Outrage has reached hair-on-fire levels after a jaw-dropping ProPublica investigative piece revealed just howclose U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is to a powerful GOP megadonor, Texas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow. Some in the chattering class leaned into the i-word: impeachment

When the Supremes hand down their final decision of the term, the story details, Thomas and his wife, Virginia “Ginni,” regularly board Crow’s private Bombardier Global 5000 jet and wing off to his private superyacht for the sort of cosseted and luxurious holiday usually reserved for the uber-wealthy or celebrities.

The couple also reportedly spends a week each summer with Harlan and Kathy Crow, roughing it at their Adirondack camp, Topridge. (In a stunning “Small World Department,” it is a former home of cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, who also built and owned Donald Trump’s Palm Beach clubhouse, Mar-a-Lago.) Though labeling a 105-acre pleasuredome, replete with guest houses, clay tennis court, stables, three boathouses and a fake waterfall, as a “camp” is akin to the Gilded Age colloquialism that dubbed the massive mansions of Newport “cottages.”

This story might not have rankled so much if the piece hadn’t quoted a documentary about Thomas (paid for by Crow) where the justice asserts that the vacations he favors involve visit to RV partks or Walmart parking lots in the good old U.S. of A.

Outrage also likely might not have reached this crescendo if the reporters Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski hadn’t laid out how Crow bankrolled many of Ginni Thomas’s Tea Party groups and her other conservative efforts, in addition to covering her salary at one enterprise.

Thomas took several days to respond, finally issuing a statement that colleagues had advised he didn’t need to report “personal hospitality” from a dear friend. Maybe the justice subscribes to one of my favorite Elsie de Wolfe axioms: Friendship cannot be bought, but it can be rewarded.”

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Times reporter David Savage, who covers the Supreme Court, pointed out that Thomas actually had been reporting some of Crow’s beneficence – until a 2004 L.A. Times article revealed aspects of it. Savage wrote that he had assumed Thomas stopped accepting Crow’s largess after the piece ran, but now realizes the justice just stopped disclosing it.

Yet, amid all the brouhaha, any impeachment talk is probably a waste of time. Because, unlike all other members of the U.S. judiciary, the Supremes stand apart from any ethics rules.

Constitutional scholars have long grappled with the issue. Savvy Law Professor Herman Schwartz tackled it with an insightful opinion piece in Politico, offering one smart possible way to address this. I commissioned Schwartz’s article more than a decade ago -- though the triggering news peg now seems minor league. Maestro illustrator Matt Mahurin provided the perfect image.

One Way to Enforce Legal Ethics on the Supremes