The left's pressure campaign against the Supreme Court is taking an interesting direction, with criticism now surfacing in the media against liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor.
According to the Associated Press, Sotomayor's staff pressured colleges and libraries where she had speaking engagements to buy her books.
The proceeds from Sotomayor's book sales have netted the justice "at least $3.7 million" since she joined the court in 2009, the report said.
For example, an aide wrote to a library in Portland, Oregon that the number of books purchased for a meet-and-greet was "not enough."
“For an event with 1,000 people and they have to have a copy of Just Ask to get into the line, 250 books is definitely not enough,” the aide wrote.
The Supreme Court is not bound by a formal code of ethics, and this has never appeared to be a problem - until Democrats started making it one, right around the time conservatives gained a majority.
With the White House and Senate in Democratic hands, the high court is, for progressives, a frustrating redoubt of conservative power.
Conservatives dismiss talk of "reform" as a stalking horse for a power grab - and indeed, Democrats and their media allies have concentrated their criticism of the court on its conservatives.
The pressure campaign began with attacks on Clarence Thomas over his "luxury trips" with a friend and Republican donor. Samuel Alito was later the subject of similar scrutiny.
Is all of this criticism of Sotomayor just another attempt to further the left's pressure campaign? Some Republicans think so.
“I think it’s a co-equal branch of government we don’t have jurisdiction over. Secondly, I think this is part of a false narrative that the court is out of control and needs Congress to save it,” Texas senator John Cornyn (R) said.
The AP's report indeed reads like thinly veiled Democrat press release, noting that Sotomayor "is free to do what other government officials cannot because the Supreme Court does not have a formal code of conduct, leaving the nine justices to largely write and enforce their own rules."
Democrats pounced on the report, with Senator Dick Durbin (Il.) saying it demonstrates the need for the court to follow "the basic standards of every other branch of government."
But the Supreme Court is a co-equal branch of government, and not the subordinate of Congress, as some Democrats seem to imagine. What's the real end game, here?
