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A recently published New York Times expose details the improper ties between Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and influential rightwing funder and activist Harlan Crow.1

Crow is a major contributor to conservative causes and a stalwart supporter of Clarence Thomas. In past years he gave Thomas' wife, Ginni Thomas, $500,000 to exploit the Citizens United decision and start a shadowy, Tea Party-related group called Liberty Central.2 He gave Thomas a Bible (estimated value $15,000) that once belonged to Frederick Douglass, and reportedly provided the Supreme Court Justice with access to his yacht and private jet.

As if that wasn't enough, the New York Times has revealed that Thomas solicited a multi-million dollar donation from Crow to benefit one of his own pet projects near his birth place in a remote coastal community outside Savannah, Georgia.

Shockingly, the Supreme Court is not legally bound by the code of conduct for federal judges, though Justices Breyer and Anthony M. Kennedy have testified to Congress that members of the Supreme Court voluntarily follow the code which explicitly prohibits justices from directly soliciting charitable donations.

Crow is far from a disinterested philanthropist. He has donated nearly $5 million to Republican campaigns and rightwing groups, including a six digit donation to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth which so effectively attacked Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election. He's on the board of the ultra conservative American Enterprise Institute which brought a case to the Supreme Court challenging federal voting rights laws, a case that found only one sympathetic vote on the court -- that of Clarence Thomas.

Clarence Thomas participated in a secret political fundraising event put on by the Koch brothers to fund Tea Party infrastructure groups.3

And for years, Thomas disregarded rules requiring him to report his wife's income on financial disclosure forms. His household received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the conservative Heritage Foundation during a period when he was voting on landmark cases in which the rightwing think tank had a clear ideological stake.More at http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/resign_clarence_thomas/]
That all this happens and nobody does anything about it clearly shows that the Supreme Court is no longer what it once was, and doesn't deserve our respect. Hell, they can even get away with breaking the law, and nothing happens!

Scalia is just the most recent example, nothing more. The same problem applies to him as to Thomas, in a different way.

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As a Supreme Court justice, Scalia isn’t legally bound by the rules of judicial conduct that apply to all other federal judges. They require judges to avoid the appearance of impropriety, defined as “when reasonable minds, with knowledge of all the relevant circumstances disclosed by a reasonable inquiry, would conclude that the judge’s … impartiality … is impaired.” It’s a legalistic way of saying that if a judge repeatedly spouts off in public forums about his or her views on an issue before the court, he or she cannot be relied on to be impartial when confronted with a case involving that issue.More at http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/12/justice-antonin-scali
a-in-hot-water-again-over-homosexual-comments.html

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Those rules should encompass both Scalia's disgusting prejudice AND Thomas' highly-partisan and quite questionable activities. They don't, because Supremes aren't bound by the same rules as other federal judges. Why, I don't know, but it's a very egregious omission, in my opinion. If they WERE bound by them, both Thomas and Scalia would be off the bench. Instead,

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(t)he fact that he can’t even pretend to maintain an open mind on the issue of gay rights doesn’t matter, and we’re left with nothing more than a plea to Scalia that he recognize he’s no longer capable of behaving judiciously on this topic. (If you think that plea has any chance of success I have a duck blind I’d like to sell you.)Same

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The author opines that

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Scalia’s real problem isn’t that he’s biased ....it’s that he’s increasingly out of touch with the basic moral sentiments of the society over which he passes his increasingly cranky moral judgments. It’s obvious from polls (not to mention voting trends) that in another generation or so laws against same-sex marriage will be considered, by the vast majority of Americans, to be as bizarre and unjust as laws against, say, interracial marriage are considered today.Same

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I'm afraid in MY opinion both Thomas' and Scalia's REAL problems are that they feel no necessity to abide by decency and act in ways that deserve the respect their office is supposed to personify. They don't deserve our respect, and they should be held accountable.

It worries me that the Supremes are taking up the DOM and Prop 8 issues. There was quite a bit of surprise expressed by pundits when they decided to, and given the attitude of the right-wing justices, it makes me wonder.

For one thing, from the article you linked,

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Scalia excused himself in a high-profile 2004 case over whether public school children should be forced to hear the Pledge of Allegiance being recited in the classroom. He had made comments on the topic at a Virginia rally months before the arguments.

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Yet there's no way on EARTH that Scalia will recuse himself from this issue. Think about it; he recused himself from an issue about the Pledge of Allegiance, but won't recuse himself from this issue despite FAR more egregious comments regarding gays.

Tit for tat got us where we are today. If we want to be grownups, we need to resist the ugliness. If we each did, this would be a better reflection on Firefly and a more welcome place. I will try.