party-line vote on Thursday morning.
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“This bill is dead as fried chicken,” the Louisiana senator said. “It’s going to get out of committee. It doesn’t have 60 votes in the Senate. And it sure can’t pass the House. So why do it? Why beat the living crap out of the United States Supreme Court? I just don’t get it. I understand politics, but I just don’t get it.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who also took part in the press conference, joked that “anyone who writes what Kennedy says, he’ll buy you fried chicken.”
“It’ll be dead,” Kennedy remarked in response.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) began moving forward with a vote on Whitehouse’s bill in the wake of a series of reports in recent months on Supreme Court justices allegedly accepting luxury gifts and making money through their offices. He has also held Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court ethics.
ProPublica has reported that Justice Clarence Thomas accepted luxury trips and gifts from billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow, which he did not include in financial disclosure forms. The outlet also published an article detailing a luxury fishing trip Justice Samuel Alito accepted in 2008. News of Thomas’s undisclosed gifts largely sparked outrage among Democrats, with few Republican defections.
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Most Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee had withheld judgment until Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s team was accused in an Associated Press report last week of pressuring public institutions that have hosted her to buy hundreds, sometimes thousands, of her books.
Judiciary Republicans told the Washington Examiner in response to the Sotomayor news that they would support Chief Justice John Roberts initiating an ethics code for the court, but none were behind Congress establishing those rules.