If Justices were paid by the word, Clarence Thomas would be eligible for those government assistance programs he hates, if it weren’t for his family’s right-wing welfare income, which Thomas’ disclosure forms for 13 years “inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions.”

In the five years since the Justice spoke in oral arguments carried on by colleagues with lawyers, he and Mrs. Thomas have been loquacious in lucrative self-expression that has brought them millions from the likes of the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch.

Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas was paid $700,000 by the Heritage Foundation alone, as Murdoch gave her husband $1 million for his premature memoir.

Now, Thomas, who has a keener sensitivity to injustice aimed at himself than others, is complaining to the Federalist Society in what one scholar calls a “Louis XIV moment” that “any criticism–even criticism that he is harming the court–is an attack on the institution. It is more than an embarrassing conceit; it can be a dangerous delusion for any justice.”

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