If you are of a certain age, you may remember the name Abe Fortas. He was a lawyer and eventually a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) who became rather well known for the manner in which he left the nation’s highest court, but he was a remarkable man.

Fortas first came to national notice in 1963 when he, as a lawyer before serving on the SCOTUS, represented a gentleman named Clarence Gideon. A small-time crook, Gideon had been arrested for breaking into a pool hall in Florida. Destitute, Gideon asked for a lawyer but because he couldn’t pay for one himself, he didn’t get one. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Fortas argued passionately justice should not exist only for those wealthy enough to afford it. The legendary Justice William O. Douglas would later write Fortas’s argument before the Court was “probably the best single legal argument” he heard during his 36 years on the highest bench.

Fortas, a Democrat, found himself in the national spotlight, and in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Fortas to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. During the turbulent 1960s Fortas’s fingerprints were on a number of important SCOTUS rulings, especially the 1968 case of Epperson v. Arkansas, where the Court ultimately ruled biblically-based creation theory was not to be included in a science curriculum in public schools.

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In 1968, then-Chief Justice Earl Warren retired, and President Johnson nominated Fortas to be elevated to chief. It was during the hearings regarding this nomination Fortas first ran into trouble. It turns out Fortas had taken a payment of $15,000 for a series of lectures he presented at American University’s law school. The problem was the money didn’t come from the school itself, but rather from a series of private donors, some who represented companies with issues being litigated in the U.S. court system. A bunch of antisemitism also kicked in, and that, combined with the scent of scandal, doomed his elevation.

Not long after, additional ethics concerns were raised, as Fortas had accepted $20,000 from a private family for “legal advice.” Republicans in the Senate and in the Nixon White House were outraged and demanded Fortas resign, or he would face impeachment. He would resign his SCOTUS seat on May 14, 1969, and President Richard Nixon called his attorney general to congratulate him on helping to force the resignation for perceived ethics violations.

Which, of course, brings me to Clarence Thomas.

In his roughly 32 years on the SCOTUS, Thomas has made a name for himself in several ways. He has been called “silent Clarence” due to his refusal to speak out during the Court’s oral arguments. Most justices ask the arguing lawyers questions, pose hypothetical questions for the lawyers to ponder, and otherwise interact. Thomas, for decades, remained silent. He had a run of more than 10 full years without asking a single question, usually sitting and staring at the ceiling as arguments are made. It made national news when, in 2013, Thomas cracked a 9-word nearly inaudible joke. Lately, though, he’s been more involved in oral arguments.

Thomas was also known for his love, as he put it, for RV parks and Walmart parking lots, as he and his wife spent portions of the Court’s vacation periods driving his rig around various campgrounds and seeing real America, so to speak.

Except when he is not…

Turns out, for the past 20 years or so, Thomas and his wife Ginny have accepted free luxury trips nearly every year, to include flying on billionaire and GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow’s private jet and his 162-foot yacht, as well as a number of lavish resorts and clubs around the world.

Oh, and Thomas, until recently outed by ProPublica, hadn’t bothered to report any of that on his annual financial disclosure forms. Had Thomas had to pay for these amazing vacations himself, he likely would have faced a bill of more than $500,000. That’s quite a “donation” to Thomas from his old rich friend.

Had Thomas been, say, a member of Congress, he would have been forbidden from accepting any gift valued at more than $50, and if he wanted to take a trip such as the one noted above, he would have been required to get permission from the Ethics Committee prior to embarking. Again, Thomas, for years, said nothing and reported nothing on his required annual reports. But the SCOTUS has no ethics committee, nor any actual binding ethics regulations. Each justice is supposed to decide what is ethical and what is not on their own.

Right…

Thomas has also developed tunnel vision when it comes to his activist wife. Virginia Thomas was a leading figure in the situation surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 rally aimed at overturning the 2020 elections results (though she was not one that urged violence or went to the Capitol).

Remarkably, her involvement was not enough for Thomas to recuse himself from any Jan. 6 cases, or any other cases related to the issues raised above. Oh, and Thomas also didn’t bother to report, on his annual financial statement, that Mrs. Thomas was paid $686,589 from 2003 to 2007 by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

As you might expect, there is outrage, albeit selective, in the Washington establishment. Democrats find hints of corruption and at least really bad decision making and poor filling out of financial forms, while the GOPers smile and say Thomas did nothing wrong. Yet, of course, for Fortas a generation earlier, the GOP was out for blood due to his “corruption.”

Abe Fortas was rejected as chief justice and was ultimately forced to resign due to financial issues dwarfed by the actions of Justice Thomas. Yet not a single GOP senator has suggested Thomas did anything wrong, let alone that he should resign. Today’s GOP is concerned only with staying in power, limiting individual rights and making the top 1% even wealthier. And, thanks to the ability to utterly ignore their own hypocrisy, they will continue to find Thomas firmly sitting in his comfy chair at the Supreme Court.

I’d say they should be ashamed, but they have long since forgotten how to feel that emotion.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.