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

[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.

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

 

[flacaltenn]

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...

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Justice Thomas’ decisions are influenced by subjective conservative dogma alone.

 

[Mustang]

Justice Thomas’ decisions are influenced by subjective conservative dogma alone.

Which begs the question as to why Thomas was the lone dissenting vote...

Additionally, from the NYT article...

...justices must comply with laws applying to all federal officials that prohibit conflicts of interest and require disclosure of gifts. Justice Thomas’s gift acceptances drew attention in 2004, when The Los Angeles Times reported that he had accumulated gifts totaling $42,200 in the previous six years — far more than any of the other justices.

Since 2004, Justice Thomas has never reported another gift. He has continued to disclose travel costs paid by schools and organizations he has visited for speeches and teaching, but he has not reported that any travel was provided by Mr. Crow.

Travel records for Mr. Crow’s planes and yacht, however, suggest that Justice Thomas may have used them in recent years.

At the VERY least, there's an appearance of impropriety. In my experience, where there's smoke, there's fire.

 

[peach174]

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.

 

[Liability]

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.

Correct.

It's a dishonest lib power grab attempt.

Nothing more.

 

[Mustang]

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.

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?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

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

Did your mother drop you on your head?

Repeatedly?

 

[California Girl]

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.

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.

 

[Mustang]

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.

 

[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.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

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.

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?

What makes you think they aren't?

 

[PoliticalChic]

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.

Based on your concerns, and especially with respect to Justice Thomas, the following suggests that the conservative Justices might just be inclined to strike down Obamacare...

...no wonder you're sweatin'.

In "Why We’re Liberals," I (Eric Alterman) sought to examine the “activist judge” charge and examined the careful work of two sets of studies, each deploying different but entirely credible—and sensible—sets of criteria to scrutinize the history of judicial decisionmaking. Paul Gewirtz and Chad Golder of Yale Law School measured “activism” by calculating the number of decisions taken that deliberately declared congressionally sanctioned legislation as unconstitutional. They discovered that, beginning in 1994, Republican-appointed justices struck down considerably more laws than their Democratic-appointed counterparts.

Meanwhile, Thomas Miles and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School looked at the frequency with which appointed justices chose to strike down acts of the executive branch. They found that, between 1989 and 2005, “the most liberal members of the Court were the most likely to vote to uphold the decisions of the executive branch. The most conservative members of the Court were the least likely to vote to uphold those decisions.”
Think Again: Codeword "Empathy"

 

[PoliticalChic]

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.

Might decide to return the money.

That would be the end of it.

 

[The T]

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

So when are you lodging your Lawsuit demanding he stepdown from the bench?

 

[PoliticalChic]

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.

"Thomas was never the brightest bulb on the court. Hell, he doesn't even ask any questions. He just sits there like a mute."


WSJ 10/20/08 The following is an excerpt from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's Wriston Lecture to the Manhattan Institute :

"The national government was to be strong enough to protect us from each other and from foreign enemies, but not so strong as to tyrannize us. So, the framers structured the Constitution to limit the powers of the national government. Its powers were specifically enumerated; it was divided into three co-equal branches; and the powers not given to the national government remained with the states and the people. The relationship between the two political branches (the executive and the legislative) was to be somewhat contentious providing checks and balances, while frequent elections would assure some measure of accountability. And, the often divergent interests of the states and the national government provided further protection of liberty behind the shield of federalism. The third branch, and least dangerous branch, was not similarly constrained or hobbled.
Since Marbury v. Madison the federal judiciary has assumed the role of the interpreter and, now, final arbiter of our Constitution. But, what rules must judges follow in doing so? What informs, guides and limits our interpretation of the admittedly broad provisions of the Constitution? And, more directly, what restrains us from imposing our personal views and policy preferences on our fellow citizens under the guise of Constitutional interpretation?

As important as our Constitution is, there is no one accepted way of interpreting it. Indeed, for some commentators, it seems that if they like or prefer a particular policy or conduct, then it must be constitutional; while the policies that they do not prefer or like are unconstitutional. Obviously, this approach cannot be right. But, it certainly is at the center of the process of selecting judges. It goes something like this. If a judge does not think that abortion is best as a matter of policy or personal opinion, then the thought is that he or she will find it unconstitutional; while the judge who thinks it is good policy will find it constitutional. Those who think this way often seem to believe that since this is the way they themselves think, everyone must be doing the same thing. In this sense, legal realism morphs into legal cynicism. Certainly this is no way to run a railroad, not to mention interpret the Constitution. . . .

Let me put it this way; there are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution -- try to discern as best we can what the framers intended or make it up. No matter how ingenious, imaginative or artfully put, unless interpretive methodologies are tied to the original intent of the framers, they have no more basis in the Constitution than the latest football scores. To be sure, even the most conscientious effort to adhere to the original intent of the framers of our Constitution is flawed, as all methodologies and human institutions are; but at least originalism has the advantage of being legitimate and, I might add, impartial."

Sure seems to know what he's talking about.
Don't you agree?

 

[Mustang]

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.

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.

 

[The T]

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.

Then YOU petition your REP to begin Impeachment hearings. When you gonna start?

 

[Mustang]

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?

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.

 

[flacaltenn]

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..