A penthouse parking spot with view of ocean

IT HAS BEEN A busy week in the higher levels of public life that, among other things, has added broccoli and automobile elevators to the modern narrative of witless political and judicial behavior.

Let's begin with the news from McMitt Romney's camp that the candidate has decided to wait until after the campaign to go forward with his four- story auto elevator that will be added to his

California mansion.

It is one of the few wise decisions to arrive from the Romney people. How do you look into the eyes of the 99 percenters and tell them in your own modest estimation that the car lift won't cost that much? Besides, it is merely part of a $12 million expansion of the seaside hearth that may very well show up on the Wealth Channel on AT&T TV.

Not even the luxurious Hearst mansion up the way offered that kind of parking space. Romney defends his investment as a way of solving a need to find a place for four cars.

Vanity Fair suggested he could easily ease the expense by getting rid of a few cars. In my case, there are days when I wonder if can I ease my 19-year-old station wagon from the garage to the driveway. I know. Envy is a terrible thing.

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OK, surely you have heard about the broccoli thing. That was how Justice

Scalia during the health care reform hearings went about contending that if you can order people to buy health insurance, you can also mandate them to buy broccoli. (Even I would oppose that!) But what else can you expect from the right-wing political majority on the court that has some other weird stories in its resume. Justice Thomas, we are told, was struck dumb when he was appointed to the court and hasn't uttered a word from the bench in several years. Thomas, who once went to a seminary to prepare for a life as a Catholic priest, only needs to lean slightly forward for a signal from Scalia on how to vote. Then there is Justice Alito, who has shown up at several right-wing political fund raisers as one of their stars. When confronted by reporters, he shushed them by saying he didn't think his presence at these fund-raisers was "important". We are left to imagine how it would have gone for a Democratic justice who took a table at an Obama fund-raiser this year.

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Finally, the pundits are declaring Romney to be the Republican nominee-designate if he wins the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday. Everyone in the GOP establishment has been rushing to his side to endorse him these days. It's rumored that even Lincoln and

Reagan endorsed him posthumously. Meantime, there was his nemesis Santorum insisting on TV Sunday that he was going all the way to the convention. Hence, today's appropriate painting (above) of Marc Chagall's "Two Clowns on Horseback". Giddyup!

When U.S. Supreme Court justices come to dinner...

AFTER THE SUPREME COURT handed the 2000 election to George Bush, and after its game-changing Citizens United decision that turned over elections to the highest corporate bidders, I had hoped that the conservative-majority guys would finally behave themselves and get back to serving us as apolitical justices. I missed that one by a mile. Indeed, they aren't even bashful these days about their narrow political interests as guests at right-wing fundraisers - places the robed strict constructionists oughtn't to be."

There have been numerous reports of three of the justices making their rounds at these mega-cash registers for sympathetic candidates. Interestingly, the three - Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas - didn't show up at President Obama's State of the Union speech, dismissing these annual rituals as political events. On the other hand, Scalia and Thomas found time to speak at a political fund-raiser organized by Koch Industries - a leading Tea party contributor. Alito made it to an event sponsored by the Manhattan Institute, an honored think tank in the conservative pantheon.

And now, it's discovered that Thomas failed to report his wife's previous job, even though he is required to do so by law. (Until 2007 she had been on the payroll of the conservative Heritage

Foundation, earning $686,589.) Thomas said his failure to list the job - actual earnings not required - was inadvertent for several years because of a misunderstanding and more or less promised he would do better in the future. Maybe he needs better law clerks to explain the complicated forms to him.

Legal experts say, yeah, he broke the law, but nothing would likely come of it, Thomas being a Supreme Court Justice and all that.

Does anybody recall what President Nixon said when David Frost challenged him to explain why he approved of clearly illegal wiretapping? OK, I'll remind you:

"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."

Should we now add Clarence Thomas to the untouchables?

y ougers.

Alito: the conduct code doesn't apply to him

THE STIR CAUSED BY Justice Samuel Alito's presence at right-wing fund-raisers not only raises questions about his own ideological neutrality on the bench but also whether he is arrogantly defying court rules that bar such action. Alito turned up at a fund-raiser for American Spectator, one of the prominent voices of the American Right, to fill out the crowd that included the loony Rep. Michele Bachmann and GOP National Chairman Michael Steele. (Yep, he hasn't gone away!) When a reporter from Think Progress asked him what he was doing at a political fund-raiser, Alito dismissed the question with "It's not important that I'm here" and walked away. That brief encounter with the media defined hubris.

It's not the first time that he has been spotted hanging out at conservative fund-raisers. Last year he attended an event by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, whose preferred candidate was Christine 'O'Donnell, the big Tea Party loser in Delaware. Web reports allege that he helped raised $70,000 for the Institute.

In case you need further witness to the rule that bars federal judges from poitical events, here it is from RAW STORY's website:

According to the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, a justice should not "solicit for, pay an assessment to, or make a contribution to a political organization or candidate, or attend or purchase a ticket for a dinner or other event sponsored by a political organization or candidate."

Back in 2006, after Alito had been nominated by George W. Bush to succeed Sandra Day O'Connor on the bench, Alito was more humble in the face of his big promotion. He told a student assembly at Franklin & Marshall College that a judge is guided by law and must forever be aware of it in his or her decisions.

"I have continued to learn from various colleagues that you have to have an open mind to wisdom whenever it presents itself, he said. Assuming that he has read the code, his wisdom enables him to say "it's not important."