Tag Archives: Clarence Thomas

legal news

SCOTUS loses ‘trust’?

Think of the irony of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggesting that the nation’s highest court has lost “trust” because someone leaked a draft document that hints that the court is poised to overturn a landmark ruling that legalized abortion in this country.

Justice Thomas spoke to a judicial conference in Dallas. “When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s like kind of an infidelity that you can explain it, but you can’t undo it,” he said.

Wow!

Clarence Thomas says Supreme Court changed by leak of draft abortion opinion (msn.com)

Excuse me for laughing out loud. The court also lost trust when one of its members, Justice Thomas, chose to take part in a ruling involving Donald Trump’s role in the 1/6 insurrection. Ginni Thomas, wife of the justice, is an avid Trumpkin and took part at the start of the demonstration that turned into an assault on our democracy on 1/6.

I believe Thomas should resign from the court. He won’t do the right thing. The next right thing would be to recuse himself from any court matter related to the former POTUS’s effort to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. He won’t do that, either.

Oh, no. Instead, he is going to pontificate about the court losing the trust of the people because someone decided to leak a draft opinion that sets up a monumental battle between pro-abortion rights Americans and those who would make it a crime for a woman to decide to terminate a pregnancy.

Trust? Clarence Thomas has no moral standing to talk about whether the Supreme Court has lost it. Whatever loss it has suffered is due largely because of the associate justice himself.

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legal news

SCOTUS needs ethics rules

The United States Supreme Court has existed since the founding of the Republic and it has functioned — more or less seamlessly — without needing a policy that lays down ethics requirements for the individuals who interpret the constitutionality of our federal laws.

It damn sure needs one. Justice Clarence Thomas clear and unequivocal conflict of interest involving his participation in decisions involving the 1/6 insurrection have demonstrated the need for the high court to set forth ethics boundaries that justices should never cross.

The Supreme Court is the only federal judicial panel that doesn’t have an ethics policy on the books.

Thomas’s wife, Virginia, is a right-wing political activist who reportedly lobbied the White House chief of staff to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Mrs. Thomas believes the election was “stolen” from Donald J. Trump and has made no effort to conceal her belief in the nut-job conspiracies that continue to thrash around over The Big Lie.

Justice Thomas, meanwhile, has continued to hear cases involving The Big Lie, refusing to recuse himself from any discussion, deliberation and decision-making involving 1/6.

The SCOTUS has no rule prohibiting the justice — the longest-serving member of the court — from taking part. Good grief, man! Is there no clearer demonstration of Justice Thomas’s bias on this matter? The court voted 8 to 1 to require The Donald to turn his presidential papers over to the 1/6 House committee; Justice Thomas cast the only vote in dissent.

Justice Thomas simply needs to resign. Short of a resignation, he needs to recuse himself from anything to do with the insurrection.

And the court should establish a hard-and-fast policy regarding ethical conduct. It can start by demanding that no justice can participate in decisions on cases involving their spouse!

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Recusal or resignation?

Oh, how I wish U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas would just leave the nation’s highest court and let others on the panel with a semblance of ethics and an understanding of the law make these critical decisions.

He likely won’t, given that he is defiant in the extreme to concerns about whether he is guilty of grievous conflicts of interest. That leaves recusal. Justice Clarence Thomas needs to declare right now — at this very minute — that he will not take part in any deliberation or decision involving the 1/6 insurrection.

Thomas’s wife, Ginni, is a right-wing political activist who reportedly lobbied the White House to do whatever it could to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which Donald Trump lost to Joseph Biden. Justice Thomas has failed to recuse himself. He has failed to recognize the obvious conflict of interest in his participation in anything to do with the 1/6 insurrection, which involved his wife in a direct manner.

Justice Thomas already has revealed his bias by casting the lone vote to allow The Donald to block sending presidential papers to the 1/6 House committee.

I cannot think of a more obvious conflict of interest than what we are witnessing in real time with Justice and Mrs. Thomas.

If he won’t quit the court, then for God’s sake he needs to recuse himself from any deliberation involving the insurrection. Or … Chief Justice John Roberts needs to tell him, “Clarence, we have a serious problem … ” and then suggest to him that he recuse himself.

The Supreme Court is the only federal court that lacks a code of ethics. It is a self-policing body.

I still want Clarence Thomas to resign from the nation’s highest court. If he won’t, then by all means — if you “love the law” as you say you do — then just stay the hell away from these decisions involving the insurrection.

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legal news

How about impeachment?

Now that I am on the record calling for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign, let’s look briefly at another option available to those of us who value judicial integrity: impeachment.

I fear impeaching the justice would produce the same result as the two impeachments of Donald Trump: He would escape conviction by a U.S. Senate that lacks sufficient Republican belief in doing the right thing.

A brief review: Thomas’s wife, Ginni, is a political activist who allegedly sent numerous text messages to the White House chief of staff urging him to overturn the 2020 presidential election result that elected Joe Biden. Trump has fought against Biden’s free, fair and legal election by fomenting The Big Lie about phony “widespread voter fraud.” Ginni Thomas in league with Trump, who lost a Supreme Court vote on whether he could claim “executive privilege” by denying the House committee looking into the 1/6 insurrection access to his presidential documents. The court voted 8-1 against Trump; the lone dissent came from Clarence Thomas.

Do you get where I’m going here?

If he won’t quit, then perhaps the House could impeach him and bring a torrent of publicity on how Thomas’s lack of integrity has compromised the SCOTUS. The Senate won’t convict him, but the bad pub might be sufficient for Thomas to call it quits and perhaps spare the court on which he is now its senior member additional embarrassment and shame.

Hey, it’s just a thought.

I still believe Justice Thomas needs to resign.

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legal news

Resign, Justice Thomas!

All right, enough is enough! I have seen and heard all I need to see and hear about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s obvious conflicts of interest involving Donald J. Trump, his own wife Ginni and The Big Lie that Trump has pitched contending there was “widespread voter fraud” during the 2020 presidential election.

Justice Thomas needs to resign from the Supreme Court if only to enable his wife to continue her political activism and to avoid further damaging the integrity of the court on which he has served for more than three decades.

Go home, Mr. Justice!

I say this without any reservation. It is clear to me that Ginni Thomas’s activism has compromised her husband’s role as a supposed “impartial” arbiter of cases that come before the court. Some of them have involved The Donald’s preposterous claims of executive privilege. Justice Thomas, I need to remind everyone, was the lone dissenting vote against The Donald’s claim of executive privilege as he sought to prevent the National Archives from handing over presidential documents to the House select committee examining the 1/6 insurrection/riot. Why is that significant? Because Ginni Thomas attended the damn rally on The Ellipse on that day, but left before it got totally out of hand.

Now we hear from credible media reports that Ginni Thomas pushed, prodded and pressured White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to do all he could to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which The Donald lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

She did all this and then went home at night to the same residence she shares with an associate Supreme Court justice. How in the name of juris prudence can this be dismissed? How is that not a direct conflict of interest? How does Justice Thomas explain his ghastly vote to grant executive privilege to Trump when every lower court has ruled against it — along with all eight of his SCOTUS colleagues?

I have had enough of this charade being perpetrated on Americans by the most senior member of the nation’s highest court.

Get the hell out of office, Justice Thomas!

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DC riot

Conflict of interest?

Imagine for a moment a conversation that might have occurred in the home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Virginia.

Justice Thomas: Hi, Ginni. How did your day go?

Ginni Thomas: Oh, fine, Clarence. I attended a Donald Trump rally today on the Ellipse. I left early before the crap hit the fan.

CT: Oh, really? What happened?

GT: The president told the crowd to “fight like hell” to “take back the government.” The crowd got excited and stormed the Capitol Building. It did all kinds of damage.

CT: Oh, yeah. I heard about that. I also heard something about the president seeking to claim he had “executive privilege,” and that it’s OK for him to do such a thing because, after all, he’s the president.

GT: You bet he does! Furthermore, I believe the privilege claim extends beyond the time he’s in office. I am sure you agree.

CT: Absolutely, I agree, honey. Anything you say is OK with me.

GT: Oh, and how would you vote if the issue were to come before the court? Would you stand with me … and with the president?

CT: Of course I would! No problem there.

***

Therein might lie a problem for Justice Thomas, who eventually did cast the lone vote upholding Donald Trump’s specious claim of executive privilege in his failed fight to prevent the National Archives from releasing his presidential papers to the 1/6 House committee that demanded them.

Do I know such a conversation took place in the Thomas home? Absolutely not! However, it doesn’t stretch anything beyond all reasonable doubt that something akin to that chat might have occurred.

And to think that Justice Thomas recently lamented that the Supreme Court is becoming “too political.” Yeah, no kiddin’.

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national news

Conflict of interest? Hmm?

Good, ever-lovin’ grief. What in the world does one make of this acknowledgement from the wife of a sitting associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, that she attended a Donald Trump rally on 1/6 before rally attendees decided to storm Capitol Hill in that insane insurrection against the federal government?

I believe we have a serious breach of ethics steeped in conflict of interest.

The admission comes from Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas. Mrs. Thomas stood in the crowd on the Ellipse that day prior to The Donald’s speech. She said she left because she got cold. Then all hell broke loose.

Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, says she went to January 6 rally before Capitol assault – CBS News

Thomas’s political activism is well-known. She is a far-right believer in causes. She is an ardent political supporter of The Donald.

She also is married to one of the nine justices who voted 8-1 to disallow The Donald’s claim of executive privilege in an effort to keep him from releasing documents to the House committee examining the 1/6 riot; the document release was ordered by the National Archives.

Who cast the dissenting vote? None other than Justice Thomas?

I am putting together 2 plus 2 and I keep coming with up 4. Which is my way of saying that Ginni Thomas’s involvement with the 1/6 mob must have something to do with the way her husband came down on a key judicial decision.

This dot-connection stinks. It wreaks.

If I were speaker of the House of Representatives, I likely would be considering articles of impeachment against Justice Thomas. Not that they would result in his being removed from the nation’s highest court.

Too many Republican members of Congress have lost their spine.

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legal news

Impeach the justice!

Here’s a thought for you to ponder. It doesn’t come from me exclusively, but I read about it and have embraced it as a potential game-changer for the American judicial system.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas could be impeached by Congress because of his wife’s right-wing activism and the justice’s refusal to recuse himself from cases in which she is involved directly.

Ginni Thomas is a right-wing zealot. She has written scathing essays excoriating the 1/6 House committee examining the insurrection that sought to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

She and her hubby talk openly with each other about their jobs and their duties. So, how in the world does Justice Thomas vote on matters involving Ginni Thomas’s political activism?

Case in point: The court voted recently 8-1 to require Donald Trump to turn over documents to the House select committee looking into Trump’s role in inciting the riot. The lone dissent? It came from Clarence Thomas.

Good grief, man. Justice Thomas has no business sitting in on arguments involving anything regarding this issue. His wife has disqualified him in the eyes of many millions of Americans, including mine.

https://newrepublic.com/article/165118/clarence-thomas-impeachment-case-democrats

Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, makes the case that Clarence Thomas is ripe for an impeachment action. What’s more, there needs to be ethical rules set up to govern the Supreme Court, the only court in America that doesn’t have any such regulatory authority watching over its conduct.

I happen to agree with him, that Clarence Thomas has disgraced himself and the nation’s highest court.

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Uncategorized

Conflict of interest … anyone?

What am I missing here? Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenting vote on the high court that decided the National Archives must release hundreds of pages from Donald Trump’s files to the House select committee investigating the 1/6 insurrection.

Hmm. I thought about that dissent. I wasn’t surprised, given Justice Thomas’s rigid right-wing credentials.

Oh, but wait! Then came this bit of news. Ginni Thomas, the wife of the justice, is an ardent political activist who rails constantly against the 2020 presidential election. She is known to be a fervent supporter of the disgraced, twice-impeached former president. She just recently launched into a scathing attack on the 1/6 committee, challenging its legitimacy and its authority to look where it is looking.

So, then comes the decision from the highest court in the land. All the other justices, conservatives and liberals — including the three people nominated by Donald Trump — voted to require the documents to end up in the committee’s files.

Justice Thomas was the lone dissent. Is there a conflict of interest that the justice is ignoring?

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Donald Trump, national news

2020 could produce The (Actual) Year of the Woman

The Year of the Woman was thought to be 1992.

Clarence Thomas had to fend off allegations of sexual harassment from Anita Hill at his U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The controversy produced an outcry from those who said Hill was treated badly by the all-male U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

So the next presidential election was thought to produce an electoral backlash against President Bush, who lost his re-election bid to Bill Clinton.

Here we are now, 27 years later and we’re going to see another Year of the Woman. Indeed, more women than men so far have announced their candidacies for president of the United States. Why do you suppose is bringing out all these women who want to succeed Donald Trump as president?

Gosh, it might be that Trump has denigrated women since the moment he announced his presidential candidacy in 2015. It might be the way he has acknowledged how his status as a “celebrity” and a “star” allowed him to grab women by their genital area.

The plethora of female candidates for POTUS might be a result of the #MeToo movement that has brought serious national attention to the way women have been dismissed and disrespected — and sexually assaulted — by men in power.

The Year of the Woman in 1992 was a preliminary event to what well might be the main event coming up in 2020.