Tag Archives: Clarence Thomas

legal news

Come clean, Mr. Justice … or else!

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should be in a world of hurt right now, but he isn’t. Not by a long shot.

Why? Because the court on which he has served since 1991 has no rules governing its members’ conduct.

Oh, my … that needs to change!

It has been revealed that Thomas accepted ritzy travel gifts from a rich Republican donor, Harlan Crow of Texas, without reporting them to authorities. Thomas  now says he was advised by others that he didn’t need to do such a thing and, of course, accepting such extravagant gifts did nothing to influence his rulings on political matters.

Democrats are outraged over these findings. They have good reason to be angry. They also are a bit dispirited because they have few legislative options in Congress available to them.

Thomas is a walking case of judicial hypocrisy. The high court demands that lower courts set strict ethical standards and requires them to enforce them strictly. The SCOTUS, though, is immune from such protection. Justices are free to flout the rules whenever they please. Clarence Thomas is the worst of the bunch.

He needs to be impeached by Congress and put on trial for his ethical transgressions. Will it happen? Hah! Hardly.

The man is a disgrace to the court and to the nation.

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This ain’t Wal-Mart, Mr. Justice

Clarence Thomas once declared he is favors RVs and Wal-Mart parking lots over luxury vacation retreats.

He said he comes from “simple stock.”

Oh, really, Mr. Supreme Court Justice? How does he explain the luxurious vacations he and his wife, Ginni, took on the dime of a wealthy Republican donor? Well, he isn’t talking because the Supreme Court doesn’t have any ethics rules for justices to follow.

Justice Thomas is a hypocrite of the lowest order. He needs to be resign from the court. The House ought to impeach him. The Senate ought to try him and he ought to be removed from the court.

Recall, too, how Justice Thomas voted against rules sanctioning the 45th POTUS after it was revealed that Ginni Thomas is a vocal supporter of The Big Lie about the 2020 election, which she contends was “strolen” from the ex-POTUS.

Good grief! This baloney has got to stop.

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legal news

SCOTUS needs ethics rules

Leadership by example is the best kind of leadership I can find among those in position to assume positions that enable them to call the cadence for others to follow.

Why, then, doesn’t the nation’s highest court have a code of ethics and a strong enforcement policy in case the men and women who serve on that court mess up?

The U.S. Supreme Court is being drawn into the proverbial crosshairs of those who believe the highest court in the nation is failing itself and the judicial system by not leading by example.

Justices on the court have engaged in some mighty nasty side hustles of late. My favorite, of course, is Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni, being involved in the MAGA movement to overturn the 2020 presidential election. It coincides with Justice Thomas being the only member of the nine-justice court to demand that Donald Trump turn over his White House records to the Justice Department during its probe into the 1/6 insurrection.

Coincidence? I think not!

However, there is nothing on the books at the Supreme Court building that enables anyone to take any action against Justice Thomas. There must be some law enacted that compels the court to establish a code of ethics and then ensures that the court punishes its members when they violate that code.

I recently interviewed a candidate for the Farmersville City Council here in Collin County. I asked him to describe his leadership ability. He said he leads “by example,” that he “wouldn’t ask someone to do something I wouldn’t do myself.”

That kind of creed ought to apply to the Supreme Court. It decides on others’ ethics issues all the time. If they break the rules and their case ends up in front of the nine justices, then the court has the power to decide whether a defendant broke the ethics rules.

Furthermore, lower federal and state courts have ethics rules they demand that judges follow. When is it ever OK for the court that oversees those lower courts’ adherence to the rules to be free of following rules of its own?

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legal news

SCOTUS needs ethics rules

What in the name of judicial ethics will it take for the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt a code of ethical behavior that it insists that lower court judges must follow?

Good grief. We now are witnessing two justices on the nation’s highest court violating what would appear to be clear ethical rules governing their conduct as jurists. They both are conservatives, Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh.

Justice Thomas — the court’s longest-serving member — has been ruling routinely on matters related to the 1/6 insurrection even though his wife, Ginni, took part briefly in the rally that day preceding the frontal assault that Donald J. Trump incited. Thomas has been a lonely voice in standing up for Trump while his colleagues — liberal and conservative — have ruled against the ex-POTUS.

I have said many times that Justice Thomas should quit the court, not just recuse himself. His behavior has been nothing short of disgraceful.

Now we hear that Justice Kavanaugh has been keeping company with far-right-wing activists who belong to organizations that have brought matters before the Supreme Court. Huh? What? Are you kidding me?

How in the world does Kavanaugh rule impartially and without bias when he pals around with MAGA types? He cannot do it.

Back to my original point. The Supreme Court has punished jurists for unethical conduct over many decades. And yet the justices are not held to any sort of code of conduct that requires them to follow ethical rules of behavior.

How in the world does the nation’s top judicial bench justify that? How does Chief Justice John Roberts explain that lack of ethical standard? He doesn’t because he can’t.

This lack of ethical code is beyond absurd. It is reprehensible.

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legal news, national news

How did Mrs. Thomas keep this secret?

Ginni Thomas says she never has discussed her political activity with her husband, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

That’s right. Mrs. Thomas would have us believe that Justice Thomas, presumably an alert, learned individual, would be oblivious to her involvement in activities involving the overturning of the 2020 presidential election; Ginni Thomas has made no secret of the notion that she believes the election was stolen from Donald Trump.

So, Justice Thomas, who has taken part in rulings involving the election — who has failed to recuse himself from those decisions — knows nothing about his bride’s involvement. We are asked to believe that?

I believe Ginni Thomas has described Justice Thomas as her “best friend.” I believe “best friends” tell each other, well, everything.

Who in the world is Ginni Thomas kidding? Not me. Not most Americans. My hunch is that her husband knows all about what his wife has been doing when she’s away from the house.

Ginni Thomas told all of this to the House select committee examining the 1/6 insurrection. Chairman Bennie Thompson, as he has done throughout the testimony, swore in Ginni Thomas to “tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth” under threat of criminal prosecution.

Hmmm. What’s next? There could be a perjury accusation on its way.

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legal news, national news

Let her believe that crap, however …

Ginni Thomas is entitled to believe whatever conspiratorial crap fills her seemingly vacuous noggin, such as the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald J. Trump.

We have no evidence of any such theft. Still, that’s reportedly what she told the House select committee examining the 1/6 insurrection.

Fine, lady. You believe whatever you wish.

However, she occupies an unusual place in the world of public figures. She’s not elected or appointed to any high-profile office. She is, though, married to someone who fits that bill: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Here is where Ginni Thomas’s denials of wrongdoing get a little sticky, not to mention stinky. She insisted to the committee that she and her husband don’t ever discuss politics at home. And yet, she would have anyone with half a noodle in their skull believe that she would ignore what she has told others that the 2020 election was the “greatest political heist” in U.S. history.

Is she going to have us believe she never has said anything to her best friend, the man to whom she’s been married for 35 years about what she believes is the greatest act of theft in the history of our nation?

I am not going to accept that Justice and Mrs. Thomas never have talked between themselves about her political life outside the walls of their home.

The issue came to the fore when Justice Thomas cast the lone dissenting vote as the court ruled that he had to turn over his presidential papers to the National Archives. Every other justice ruled that Trump had to cut them loose; not so, Clarence Thomas ruled.

I will stand by my earlier demands that Clarence Thomas resign from the court. He has no business ruling on matters related to the insurrection when he is married to someone who believes The Big Lie about alleged electoral thievery.

And I do not believe for a nanosecond that Ginni Thomas has never said a word about to the justice.

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legal news, national news, political news

Ginni Thomas: dangerous conspirator

Ginni Thomas just keeps distinguishing herself in ways that ought to bring shame not just to her but to her husband … who happens to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Thanks to some intrepid reporting from the Washington Post, we now hear that Ginni Thomas urged Wisconsin Republicans to do all they could to overturn the results of that state’s 2020 presidential election. She wanted them to flip the results from Joe Biden’s column to Donald Trump.

Why is this important? Because … hubby Clarence Thomas continues to rule on cases involving that election, rather than (a) recuse himself from anything having to do with that event or (b) just resigning from the high court altogether, which is my preferred outcome.

It is an utterly disgraceful display of conflict of interest for Justice Thomas to continue ruling on these matters while his wife continues to roil the faithful with idiotic assertions that the election was stolen from Donald Trump.

This matter is so far from being over.

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local news

Contraception is alive, but struggling

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a bill that allows Americans to take measures to avoid pregnancy when they engage in intimate activity.

Sounds, well, rather normal, right? Not if you’re a Texas Republican member of Congress. You see, all GOP House members from Texas voted against this modern, common-sense, rational bill. That means my congressman, Van Taylor of Plano, has something against allowing his constituents to use contraceptives during sex.

What the hell?

Someone has to explain to me the reasons behind the partisan resistance to this measure.

GOP Texans in Congress vote against bill to protect right to contraception | The Texas Tribune

It appears to be some additional blowback to the Supreme Court decision to overturn the law that made abortion legal. Justice Clarence Thomas — the right-wing king of the high court — let it be known that the SCOTUS might next take aim at same-sex marriage and, yes, allowing contraception.

Good grief!

The 50-50 U.S. Senate isn’t likely to follow the House’s lead, given that the GOP side of the divide is wedded to this idiocy that contraception is some sort of Satanic mischief.

Well, it’s as clear as deep blue sky that the Texas Republican congressional delegation has swallowed the swill that now governs GOP policy these days.

They sicken me.

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national news

Lesson in ethics

I watched an interesting bit of ethical correctness play out this week at a city council meeting I was covering for a newspaper for which I work on a freelance basis.

The Farmersville City Council made several appointments Tuesday night to citizen boards and commissions. One of the appointees was Sue Williams, who happens to be married to Terry Williams — who happens to serve on the City Council.

What did Terry Williams do prior to the vote? He motioned to the city attorney and asked to recuse himself from the vote. Terry Williams walked out of the council chambers and the council then voted to put Sue Williams on the board to which she had been nominated.

Why mention this? Ohhhh, because a member of the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t have the semblance of ethical propriety to recuse himself from court matters involving his wife.

Justice Clarence Thomas has voted on matters related to The Big Lie promoted by Donald J. Trump, the defeated and disgraced former president who — to this very moment — hasn’t yet conceded that he lost the 2020 election to President Biden.

The most recent ethical transgression occurred a few weeks ago when the Supreme Court voted 8-1 to require Trump to turn over White House records to the House select committee examining the 1/6 insurrection. Who voted “no”? Justice Thomas.

Why did he vote no? It might have something to with the fact that his wife, Ginni, is an ardent MAGA follower of Trump and a believer in The Big Lie who attended the 1/6 rally but left before it turned into a violent frontal assault on the U.S. government.

Clarence Thomas clearly should take a page from the ethical book followed by a small-town city council member in North Texas.

Whereas Terry Williams saw the potential for conflict of interest were he to vote to accept his wife for a spot on a citizens panel, Clarence Thomas continues to ignore that gigantic blind spot.

Indeed, the justice would solve the problem altogether by resigning from the nation’s highest court — which he clearly should do.

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legal news

Resign, Justice Thomas!

I shall say this as many times as it takes to get my message across: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas needs to resign from the nation’s highest court.

Why? Because his wife, Ginni Thomas, has committed egregious acts that compromise the justice’s ability to adjudicate matters fairly and impartially regarding The Big Lie fomented by Donald J. Trump.

Now we hear that Mrs. Thomas was in frequent email communication with Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, expressing her disgust with the 2020 presidential election result, the one that Trump lost to Joseph Biden.

Are we now going to believe that Ginni Thomas didn’t tell her husband, the justice, of her deepest feelings about the election? And are we now going to believe that Ginni Thomas’s views have no impact on Justice Thomas’s votes favoring Trump in his losing battles to stay in power?

Good grief! Justice Thomas needs to resign from the court. Immediately!

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