Sheldon Whitehouse's constitutional foolishness keeps shining through

On this morning's Meet the Press, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse proved yet again that he prefers partisanship over constitutional intelligence. Whitehouse said "When Justice Thomas failed to recuse himself from the January 6th investigation that turned up his wife's communications, he made the case that that was okay because he had no idea that she was involved in insurrection activities. That is a question of fact. That's something that could have, and should have, been determined by a neutral examination, and then we'd all know. And so the problem with the Supreme Court is that they're in a fact-free zone as well as an ethics-free zone."

Apparently, Whitehouse is operating in a Constitution-free zone. The thought of applying the principles of Separation of Powers appears to be foreign to Sen. Whitehouse. The other thing that's obvious is that Sen. Whitehouse is plenty ignorant of history, too. Here’s proof that Sen. Whitehouse is ignorant of history, too:

I'll be the first one to concede, if there's a case in the judicial branch of government, we in the Congress have nothing to say about it. But in terms of administering how the internal ethics of the judicial branch are done – heck, the judicial conference which does that is a creation of Congress.

The problem with Sen. Whitehouse's thinking is that the Supreme Court wasn't created by Congress. The Supreme Court was created by the Constitution. That means that the Constitution reigns supreme. That which was created by Congress is inferior in authority. That's how the hierarchy works. Then there's this:

When Justice Thomas failed to recuse himself from the January 6th investigation that turned up his wife's communications, he made the case that that was okay because he had no idea that she was involved in insurrection activities. That is a question of fact. That's something that could have, and should have, been determined by a neutral examination, and then we'd all know. And so the problem with the Supreme Court is that they're in a fact-free zone as well as an ethics-free zone.

That's a political argument to a judicial situation. If Sen. Whitehouse won't apply constitutional principles to this situation, then he isn't qualified to be on the Senate Judiciary Committee. It isn't that the Supreme Court is illegitimate. It's that certain members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees aren't legitimate.

I tried watching Sen. Klobuchar question Justice Amy Coney Barrett but I only made it 3 minutes into the questioning:

I could've picked any Democrat questioning a judicial nominee and gotten the same questions. The point is that in 3+ minutes of monologue, Sen. Klobuchar a) talked about COVID, b) talked about being queen, c) complained that not enough of her priorities were getting done, etc. This is a confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court. This confirmation hearing was about filling the Ruth Bader Ginsburg seat yet Sen. Klobuchar didn't ask a question about judicial philosophy or underlying principles about Supreme Court rulings. Instead, in all of her time of meandering questioning, Sen. Klobuchar spoke to the ramifications of rulings rather than speaking to the constitutional principles of a ruling. A justice's job isn't to contemplate the political ramifications of a ruling. Their job is to determine whether a law is constitutional or whether an agency's regulations were authorized by the bill creating the agency or subsequent legislation pertaining to that law.

In short, the senators' responsibility is to worry about political or real-life ramifications. That isn't the justice's responsibility. Similarly, it isn't a justice's responsibility to comply with congressional edicts. If the Senate wants to write and pass a bill on Supreme Court justice ethics, they can waste their time with something like that. It's a meaningless gesture but it's their right.

Rather than worrying if the Supreme Court is legitimate, it's time for voters to question whether their senators are qualified.