“Close Family Friend” buys influence with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Let’s see. A billionaire flies Clarence and his bride all over the world for the last 25 years, including one trip that would have cost you or me $500,000 and Thomas thinks we are so dumb that we buy the family friend angle. The billionaire and his companies also have had matters before the Supreme Court that Thomas ruled on and, although Clarence and wife have enjoyed the perks for over a quarter of a century, and there were trips almost every year courtesy of the billionaire, none were reported on Thomas’s ethics reports.

All of my first paragraph is true. No wonder our highest court is now held in such low regard by most of us who have to live under its rulings.

Thomas should resign immediately. He won’t.

The Congress should move to impeach him. It won’t.

The public is disgusted but there is nothing we can do about such obvious conflict of interest on the justice’s part.

And finally, John Marshall, the Supremes first chief justice back in the early 1800s, must be doing backflips in his grave over this fellow. Thomas was never qualified to serve but back in 1990 he prevailed on a 52-48 vote in the Senate to confirm.

A vote here, a vote there, and our lives are often changed by the narrowest of margins and this Clarence scandal is but one glaring and awful example.