I had a different reaction than Josh Blackman did to the comment of the Supreme Court's Public Information Officer Patricia McCabe about Beyoncé—it struck me as likely just McCabe's own well-meaning-but-odd comment, rather than evidence of a nefarious quid pro quo between Beyoncé and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson—but I wanted to focus instead on a comment Josh makes that strikes me as particularly unlikely to be true:
For all the outrage about Justice Thomas, no one doubts that he and Harlan Crow are genuine friends. They met nearly three decades ago, and have forged a close bond. Whatever generosity that Crow shares with Thomas is based on a kinship and connection that has been developed for years.
I have no particular reason to doubt that Justice Thomas and Harlan Crow are very close friends. With that said, it seems wrong to say that no one doubts that. A lot of people do. And to my mind it raises an interesting question: Do Supreme Court Justices have real friends? Or maybe, more specifically, if you're a Justice, how do you know who is a real friend, and how do you know who has decided to "befriend" you for their own personal or political reasons?
