The media just attempted to smear Justice Thomas again, but as is often the case, they came off as bluntly racist instead. In an article written about Rep. Jim Clyburn's influence on President Joe Biden's pick to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, reporters Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Marianna Sotomayor wrote (emphasis added):

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), a friend and ally of Clyburn's for over 30 years, said even Clyburn's critics respect his political instincts and his connection with a valuable but often disappointed subset of Democratic voters.

"Nobody that I'm aware of feels that opposing Clyburn's nomination would be the wise thing to do," he said. "If you know that a person has been vetted by Jim Clyburn, you know that person won't go to the court and end up being a Clarence Thomas," referring to the Black justice whose rulings often resemble the thinking of White conservatives.

A new report from the Washington Examiner reveals that more problems are on the horizon for "dark money" Marc Elias whose firm is representing Black Lives Matter in a fraught tax filing:

The national organization for Black Lives Matter appears to have used an unusual accounting maneuver to further delay reporting what became of its $60 million bankroll from 2020, a move one charity watchdog called "the worst transparency issue" she has ever seen.

Recordings obtained from a whistleblower in Delaware County, Pennsylvania show rampant election administration problems in the suburban Philadelphia county:

To date, the videos have exposed a wide array of problems with election integrity, including on-tape admissions that the election laws were not complied with, that 80 percent of provisional ballots lacked a proper chain-of-custody, that there were missing removable drives for some of the voting machines, and that election workers “recreated” new drives to response to the Right to Know request.

When Justice Clarence Thomas was going through the confirmation process, Democrats orchestrated false allegations that Thomas had harassed a former employee, Anita Hill, in an effort to derail his nomination to the Supreme Court. The character assassination was led by none other than then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Joe Biden. The remarkable thing is that Biden did not even believe Hill, but he chose to use her testimony anyways. Mark Paoletta, who worked on Justice Thomas' confirmation, recalled one specific instance where then-Senator Biden pressured Hill to change her testimony to fit the Democrats' attacks on Justice Thomas:

Hill, who had been discussing in detail alleged conversations with Thomas and others that happened many years earlier, told Specter she could not remember any such conversations. According to Specter:

Another poll has shown that Americans would prefer President Joe Biden pick the "most qualified" person to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court as opposed to strictly sticking with his pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Court:

[J]ust 36 percent of Americans say Biden’s pledge was a "good idea," while the rest say it was either “a bad idea” (32 percent) or “neither good nor bad” (32 percent). And just a third of Americans say they have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence that Biden will select "the right kind of person" to replace Breyer on the court (33 percent), or that they themselves expect to support the nominee Biden puts forward (34 percent) — noticeably lower than the 39 percent who said they expected to support "President Trump's Supreme Court nominee" in September 2020, just before he nominated Amy Coney Barrett.

Tensions are ramping up in Eastern Europe. On Thursday, Russia announced that it has begun military exercises which many see as a potential precursor to a Russian invasion of Ukraine:

The military drills, called "Allied Resolve-2022," began in Belarus and will end February 20, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced Thursday in a statement. . .

On Monday, Democrat candidate for Georgia Governor Stacey Abrams nearly broke the internet when pictures of her sans mask in a room full of masked students went viral. Despite her trying to claim that she briefly took her mask off for a single picture, the evidence proves otherwise.

Six hours after @OutKick posted photos showing that Stacey Abrams spent the entire day maskless with masked-up students, she went on CNN to say she took off her mask only to read to the kids.

She's lying:https://t.co/0m461rF25S

— Bobby Burack (@burackbobby_) February 9, 2022

The past week has been a busy one for redistricting. Unsurprisingly, most of the scrutiny has been on Republican-drawn districts. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order reinstating Alabama's congressional map that a lower court struck down.

Alabama's new congressional map is a status quo map based on the previous one precleared by Eric Holder’s Justice Department 10 years ago. The Supreme Court rightly stayed the lower court's egregious misapplication of Section 2. https://t.co/JopP8piI0c

— National Republican Redistricting PAC (@GOPRedistrict) February 7, 2022

Ever since Joe Biden became President, the Left has pressured Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to retire through a campaign spearheaded by "dark money" groups like Demand Justice:

After President Biden’s election, Demand Justice started bullying Justice Stephen Breyer into retirement. It ran aggressive ads and drove a mobile billboard around the Supreme Court that said: “Breyer, retire. It’s time for a Black woman Supreme Court justice. There’s no time to waste.” 

If you only read Democracy Docket or follow Marc Elias on Twitter, you might think that the left has never lost an election case ever. However, liberal election law professor Rick Hasen pointed out on Friday that this is simply not true:

The pre-election story is not documented quite as well, but it should be, as the outcomes were instructive. On the left, party committees, Super PACs, advocacy organizations and, to a lesser extent, civil rights groups brought dozens of suits challenging state election laws, regulations, or practices – particularly, though not exclusively, as they related to voting during the pandemic.  Overall, the litigation was unsuccessful, with losses outnumbering even partial wins by a ratio of more than 7:1.