Has a Lox on the Ethics Issue

While Clarence Thomas was taking millions of dollars of bribes, Elena Kagan refused a gift of lox and bagels from former high school classmates, because she felt that the ethical considerations were too involved.

The contrast is stunning:

A group of women who went to high school with Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan wanted to send her bagels and lox from Russ & Daughters, the legendary deli on the Lower East Side. But they scrapped the plan after Kagan expressed concerns about the court’s ethics rules for reporting gifts.

The idea for the gift originated in a Facebook group for women who attended Hunter College High School in Manhattan in the 1970s. (Kagan was in the class of ’77.)

Full disclosure, my mom was class of 1954.

“I somewhat tongue-in-cheek said, ‘I feel so badly for her, it must be so lonely and difficult, we should send her a care package,’” recalled Ann Starer, Hunter class of ’75.

The idea of sending the appetizing spread was proposed in February 2021 and abandoned soon after. But Kagan’s ethical concerns about accepting bagels and lox from her high school pals are newly relevant in contrast with the scandal surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas, who failed to disclose luxury vacations and other gifts from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow.

The writer Sarah Schulman, who also went to Hunter, posted on Facebook on May 6 that the care package for Kagan was envisioned “as a sign of support for the nightmare of having to go to work with Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch every day. She turned it down because her ethical standard is to not accept any gifts. I mean, she said no to lox and bagels!”

Compare that to Thomas, Schulman added, with “his real estate, fancy travel and cold hard cash. Lox!”

Clarence Thomas is a lying corrupt son of a bitch.

So is Gorsuch, and Alito, and Kavanaugh, and Antonin Scalia was on a Thomas-style junket when he died from choking on his own bile in 2016.

Next time that I am in New York City, I need to check out Russ & Daughters.