PLEASE READ THE REST!! WOULDN'T IT BE GREAT IF THOMAS WERE TO GET KICKED OFF THE COURT?? HE COULD BE IMPEACHED COULDN'T HE??? I hope I have not posted too much of this article.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/03/06/Under-the-US-Supreme-Court-Justices-get-down-get-funky-with-Tea-Party/UPI-13681299401160/WASHINGTON, March 6 (UPI) -- What are conservative Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas thinking? In recent months, they've abandoned any pretense and begun to play a kind of public game of footsie with the Tea Party.
Can anyone imagine the other conservatives who make up the Supreme Court's five-member majority -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito -- being so politically inept?
Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, wife of the U.S. Supreme Court justice, started it all last year by founding a non-profit lobbying and organizing group designed to help Tea Party activists.
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Politico reported last week Thomas was even more upset about criticism directed at him for attending a closed-door meeting of conservative donors sponsored by the Koch brothers.
The private meeting in January 2008 of conservative donors with big wallets was sponsored by the billionaire Koch brothers in Palm Springs, Calif., Politico said. Salon magazine said Thomas benefited from an all-expenses paid trip to the four-day meeting.
Public watchdog Common Cause told the U.S. Justice Department Thomas's connection to the conservative donors should have led him to withdraw from the case Citizens United vs. FEC. The 5-4 ruling (with Thomas in the narrow majority) last year struck down a century of restrictions on political spending by corporations and unions.
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Seventy-four House Democrats sent Thomas a letter saying he should withdraw from future deliberations on healthcare because of his wife's work as a lobbyist for the two conservative organizations, The Washington Post reported.
"The appearance of a conflict of interest merits recusal (withdrawal) under federal law," the letter to Thomas said. "From what we have already seen, the line between your impartiality and you and your wife's financial stake in the overturn of healthcare reform is blurred. Your spouse is advertising herself as a lobbyist who has 'experience and connections' and appeals to clients who want a particular decision -- they want to overturn healthcare reform. Moreover, your failure to disclose Ginny (their spelling) Thomas's receipt of $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, a prominent opponent of healthcare reform, between 2003 and 2007 has raised great concern.
"This is not the first case where your impartiality was in question," the letter said. "As Common Cause points out, you 'participated in secretive political strategy sessions, perhaps while the case was pending, with corporate leaders whose political aims were advanced by the <5-4> decision' on the Citizens United case. Your spouse also received an undisclosed salary paid for by undisclosed donors as CEO of Liberty Central, a 501(c)(4) organization that stood to benefit from the decision and played an active role in the 2010 elections."
Read more:
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/03/06/Under-the-US-Supreme-Court-Justices-get-down-get-funky-with-Tea-Party/UPI-13681299401160/#ixzz1FocAWDpO
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