On the day before Emperor Darius planned to battle Alexander at the battlefield of Gaugamela, thousands of slaves leveled the field to assist in the use of chariots with great scythes mounted on the wheels. Darius believed he had not had enough room to use his superior numbers at Isus, the first battle two years before.
Now, we see another attempt to prepare a battlefield. The political left fears that Obamacare and its mandate will not survive Supreme Court scrutiny so they are viciously attacking Justice Thomas and Scalia in an attempt to intimidate them. No mention, of course, is made of various speaking engagements and contacts with left wing groups by such members of the Court as Ginsberg (Former ACLU counsel) and Kagan (Obama Solicitor General).
Still reeling from a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that opened the door to an explosion of political ads from corporate interests and fearful the court could overturn President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, liberal groups have launched an aggressive — and, at times, personal — attack on the court’s most conservative justices.
The sharp questioning of the impartiality and ethics of Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and, to a lesser extent, Samuel Alito, represent the most concerted attack on a bloc of justices since the early 1970s, when conservatives waged a long campaign against the liberal justices of the Warren court, most notably Justices William O. Douglas and Abe Fortas.
Abe Fortas was a crony of LBJ and a labor lawyer. His nomination to be Chief Justice was derailed by ethics complaints that caused him to resign as Associate Justice soon after.
In 1965, Lyndon Johnson, then President, persuaded Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg to resign his seat to become Ambassador to the United Nations so that he could appoint Fortas, his longtime friend, to the Court. Johnson thought that some of his Great Society reforms could be ruled unconstitutional by the Court, and he felt that Fortas would let him know if that was to happen. Johnson and Fortas did collaborate while Fortas was a justice; Fortas co-wrote Johnson’s 1966 State of the Union speech.
Now, THERE is conflict of interest ! All in a good cause, of course. The Great Society that has bankrupted the United States.
Thomas and Scalia have been accused of undermining public confidence in the court by engaging in partisan politics and making decisions that could benefit the political and financial interests of family members and associates. And liberal groups have called on the Justice Department to investigate whether the two justices’ alleged conflicts of interest should have disqualified them from voting in the 2010 decision on political spending, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission. One low-profile liberal watchdog group last week asked the Missouri Supreme Court to disbar Thomas.
This is standard Saul Alinsky tactics, of course.
“What we’re seeing is that there is major concern among liberals that the four died-in-the-wool conservatives on the court — with Justice Kennedy, when they’re able to bring him on board — are now in a period of real activism,” said Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor and author of a book about the sometimes heated battles surrounding the jurisprudence of the liberal justices appointed to the Supreme Court by former President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“In this [modern] context, it’s not so surprising that attacks on the justices would veer from the purely ideological into attempts to delegitimize the justices personally, to some extent,” said Feldman, who clerked for retired liberal Justice David Souter but nonetheless drew fire from the left for a February New York Times op-ed in which he argued that the political engagement of Thomas and Scalia pales in comparison to their predecessors and could, in fact, help better inform their decisions.
No, facts are not of interest. The LA Times has weighed in with the disappointing Jonathan Turley waving the bloody shirt.
This was a rally sponsored by Common Cause, Turley’s sponsor.
Louis XIV of France was infamous for his view that there was no distinction between himself and the state, allegedly proclaiming “L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the State”). That notorious merging of personality with an institution was again on display in a February speech by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas before the conservative Federalist Society.
Wow ! Heady company for the poor kid from the South Carolina ghetto.
Thomas used the friendly audience to finally address a chorus of criticism over his alleged conflicts of interest and violation of federal disclosure rules concerning his wife’s income. Rather than answer these questions, however, Thomas denounced his critics as “undermining” the court and endangering the country by weakening core institutions.
In January, Common Cause released documents showing that Thomas had attended events funded by conservative billionaires David and Charles Koch. Thomas was even featured in Koch promotional material — along with Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others — for events that sought financial and political support for conservative political causes.
Horrors !!!
Are you starting to see the pattern ? The Citizens United decision is a proxy for the favors done the left by past campaign finance legislation, including that authored by John McCain. Obama was elected by a flood of unidentified money coming from God knows where. He turned down federal financing after promising to abide by the rules. His campaign TURNED OFF credit card validation software so the source of the contributions could not be traced. Fake names were used. Contributions poured in from other countries including Gaza, controlled by Hamas.
What is interesting to me is that the merchant acquirer has knowingly violated a basic CNP fraud prevention technique to accommodate a merchant (Obama Campaign). I think that both the Associations (VISA & MasterCard) would be highly interested in looking at the merchant acquirer that was processing these transactions. The value of ignoring the AVS responses is that multiple invalid transactions may be made without fear of being rejected by the authorization systems. This means that the real owner of the credit card account is willing to allow multiple transactions to be made on the account using different names and addresses that under normal conditions would be denied. The merchant acquirer has a complete listing of all transactions done and it would be very interesting to see how many transactions were conducted on the same account number using different names. I would think that this would be a Federal violation under the current campaign funding laws.
No, this is unimportant. The election is over and Obama and his friends, whoever they are, won.
What is important is Clarence Thomas and his wife’s job.
Worse yet, Common Cause discovered that Thomas had failed to disclose a source of income for 13 years on required federal forms. Thomas stated that his wife, Virginia, had no income, when in truth she had hundreds of thousands of dollars of income from conservative organizations, including roughly $700,000 from the Heritage Foundation between 2003 and 2007. Thomas reported “none” in answering specific questions about “spousal non-investment income” on annual forms — answers expressly made “subject to civil and criminal sanctions.”
In the interests of full disclosure, I was consulted by Common Cause before the release of the Thomas documents. I found the violations regarding Virginia Thomas’ income particularly alarming.
Virginia Thomas was receiving money from groups that had expressed direct interest in the outcome of cases that came before her husband, including Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, in which the court in 2010 struck down limitations on corporate contributions to elections.
A justice is expressly required by federal law to recuse himself from any case “in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” This law specifically requires recusal when he knows that “his spouse … has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.“
Virginia Thomas, like the 40% of Greater DC who are not government employees, is a lobbyist. She was before she met Justice Thomas. I was not aware that lobbyists whose clients lose on an issue are fired. She could broadly be construed to have a financial interest in issues that come before the Court but this is not a new issue. They have been married since before he was elevated to the Court and her occupation has not changed.
The present tactic is not new.
In 1991, Thomas returned to government service in the Legislative Affairs Office of the United States Department of Labor, where she argued against comparable-worth legislation that would have mandated equal pay for women and men in jobs deemed to be comparable. That year, her husband, Clarence Thomas was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to fill the open seat on the U.S. Supreme Court left by the retirement of Justice Thurgood Marshall. She attended the contentious Senate confirmation hearings and stood by her husband as he was accused of sexual harassment. During the confirmation hearings, several Democratic Senators claimed that her job with the Labor Department might create a conflict of interest for her husband if he was seated on the Supreme Court.
This is just more preparation of the battlefield for the coming Obamacare decision. I expect it to be nasty and vicious and, for Justice Thomas, very personal. The left knows no scruples in gaining an advantage in a struggle.
The same efforts will be made with Scalia but he does not seem as vulnerable. Thomas’ life, and that of his wife, have been the subject of slander and libel since 1991. If you doubt that, take a look at the comments following the LA Times column by Turley. Get ready for the political equivalent of eye gouging and biting as this winds to a conclusion. After all, Obama learned his politics in Chicago.
Tags: Congress, Democrats, politics, Republicans