Replies to post #125221 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[PegnVA]

You betcha!

[StephanieVanbryce]

4Kismet posted this tonight - Watchdog Group Says Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Appears to Have 'Knowingly and Willfully' Violated Rule of Law for Twenty Years by Falsifying Disclosure Forms

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/watchdog-group-says-supreme-court-justice-clarence-thomas-appears-to-have-knowingly-and-willfully-violated-rule-of-law-for-twenty-years-by-falsifying-disclosure-forms-115002859.html

AND here is her entire POST with MUCH MORE and MORE LINKS..

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=59431337

.......Thanks 4Kismet for staying on top of this!

[StephanieVanbryce]

Justice Thomas’s wife Virginia Thomas now a lobbyist

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/48812.html

..

[StephanieVanbryce]

Democrats: Justice Thomas should recuse himself in healthcare reform case

By Michael O'Brien - 02/09/11 11:10 AM ET

A group of 73 House Democrats on Wednesday demanded U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recuse himself from any case examining the constitutionality of healthcare reform.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) and 72 other colleagues wrote Thomas on Wednesday to ask him to sit out any Supreme Court review of President Obama's healthcare law, citing the work by Thomas's wife on behalf of efforts opposing that healthcare law.

"As members of Congress, we were surprised by recent revelations of your financial ties to leading organizations dedicated to lobbying against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," the Democrats wrote. "We write today to respectfully ask that you maintain the integrity of this court and recuse yourself from any deliberations on the constitutionality of this act."

The letter reflects the growing political gamesmanship on both sides of the aisle in regard to court challenges to healthcare reform.

For instance, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has called for Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself in similar cases. Kagan had worked in the Obama administration as solicitor general, and Hatch argued this would bias her in any consideration of the healthcare law. [ http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/141897-hatch-kagan-should-recuse-herself-from-any-challenge-to-healthcare ]

The legal challenges to the new healthcare law are ultimately expected to reach the high court. Two federal district courts have upheld healthcare reform as constitutional, while two courts have struck it down, most recently a federal judge in Florida, who threw out the entire law over concerns about the provision requiring all individuals to have health insurance, the so-called "individual mandate."

The efforts by the Democrats — and by Hatch — would presumably tip the balance on the Supreme Court going into any hearing about the law. The court is seen as leaning conservative, with a 5-4 majority, though Justice Anthony Kennedy is often seen as a potential swing vote.

The Democrats' demand in this instance is based on concerns about the political advocacy conducted by Ginny Thomas, a Tea Party and conservative activist. Mrs. Thomas advertises herself as a lobbyist for "clients who want a particular decision — they want to overturn health care reform," the Democrats said.

"Given these facts, there is a strong conflict between the Thomas household’s financial gain through your spouse’s activities and your role as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court," they wrote. "We urge you to recuse yourself from this case."

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/142969-democrats-justice-thomas-should-recuse-himself-in-healthcare-reform-case

[StephanieVanbryce]

www.ProtectOurElections.org Files Formal Complaints to Disbar and Prosecute Clarence Thomas for 20 Years
of False Statements, Financial Conflicts of Interest, and Using His Decisions on the Supreme Court to Enrich His Wife

Pressure Building On Department Of Justice To Take Action

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Yesterday, February 8, 2011, ProtectOurElections.org filed two formal complaints against Justice Clarence Thomas for falsifying 20 years of financial disclosure statements, engaging in financial conflicts of interests, and using his decisions on the Supreme Court to enrich his wife. The first complaint, filed with the Washington D.C. Bar Disciplinary Committee, seeks Justice Thomas' disbarment. It has 19 exhibits and can be viewed at http://www.velvetrevolution.us/images/Clarence_Thomas_Bar_Complaint.pdf.

The group's attorney and spokesman Kevin Zeese wrote in the Bar Complaint, "Justice Thomas violated the Rules of Professional Conduct: he committed crimes that carry serious jail time if prosecuted, he acted in a untrustworthy manner, his conduct involved dishonesty, deceit and misrepresentation, and he engaged in conduct that seriously interfered with the administration of justice."

The second complaint, filed with the Department of Justice Public Integrity Section, seeks criminal prosecution for Justice Thomas' conduct. It can be viewed at http://www.velvetrevolution.us/images/Clarence_Thomas_Public_Integrity_Complaint.pdf. In that second complaint, Mr. Zeese, wrote, "Justice Thomas committed at least 20 crimes by falsifying 20 financial disclosure forms in order to hide his wife's employers and to enrich himself and his family. The crimes he committed carry serious jail time if prosecuted, and those and similar false statement crimes have been prosecuted against many others in the past without allowance for immunity by amendment. ... We urge you to treat Justice Thomas with 'Equal Justice Under Law' as stated above the main portico of the Supreme Court building. That means he should not get special treatment by virtue of his position but instead should be charged and prosecuted for his 20 years of false statements which benefitted him and his wife while harming those who appeared before him, the institution of the Supreme Court, and the public's confidence in the rule of law."

The complaints assert that Justice Thomas knowingly and willfully withheld the information about his wife's employment in order to keep litigants from using that information to ask that he be disqualified from their cases for bias and conflict of interest. Virginia Thomas worked for the conservative Heritage Foundation earning at least $600,000, which Justice Thomas denied on his disclosure forms. The Heritage Foundation benefitted from Justice Thomas' decisions, including the controversial Citizens United decision, which allowed organizations such as the Heritage Foundation to raise unlimited funds to help conservative candidates. In the wake of that decision, Mrs. Thomas launched her own organization, Liberty Central, and raised over $550,000 in secret money. She then supposedly left that organization in November 2010 following a scandal involving an inappropriate telephone call to Anita Hill, only to start another organization called Liberty Consulting Inc. within the past month.

On February 7, 2011, staff from ProtectOurElections.org tried to interview Mrs. Thomas at the office suite address listed on her Liberty Consulting website but it turned out to be a UPS Store with "Suite 302" being a mailbox. That mailbox is the same address listed on her Liberty Central IRS 990 form. ProtectOurElections.org posted a video on YouTube about the encounter showing UPS Store staff asking them to leave when they began inquiring about Mrs. Thomas' office. The video can be viewed at

.

The two complaints about Justice Thomas' conduct have added pressure on the Department of Justice to act quickly to deal with this growing scandal. Just yesterday, Common Cause members flooded the DOJ switchboard demanding that Attorney General Holder meet with Common Cause to discuss vacating the Citizens United decision because of the conflict of interest. http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=4741359 Today, AlterNet reporter Nancy Goldstein reported that Justice Thomas is breaking the law while his wife shills for conservatives. http://www.alternet.org/news/149833/why_does_clarence_thomas_get_away_with_breaking_the_law,_as_his_wife_shills_for_wealthy_right-wingers

And thousands of citizens have signed the two petitions on www.ProtectOurElections.org asking the House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against Justice Thomas http://www.velvetrevolution.us/petitions/pnum1067.php and the Department of Justice to prosecute him. http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/prosecute_clarence_thomas/

"Justice Thomas must be held accountable because no one, especially a Supreme Court justice, is above the law," said Mr. Zeese. "Over the past several weeks, we have seen people rise up in the Middle East because those in power corruptly used their positions to enrich themselves, their wives and families. But our country is supposed to be different and based on the rule of law and equal justice. Therefore, we are insisting that all the tools available to deal with corruption by Justice Thomas be used to root out that corruption. The Justice Department must act now."

SOURCE www.ProtectOurElections.org

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wwwprotectourelectionsorg-files-formal-complaints-to-disbar-and-prosecute-clarence-thomas-for-20-years-of-false-statements-financial-conflicts-of-interest-and-using-his-decisions-on-the-supreme-court-to-enrich-his-wife-115632009.html

[StephanieVanbryce]

Friendship of Justice and Magnate Puts Focus on Ethics


Justice Clarence Thomas was given a $15,000 bust of Lincoln in 2001 by a group for which a friend is a trustee.


Algernon Varn, whose grandfather once ran a seafood cannery where Justice Clarence Thomas's mother worked, on the
site of the old cannery. Mr. Varn said Justice Thomas put him in touch with a buyer to restore the property and build a museum.

By MIKE McINTIRE June 18, 2011

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.

In several instances, news reports of Mr. Crow’s largess provoked controversy and questions, adding fuel to a rising debate about Supreme Court ethics. But Mr. Crow’s financing of the museum, his largest such act of generosity, previously unreported, raises the sharpest questions yet — both about Justice Thomas’s extrajudicial activities and about the extent to which the justices should remain exempt from the code of conduct for federal judges.

Although the Supreme Court is not bound by the code, justices have said they adhere to it. Legal ethicists differed on whether Justice Thomas’s dealings with Mr. Crow pose a problem under the code. But they agreed that one facet of the relationship was both unusual and important in weighing any ethical implications: Justice Thomas’s role in Mr. Crow’s donation for the museum.

The code says judges “should not personally participate” in raising money for charitable endeavors, out of concern that donors might feel pressured to give or entitled to favorable treatment from the judge. In addition, judges are not even supposed to know who donates to projects honoring them.

While the nonprofit Pin Point museum is not intended to honor Justice Thomas, people involved in the project said his role in the community’s history would inevitably be part of it, and he participated in a documentary film that is to accompany the exhibits.

Deborah L. Rhode, a Stanford University law professor who has called for stricter ethics rules for Supreme Court justices, said Justice Thomas “should not be directly involved in fund-raising activities, no matter how worthy they are or whether he’s being centrally honored by the museum.”

On the other hand, the restriction on fund-raising is primarily meant to deter judges from using their position to pressure donors, as opposed to relying on “a rich friend” like Mr. Crow, said Ronald D. Rotunda, who teaches legal ethics at Chapman University in California.

“I don’t think I could say it’s unethical,” he said. “It’s just a very peculiar situation.”

Justice Thomas, through a Supreme Court spokeswoman, declined to respond to a detailed set of questions submitted by The New York Times. Mr. Crow also would not comment.

Supreme Court ethics have been under increasing scrutiny, largely because of the activities of Justice Thomas and Ms. Thomas, whose group, Liberty Central, opposed President Obama’s health care overhaul — an issue likely to wind up before the court. Mr. Crow’s donation to Liberty Central was reported by Politico.

In January, the liberal advocacy organization Common Cause asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Justices Thomas and Antonin Scalia should have recused themselves from last year’s Citizens United campaign finance case because they had attended a political retreat organized by the billionaire Koch brothers, who support groups that stood to benefit from the court’s decision.

A month later, more than 100 law professors asked Congress to extend to Supreme Court justices the ethics code that applies to other federal judges, and a bill addressing the issue was introduced.

It is not unusual for justices to accept gifts or take part in outside activities, some with political overtones.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer has attended Renaissance Weekend, a retreat for politicians, artists and media personalities that is a favorite of Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg participated in a symposium sponsored by the National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, and a philanthropic foundation once tried to give her a $100,000 achievement award. She instructed that the money be given to charity.

But in the case of Justice Thomas and his dealings with Mr. Crow, the ethical complications appear more complex.

Conservative Ties

Mr. Crow, 61, manages the real estate and investment businesses founded by his late father, Trammell Crow, once the largest landlord in the United States. The Crow family portfolio is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and includes investments in hotels, medical facilities, public equities and hedge funds.

A friend of the Bush family, Mr. Crow is a trustee of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation and has donated close to $5 million to Republican campaigns and conservative groups. Among his contributions were $100,000 to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group formed to attack the Vietnam War record of Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, and $500,000 to an organization that ran advertisements urging the confirmation of President George W. Bush’s nominees to the Supreme Court.

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.

“When it came time to file a lawsuit,” he said, “A.E.I. had no role in doing that.”

Coming Up With a Plan . . .continued


There's a bit more..it's worth finishing
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/us/politics/19thomas.html?emc=na