Is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's Vote For Sale?

[driveby]

It doesn't look good. In fact, it looks pretty bad. Abe Fortas resigned for reasons that don't look much different than this (money). But there was never any question that Fortas was selling his vote. Thomas's lone dissent on a SC vote of 8-1 and his wife's involvement with a tea party group that was financed by Harlan Crow to the tune of $500,000 definitely looks suspicious, especially since the Supreme Court will likely have to rule on the Affordable Healthcare Act (Otherwise known as Obamacare).

PIN POINT, Ga. — Clarence Thomas was here promoting his memoir a few years ago when he bumped into Algernon Varn, whose grandfather once ran a seafood cannery that employed Justice Thomas’s mother as a crab picker.

Mr. Varn lived at the old cannery site, a collection of crumbling buildings on a salt marsh just down the road from a sign heralding this remote coastal community outside Savannah as Justice Thomas’s birthplace. The justice asked about plans for the property, and Mr. Varn said he hoped it could be preserved.

“And Clarence said, ‘Well, I’ve got a friend I’m going to put you in touch with,’ ” Mr. Varn recalled, adding that he was later told by others not to identify the friend.

The publicity-shy friend turned out to be Harlan Crow, a Dallas real estate magnate and a major contributor to conservative causes. Mr. Crow stepped in to finance the multimillion-dollar purchase and restoration of the cannery, featuring a museum about the culture and history of Pin Point that has become a pet project of Justice Thomas’s.
The project throws a spotlight on an unusual, and ethically sensitive, friendship that appears to be markedly different from those of other justices on the nation’s highest court.

The two men met in the mid-1990s, a few years after Justice Thomas joined the court. Since then, Mr. Crow has done many favors for the justice and his wife, Virginia, helping finance a Savannah library project dedicated to Justice Thomas, presenting him with a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass and reportedly providing $500,000 for Ms. Thomas to start a Tea Party-related group. They have also spent time together at gatherings of prominent Republicans and businesspeople at Mr. Crow’s Adirondacks estate and his camp in East Texas.

Mr. Crow has not personally been a party to Supreme Court litigation, but his companies have been involved in federal court cases, including four that went to the appellate level. And he has served on the boards of two conservative organizations involved in filing supporting briefs in cases before the Supreme Court. One of them, the American Enterprise Institute, with Mr. Crow as a trustee, gave Justice Thomas a bust of Lincoln valued at $15,000 and praised his jurisprudence at an awards gala in 2001.

The institute’s Project on Fair Representation later filed briefs in several cases, and in 2006 the project brought a lawsuit challenging federal voting rights laws, a case in which Justice Thomas filed a lone dissent, embracing the project’s arguments. The project director, an institute fellow named Edward Blum, said the institute supported his research but did not finance the brief filings or the Texas suit, which was litigated pro bono by a former clerk of Justice Thomas’s.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/us/politics/19thomas.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&hp

Abe Fortas Resignation

Fortas remained on the bench, but in 1969, a new scandal arose. Fortas had accepted a $20,000 retainer from the family foundation of Wall Street financier Louis Wolfson, a friend and former client, in January 1966.[2][11] Fortas signed a contract with Wolfson's foundation; in return for unspecified advice, it was to pay Fortas $20,000 a year for the rest of Fortas's life (and then pay his widow for the rest of her life). Wolfson was under investigation for securities violations at the time and it is alleged that he expected that his arrangement with Fortas would help him stave off criminal charges or help him secure a presidential pardon; he did ask Fortas to help him secure a pardon from LBJ, which Fortas claimed that he did not do.[2] Fortas recused himself from Wolfson's case when it came before the Court and had returned the retainer, but not until Wolfson had been indicted twice.[2]

Abe Fortas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fuck off, racist.....

 

[Mustang]

It doesn't look good. In fact, it looks pretty bad. Abe Fortas resigned for reasons that don't look much different than this (money). But there was never any question that Fortas was selling his vote. Thomas's lone dissent on a SC vote of 8-1 and his wife's involvement with a tea party group that was financed by Harlan Crow to the tune of $500,000 definitely looks suspicious, especially since the Supreme Court will likely have to rule on the Affordable Healthcare Act (Otherwise known as Obamacare).

PIN POINT, Ga. — Clarence Thomas was here promoting his memoir a few years ago when he bumped into Algernon Varn, whose grandfather once ran a seafood cannery that employed Justice Thomas’s mother as a crab picker.

Mr. Varn lived at the old cannery site, a collection of crumbling buildings on a salt marsh just down the road from a sign heralding this remote coastal community outside Savannah as Justice Thomas’s birthplace. The justice asked about plans for the property, and Mr. Varn said he hoped it could be preserved.

“And Clarence said, ‘Well, I’ve got a friend I’m going to put you in touch with,’ ” Mr. Varn recalled, adding that he was later told by others not to identify the friend.

The publicity-shy friend turned out to be Harlan Crow, a Dallas real estate magnate and a major contributor to conservative causes. Mr. Crow stepped in to finance the multimillion-dollar purchase and restoration of the cannery, featuring a museum about the culture and history of Pin Point that has become a pet project of Justice Thomas’s.
The project throws a spotlight on an unusual, and ethically sensitive, friendship that appears to be markedly different from those of other justices on the nation’s highest court.

The two men met in the mid-1990s, a few years after Justice Thomas joined the court. Since then, Mr. Crow has done many favors for the justice and his wife, Virginia, helping finance a Savannah library project dedicated to Justice Thomas, presenting him with a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass and reportedly providing $500,000 for Ms. Thomas to start a Tea Party-related group. They have also spent time together at gatherings of prominent Republicans and businesspeople at Mr. Crow’s Adirondacks estate and his camp in East Texas.

Abe Fortas Resignation

Fortas remained on the bench, but in 1969, a new scandal arose. Fortas had accepted a $20,000 retainer from the family foundation of Wall Street financier Louis Wolfson, a friend and former client, in January 1966.[2][11] Fortas signed a contract with Wolfson's foundation; in return for unspecified advice, it was to pay Fortas $20,000 a year for the rest of Fortas's life (and then pay his widow for the rest of her life). Wolfson was under investigation for securities violations at the time and it is alleged that he expected that his arrangement with Fortas would help him stave off criminal charges or help him secure a presidential pardon; he did ask Fortas to help him secure a pardon from LBJ, which Fortas claimed that he did not do.[2] Fortas recused himself from Wolfson's case when it came before the Court and had returned the retainer, but not until Wolfson had been indicted twice.[2]

Abe Fortas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fuck off, racist.....

I don't believe that I've ever stated what my ethnic/racial background is on this board.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

You would be squealing like a pig if some liberal judge was raking in all those "gifts" and his wife was taking money to start a partisan group which was involved in political activities which may end up coming up on the SC docket.

Now, if you can actually SHOW anything dishonest about the facts that article details, I'm sure everyone would love to see it. How long should we wait?

What makes you think they aren't?

The NYT is not NewsMax or World Net Daily. In fact, the NYT is considered to be the newspaper of record for the United States. While conservatives may not like the newspaper's editorial slant, the paper has one of the highest levels (if not THE highest level) of journalistic integrity of all the daily newspapers in this country. I bet they worked on that story for quite some time and triple checked their facts since they were writing a story about one of only nine serving members of the SC.

The NYT is, however, prone to letting people express their opinion.

Here is an opinion from a liberal professor at Harvard Law School.

WHAT is it about those robes? They are only flimsy bits of wools, enlivened in a few cases by some very European lace at the collar. Yet the moment our Supreme Court justices put them on, a segment of the concerned public imagines that they have become priests consecrated to the sacred order of the Constitution.
Recently, Justice Antonin Scalia has been criticized for meeting with a group of (gulp) conservative members of Congress and accused of participating in an event organized by the conservative billionaire Charles Koch. Justice Clarence Thomas has been excoriated because his wife, Virginia, last year took a leading role in organizing Liberty Central, a Tea Party offshoot that received anonymous, First Amendment-protected donations (she has since stepped down). He also belatedly amended 13 years’ worth of disclosure reports to include details of his wife’s employment.
Justices are required to disclose their income sources and those of their spouses. But the core of the criticisms against Justices Thomas and Scalia has nothing to do with judicial ethics. The attack is driven by the imagined ideal of the cloistered monk-justice, innocent of worldly vanities, free of political connections and guided only by the gem-like flame of inward conscience.
It was not ever thus. John Marshall, undoubtedly the greatest chief justice ever, spent his first month on the court as the secretary of state of the United States. That’s right, the chief justice and the secretary of state were the same person — an arrangement permitted by the Constitution, which only prohibits members of Congress from holding other offices. Marshall’s most famous decision — Marbury v. Madison, which established the principle of judicial review — arose from Marshall’s own failure as secretary of state to deliver the obscure William Marbury his commission as justice of the peace in the waning hours of the Adams administration. No one cared.

I like this part because it is particularly appropriate to this discussion

After all, Martin Ginsburg, a model of ethical rectitude until his death last year, was for many years a partner in an important corporate law firm. But surely no one believes that his career made his wife, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, more positively inclined toward corporate interests on the court than she would already be as a member in good standing of America’s class of legal elites.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/opinion/13feldman.html

Here is a fact for you, not a single legal scholar worth his weight in fertilizer thinks these arguments have any merit at all.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I KNOW you watched Rachael on MSNBC last night didn'tcha? I keep tabs on both my Left and Right flanks. Never know which side the random fires' gonna come frrom..

I watch her occasionally because she's a TALENTED leftist. And she brings up a good point. Since I'm feeling lazy today --- Does ANYONE KNOW why the S.C. are immune from gifting laws that every other judgey-poo has to abide by?

Is it Fed law? S.C. ethics rules? Pretty sure it's not the Constitution...

You are pretty wrong.

Congress cannot make laws governing the Supreme Court because it is a separate branch of the government.

Q. Winbag:
I know it's pretty rough here on the board. But how can I be "pretty wrong" by asking a QUESTION?
I was asking the brilliant reservoirs of political knowledge (like yourself)

- which of those things accounted for the exemption from the gifting laws. Thanks for the slap and the obvious knowledge --- but I guess I'll just guess -- it's an ethics statement concocted by the Court itself..

Congress makes laws about reporting income that all federal employees are subject to. That includes the Justices of the Supreme Court, They cannot, however, make laws about how the Supreme Court conducts its business. The ethical rules that apply to everyone else in the government do not apply to the Supreme Court. If you were a lawyer that would make sense.

Don't take me saying you are pretty wrong personally, it was a play on words. If I wanted to make it personal I would have called you an idiot, and that would only happen if you expressed any opinion that was so absurdly stupid that nothing else would fit. I call myself an idiot at least once a week.

 

[whitehall]

A Black Justice's vote for sale. Left wing racism rears it's ugly head again just a couple of years after they printed an unspeakable racist cartoon depicting the (Black) Secretary of State as a slave mammy.

 

[Too Tall]

Correct.

It's a dishonest lib power grab attempt.

Nothing more.

You would be squealing like a pig if some liberal judge was raking in all those "gifts" and his wife was taking money to start a partisan group which was involved in political activities which may end up coming up on the SC docket.

Now, if you can actually SHOW anything dishonest about the facts that article details, I'm sure everyone would love to see it. How long should we wait?

It is nothing more than deliberate speculation and bullshit - but I am not surprised that the gibbering hordes of the Obamanation regurgitate whatever they are fed. Learn to think for yourself. Idiot.

C'mon now, everyone knows that 'where there is smoke there is fire' is definitive proof of guilt. sarcasm/off

 

[PoliticalChic]

You would be squealing like a pig if some liberal judge was raking in all those "gifts" and his wife was taking money to start a partisan group which was involved in political activities which may end up coming up on the SC docket.

Now, if you can actually SHOW anything dishonest about the facts that article details, I'm sure everyone would love to see it. How long should we wait?

What makes you think they aren't?

The NYT is not NewsMax or World Net Daily. In fact, the NYT is considered to be the newspaper of record for the United States. While conservatives may not like the newspaper's editorial slant, the paper has one of the highest levels (if not THE highest level) of journalistic integrity of all the daily newspapers in this country. I bet they worked on that story for quite some time and triple checked their facts since they were writing a story about one of only nine serving members of the SC.

"...the paper has one of the highest levels (if not THE highest level) of journalistic integrity ..."
Of course this is not true. Not sinc Pinch took the reins.

Both the editorial position...and the news is slanted.


Thinking folks recognized this....which might explain the following:

1. The New York Times’s nationwide circulation fell 8.5 percent to 951,063 in the six months through March, while circulation at the Journal, which includes paying Internet readers, rose less than 1 percent to 2.09 million, data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations show.

Times Co., which also owns the Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune, fell 43 cents, or 4.8 percent, to $8.50 at 4:02 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have declined 31 percent this year.

NY Times Says Circulation Holding Up to WSJ Assault - Bloomberg



2. 2700 people a month stop NYTimes according to pollster Frank Luntz
“And then there's the stats: The WSJ has a paid circulation of 1.4 million, up 2.4% y/y. The NYT: 859,000, down 5.5%. With more readers, the WSJ can charge more for ads, $264,426 for full page color vs. $193,800 at the NYT.”
New York Times (NYT) Now Losing Business To Wall Street Journal


3. The Times refused to publish the climategate leaks, because “they were not intended for public viewing…”
But did publish the wikileaks…..

Pretty much shoots your post to bits, huh?

"...the paper has one of the highest levels (if not THE highest level) of journalistic integrity ..."

Oops! Sorry about the giggling.

4. "It is a good thing to be attacked by he likes of the New York Times and 60 Minutes, both of which are losing readers/viewers faster than innocent bystanders exiting the Vibe Awards after another random stabbing."
Coulter

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAkF1XpZJNs]YouTube - ‪G-Unit - VIBE Awards Stabbing (2004)‬‏[/ame]


In case you aren’t able to read ACLU press release for yourself, the Associated Press and the New York Times will helpfully restate them for you as important, breaking ‘news.’

 

[JimH52]

They are trying to get him out and a liberal judge in before the health care bill comes up to the supreme court.
That's what this is all about.

Thomas will likely have to recuse himself from hearing the case on Obamacare due to his wife's activities in fighting it. (Kagan recently recused herself in a SC case because she ruled on it in a lower court.)

How ironic that would be. CT and his wife's partisan activities has hurt the right's chance of getting it overturned. That's funny, but Thomas was never the brightest bulb on the court. Hell, he doesn't even ask any questions. He just sits there like a mute.

No he won't. Why should he? No one will call his hand on it.

 

[JimH52]

Thomas will likely have to recuse himself from hearing the case on Obamacare due to his wife's activities in fighting it. (Kagan recently recused herself in a SC case because she ruled on it in a lower court.)

How ironic that would be. CT and his wife's partisan activities has hurt the right's chance of getting it overturned. That's funny, but Thomas was never the brightest bulb on the court. Hell, he doesn't even ask any questions. He just sits there like a mute.

Might decide to return the money.

That would be the end of it.

Returning the money is a tacit admission of wrongdoing. At any rate, Thomas has dug himself into a hole all by himself. He doesn't have anyone to blame but himself. However, Thomas is a VERY defensive person (kinda like Sarah Palin). I expect that he's going to stonewall for a while. But if the story gains traction, Thomas is going probably say it's about his race. Hey, nobody forced Thomas to take the money, and they didn't "friend him" for any other reason than his status as a SC justice.

I forsee a claim of "modern day lynching" as in the Anita Hill affair.

 

[Dot Com]

He had to get caught sooner or later.

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

They are trying to get him out and a liberal judge in before the health care bill comes up to the supreme court.
That's what this is all about.

Bingo. They know the SCOTUS is going to strike down ObamaCare as unconstitutional, so the only hope they have is for Obama to get another pick before it hits their court room.

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

But if the story gains traction, Thomas is going probably say it's about his race.

Well if he were a Democrat that's what you'd be saying.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Might decide to return the money.

That would be the end of it.

Returning the money is a tacit admission of wrongdoing. At any rate, Thomas has dug himself into a hole all by himself. He doesn't have anyone to blame but himself. However, Thomas is a VERY defensive person (kinda like Sarah Palin). I expect that he's going to stonewall for a while. But if the story gains traction, Thomas is going probably say it's about his race. Hey, nobody forced Thomas to take the money, and they didn't "friend him" for any other reason than his status as a SC justice.

I forsee a claim of "modern day lynching" as in the Anita Hill affair.

That would be 'high tech lynching,' Jimmy.


Breitbart had an interesting passage about same in his book:
1. The Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearings was the equivalent of a political heavyweight match. There was Anita Hill, with the media and Democrats in her corner…and Clarence Thomas with no one but Republicans. So, Ms. Hill described a mostly unremarkable boss-employee relationship. But Democrats Metzenbaum, Leahy, Biden and Kennedy and their media allies produced outrage well beyond any evidence provided: they accused Thomas of spotting a pubic hair on a soda can, and of asking Hill for a date. And they bragged that they had used illicit means to discover that Thomas had rented pornography.

2. The question that begs answering is this: white liberals grilled this black sharecropper’s grandson in line to be a United States Supreme Court Justice, a narrative that would send a clear signal to African-Americans that anything is possible in this nation…yet they savaged him with a sense of impunity…how? How did they know that they could assassinate the man’s character without a massive backlash from the NAACP, ABC, NBC, and CBS? How did they know they could get away with it????

3. What truth had been revealed about the media?

4. With reference to the Clinton deposition in the Paula Jones case, “I was against overly broad sexual harassment laws, since feminism had defined sexual harassment down to the type of interaction that created so many marriages, a secretary and a boss meeting each other at work, for instance. I didn’t believe in the post-structural PC Marxist/feminist critique that said that sexual relationships were inherently relationships between the oppressor and the oppressed, and that the power structures between bosses and employees necessarily rendered such relationships a form of sexual harassment….But if they were going to hold Clarence Thomas to that standard, then they had to hold Clinton to that standard as well.”
Breitbart, “Righteous Indignation,” p. 53-54.


I like it, because he drew an interesting parallelel, and also indicated how the Old Left Media was firmly in the pocket of the Democrats.

Don't you agree, Jimmy?

 

[Salt Jones]

Returning the money is a tacit admission of wrongdoing. At any rate, Thomas has dug himself into a hole all by himself. He doesn't have anyone to blame but himself. However, Thomas is a VERY defensive person (kinda like Sarah Palin). I expect that he's going to stonewall for a while. But if the story gains traction, Thomas is going probably say it's about his race. Hey, nobody forced Thomas to take the money, and they didn't "friend him" for any other reason than his status as a SC justice.

I forsee a claim of "modern day lynching" as in the Anita Hill affair.

That would be 'high tech lynching,' Jimmy.


Breitbart had an interesting passage about same in his book:
1. The Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearings was the equivalent of a political heavyweight match. There was Anita Hill, with the media and Democrats in her corner…and Clarence Thomas with no one but Republicans. So, Ms. Hill described a mostly unremarkable boss-employee relationship. But Democrats Metzenbaum, Leahy, Biden and Kennedy and their media allies produced outrage well beyond any evidence provided: they accused Thomas of spotting a pubic hair on a soda can, and of asking Hill for a date. And they bragged that they had used illicit means to discover that Thomas had rented pornography.

2. The question that begs answering is this: white liberals grilled this black sharecropper’s grandson in line to be a United States Supreme Court Justice, a narrative that would send a clear signal to African-Americans that anything is possible in this nation…yet they savaged him with a sense of impunity…how? How did they know that they could assassinate the man’s character without a massive backlash from the NAACP, ABC, NBC, and CBS? How did they know they could get away with it????

3. What truth had been revealed about the media?

4. With reference to the Clinton deposition in the Paula Jones case, “I was against overly broad sexual harassment laws, since feminism had defined sexual harassment down to the type of interaction that created so many marriages, a secretary and a boss meeting each other at work, for instance. I didn’t believe in the post-structural PC Marxist/feminist critique that said that sexual relationships were inherently relationships between the oppressor and the oppressed, and that the power structures between bosses and employees necessarily rendered such relationships a form of sexual harassment….But if they were going to hold Clarence Thomas to that standard, then they had to hold Clinton to that standard as well.”
Breitbart, “Righteous Indignation,” p. 53-54.


I like it, because he drew an interesting parallelel, and also indicated how the Old Left Media was firmly in the pocket of the Democrats.

Don't you agree, Jimmy?

Clarence Thomas is what he is, an angry self-hating black man.

 

[Truthmatters]

What he has done is wrong.

Defend it all you want.

If it was a percieved left judge the right would be screaming.

They dont care about whats right they just want their guys in power.

 

[Seawytch]

To hell with Thomas and his drunk dialing wife. Let's just play their game. Time for George Soros to start throwing his scratch around. If these guys can be bought...why shouldn't he be one of the ones that can buy 'em? Equal opportunity!

Come on George, Sonia needs a new pair of shoes! How 'bout a Caddie for Ruth? Justice Kennedy looks like he could use some new golf clubs!

 

[Truthmatters]

I really hate that the right is so willing to back dishonesty when it benifits them.

Party over country every time with them

 

[Steelplate]

To the Original Poster...

Yes.

Next question?

 

[Truthmatters]

Its time these people quit backing anti American activities

 

[Liability]

I really hate that the right is so willing to back dishonesty when it benifits them.

Party over country every time with them

truthdon'tmattertoheratall only cares for dishonesty when it benefits her and her leftist bullshit beliefs and actions.

Her sole "standard" is: Partisan liberal ideology over everything and truthbedamned.

She is a vile rodent.