Forum Post: supreme court justice clarence thomas needs the boot
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 16, 2011, 12:18 a.m. EST by turtlebeanz
(40)
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today is the 20th anniversary of the clarence thomas/anita hill nightmare. hunter hosted a super powerful conference (broadcast on cnn). the gist was that it is clear at this point that hill most certainly didn't lie, that supreme court justice thomas harassed her and created a work environment of pervasive harassment. there was, as well, much discussion of how during the hearings, race and gender got pitted against each other ultimately in service of conservative agenda -- in the end thomas's record on race is horrendous, as is his record on discrimination against women. there was talk of how testimony from other women harassed by thomas was suppressed by biden and others. hill was not calling upon these women -- they were crawling out of the woodwork (and in one case out of a hospital bed), wanting very much to speak out. a member of the audience posed the question: how is it that we are letting it stand that in the highest court in the country, we have a judge who broke discrimination law? she said we should boot him out. this seems right. how can the be justice in a country where our supreme court justices have so little compassion for so much of the population?
Judge Thomas is one of the worse Supreme Justices in recent history. Just can't figure how he'll rule on the Health Care Bill!
LOL
Clarence Thomas failed to report wife's income, Virginia Thomas earned over $680,000 from conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation over five years, a group says. But Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas did not include it on financial disclosure forms. January 22, 2011|By Kim Geiger, Washington Bureau Reporting from Washington — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife's income from a conservative think tank on financial disclosure forms for at least five years, the watchdog group Common Cause said Friday. Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation's IRS records.
Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled "none" where "spousal noninvestment income" would be disclosed.
Virginia Thomas' employment by the Heritage Foundation was well known at the time. Virginia Thomas also has been active in the group Liberty Central, an organization she founded to restore the "founding principles" of limited government and individual liberty.
In his 2009 disclosure, Justice Thomas also reported spousal income as "none."
Federal judges are bound by law to disclose the source of spousal income, according to Stephen Gillers, a professor at NYU School of Law. Thomas' omission — which could be interpreted as a violation of that law — could lead to some form of penalty, Gillers said. "It wasn't a miscalculation; he simply omitted his wife's source of income for six years, which is a rather dramatic omission," Gillers said. "It could not have been an oversight." Without disclosure, the public and litigants appearing before the court do not have adequate information to assess potential conflicts of interest, and disclosure is needed to promote the public's interest in open, honest and accountable government
The allegation comes days after a letter requesting that the Justice Department investigate whether Justices Thomas and Antonin Scalia should have disqualified themselves from hearing a campaign finance case after they reportedly attended a private meeting sponsored by Charles and David Koch, billionaire philanthropists who fund conservative causes such as ALEC. In the case, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the court ruled that corporate and union funds could be spent directly on election advertising. The Koch brothers have been key supporters of the group Americans for Prosperity, which spent heavily in the 2010 midterm election and claims a nonprofit tax status that allows it to avoid disclosing its donors. Clarence Thomas has been the lone justice to argue that laws requiring public disclosure of large political contributions are unconstitutional.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/100532098003679342125/albums/posts/5662028264563572898?hl=en
Clearance is a corrupt corporate cornie.
Dude move on, look forward and stop reminiscing times of yore, are you acquainted with of our blood-spattered olden times don’t you? Moreover, our courts are now under the jurisdiction of the world court. (Relax; it’s a joke of course)
That reminds me of "look forward and not back", a Barack Obama quote.
lol - I bet every guy in criminal court this week was hoping we could just "look forward and not back".
The overview given by the powerhouse legal scholars as well as others on the panel was that things most definitely have NOT changed so much since then.
The WHOLE SYSTEM is dysfunctional and rotten to the core. It shouldn't be difficult to convince the American people of that. In fact, a majority of them may already be! (See recent "Time" poll).
The solution? A COMPLETE OVERHAUL - just as happened in the countries of the former Soviet block. We save NOTHING from the old, rotten structures, NADA! We start from scratch. So the Supreme Court is DISSOLVED and everyone gets the boot, not just Thomas. Same thing obviously with Congress, the Senate, the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, etc., etc.
PIECEMEAL REFORM will not work. It would be like trying to salvage a completely rotten apple and trying to make a good pie out of it.
Plenty of people make a NEW BEGINNING in life, starting anew with a new job, a new partner or a new attitude. WHY COULD OUR COUNTRY NOT DO THE SAME and benefit immensely?
I vote for the complete overhaul!
To me, the more useful overhaul would be people connecting through OWS and more and more walking away into lives that make more sense. Radical overthrows of government don't seem to work too well in my read of history. But a government & money system left by 99% due to lack of interest just might work. In the meantime, i think addressing some of the most egregious and glaring abuses would serve to put the extant system better in check.
Who's talking about a "radical overthrow"? An "overhaul" doesn't have to be an "overthrow"! And as you say, in history radical overthrows have not always had the best results.
I'm thinking rather of going back to the Constitution (regular "Conventions" were supposed to be held, but were always blocked by Congress, possibly UNLAWFULLY) and perhaps to Jefferson's very sensible idea of a "Second (and a Third and a Fourth) American Revolution" (see Wikipedia under that title).
That would be about UPHOLDING the Constitution and the rule of Law, NOT about violently "overthrowing" anything. The country has lost its way and I won't even begin to "count the ways"... A People's Commission - no politicians included - might be set up to examine what went wrong and how to right it.
seems reasonable.
I always tell people who argue about Thomas to google Abe Fortas. There was just a hint of a scandal there & he quickly resigned. Times have changed so much since then. This guy will never leave on his own. He really should be impeached.
You people are racists.
do not hate on Obama! this is great news cuz it shows Obama will have easy win this year. it will be good to have our same Commander in place for war in Iran. Obama is much more good warrior then Romeny.