Bizarre, Politics, Society

Wife of Clarence Thomas Organizes Tea Party Group

Virginia Thomas, wife of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, forms tea party group. Virginia Thomas told a recent panel “I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you.” She specifically went on to say that she was going to work against Obama’s “hard-left agenda.” It is an association that will likely add to a further patina of politics surrounding the Court, which just ruled in favor of conservative groups in the Citizens United case. I will be discussing this story tonight on Countdown.

There is, of course, no limitation on the spouses of justices in terms of political activities. However, historically spouses have avoided such entanglements in deference to the neutral role that their spouses are expected to perform on the Court. The involvement in such a raw political organization is, well, injudicious.

I did not share the outrage of some when Virginia Thomas worked for Heritage Foundation. Working for an conservative legal group is a bit different from working in a political organization committed to fighting the President’s policies. Once again, she is well within her rights to do so, but most spouses have avoided such a high-profile political role. This why it is so rare to ever hear of a controversy involving a justice’s spouse.

Worse yet, her group will be scoring members of Congress and accepting donations from corporations. This could raise recusal issues in future cases for Clarence Thomas, but he is unlikely to see his wife’s involvement as a recusal matter unless her group is directly involved in a case.

Ironically, Thomas said he does not attend the State of the Union because it is to “partisan.” He will not be married to one such partisan whose group will actively seek to oppose the President and democratic members.
For the Thomas story, click here.

118 thoughts on “Wife of Clarence Thomas Organizes Tea Party Group”

  1. As Elaine M noted, teabaggers allege to decry “big government”. Let’s take a gander at the things that the elements which created the “big government” just since 2000. It’s necessary to remember that GWBush came into office with a projected budget surplus over the ensuing ten years.

    Tax cuts: Alan Greenspan appeared before Congress claiming it nearly immoral for the government to have or even project such high surplusses and that tax cuts were necessary. The Dem’s plan called for $900B in cuts of which 70% or more went to those earning under less than $250K. It also included a $300B fund to be set aside for an economic downturn or national disaster. These rejected in favor of a $1.7T GOP plan with no financial safety net. In the GOP plan, roughly 67% of the cuts went to those making over $250K. The Dems proposed the GOP plan contain a trigger to delay or forego cuts if a recession hit. That was flatly rejected as well.

    TSA: After the attacks on 9/11, the government created Homeland Security and absorbed all baggage inspection functions. Do the teabaggers want this handled in some other way? Private companies as before? Out sourced to Dubai as GWB’s admin proposed for seaport security? That $300B fund the Dems proposed sure would have gone a long way to mitigate the economic impact of the national disaster it was proposed to help with.

    Medicare Part D: Any of those teabaggers over 65 wanna give up their perscription drug plan or would they rather Obama fix the part the GOP plan screwed them on where after $5000, you’re on your own?

    Wars: Bush’s wars couldn’t have been conducted more fiscally irresponsibly if they tried. Oh wait, there’s every reason to believe they DID try to conduct the most expensive, debt/deficit damaging war possible. The bill would have been less had Bush completed the job in Afghan and not forced his and Cheney’s personal vendettas against Hussein.

    The entire effort was funded with borrowed money, kept hidden from the public until 2007 and the extensive use of private, for-profit contractors versus troops as well as no-bid contracts raised the cost of the wars far beyond what was necessary. There was never an attempt or even a discussion about taxing folks to pay for the effort. A stop-loss on the ’01 and ’03 tax cuts, as proposed by the Dems and rejected by the GOP would have lessened that debt as well.

    GOP vs Americans: We’ve seen these same “anti-big government” sentiments before. It was behind the anti-seat belt sentiment and the anti-OSHA regulations. Do the millions of lives and injuries saved by just these two big government intrusions not matter to teabaggers? Are they now so willing to be callous with more American lives?

    So, we have the teabaggers’ allies, the GOP, guilty of fiscal mis-management (deliberate in my opinion), dramatically increasing the size of government, the debt and deficits and standing opposed to saving Americans’ lives and they think we should listen to THEM? They propose that the middle class and the uninsured should continue to suffer in the current healthcare insurance environment because of GOP incompetence. That’s just BS!

    Sorry for the extreme length, but I just had to get all that off my chest.

  2. AY I think the Supreme Court changed after Bush v Gore. It seems that many of the justices are not the least bit shy about showing their republican biases. They could care less about propriety.

  4. Is it coincidence of conscience or are people missing the main part or maybe I am. But isn’t the highest court responsible for not showing the appearance of impropriety?

    Does not the Citizen decision have all the ear marks of impropriety of a decision that her husband decided which benefited her directly? But then again, to spend 75 million for a Sct seat in Alabama but do you expect.

  5. Who is Judge Reinhardt married to? Oh yeah, for the last 20 years, the head of the ACLU in SoCal. Hardly political.

  6. Byron–

    “While Tom Daschle was a US senator his wife was a paid lobbyist, while Alan Greenspan was Fed Chairman his wife was a liberal anchor for CBS (maybe he took her advice) and on and on”

    Alan Greenspan is a conservative.

    Hadassah Lieberman has been a lobbyist for healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. I’d bet there are many other spouses of members of Congress who are/have been lobbyists. We regular folks don’t stand a chance.

    ***************

    Lady Liberty,

    I don’t think Obama’s “healthcare push” goes far enough. There’s no public option.

    The number one reason people declare bankruptcy in our country is because they have no health insurance or because their health insurance isn’t adequate. We most definitely need healthcare reform! I doubt that the bill the Congress may pass will provide all the reform that is needed.

    I wish the tea partiers would have held protests against “big government” starting a preemptive war in Iraq and spending billions/trillions of dollars there.

  7. Dredd:

    “The pimp’s reward was to get a federal indictment when he got caught bugging the office of the senator in broad daylight.”

    The silence has been deafining on this subject,I think he has heard those two scarey words from his lawyers”serious charges”

  12. lADY lIBERTY:

    “We mobilized because we knew what Obama was planning (we have been proven right by this desperate anti-public opinion healthcare push).”

    ***************

    You’re not patriots; you’re swamis. Like so many of your dogmatic brethren you profess to know what you cannot know, and then expect he rest of us to tag blithely along on your fools errand. The ignorance and homogeneity of the tea partiers is now legendary. The next thing you know, you’ll be back to your hoods, bonfires, and the occasional lynching. The KKK was for small government and individual too–just exclusively for white people.

  13. BTW,Lady Liberty,it helps to know your “roots”:
    “Tea is a small plant, much like a shrub. Look at the Wikipedia article. It is not grown in the united States. Perhaps there are some small plantations in Hawaii but I have never heard of them.Here are some tea growing countries:
    * India
    * China
    * Sri Lanka
    * Japan
    * Kenya
    * Turkey
    * Indonesia
    * Vietnam
    * Argentina
    * Tanzania
    * Taiwan
    * Malawi
    * Zimbabwe”

  14. We can always hope.

    “rafflaw
    1, March 15, 2010 at 10:09 pm
    Professor Turley would make a great choice for Supreme Court.”

    John Paul Stevens Speculates On Supreme Court Retirement: ‘Within The Next Three Years,’ Maybe Earlier

    “John Paul Stevens, the longest serving Supreme Court justice speculated about his own retirement from the high court in an interview with Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker.”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/15/john-paul-stevens-specula_n_499790.html

  15. First of all, I am a tea partier because I believe in small government and individual liberty. What works out best for my short term self-interest has nothing to do for it. I jumped at the chance to meet other liberty-minded individuals and spread our small government message last tax day. I don’t know why modern liberals instead on accusing the movement of being astroturf. We are not led by Sarah Palin or this “AFP.” We mobilized because we knew what Obama was planning (we have been proven right by this desperate anti-public opinion healthcare push).

  16. Byron @5:35pm: “Let’s just…make a law that if you are part of the government…your spouse can’t be involved in an activity…”

    You don’t see a big difference between her being “involved” versus forming her own Tea Party group?
    Please reread the Professor’s post and note all the comments.

    **********************

    Lady Liberty @8:56pm: “but tea partiers by and large, support a strict interpretation of the Constitution…they don’t take liberties…”

    Please reread Professor Turley’s post and all above.

    Lady L.,

    I am so sorry you have been blinded (HT Mespo!) Maybe it was done by the “Billionaires For Hate” AKA The Americans for Prosperity.

    The AFP organized the first “tea party protests” shortly after President Obama’s inaugural; fearing the potential repeal of the Bush tax cuts, which disproportionately favored the wealthy, at the expense of the middle class and poor.

    Their first big rally was on April 15th 2009, protesting “Obama’s Socialism.” Think back, you remember, all those “silly hat” people who were recruited to protest that day, even though the tax they owed had not changed, because the tax rate had been set by Bush and Congress, years before President Obama even came into office; and for the majority of taxpayers in 2010 the rates would stay the same, or go down under Mr. Obama’s new tax plan.

    I say the majority because most of the tea party members make less than $125,000; which is important in this narrative, because there just aren’t enough millionaires and billionaires to take to the streets, as they prefer to pay their lobbyist to do their leg work; but I digress.

    The tea party protests needed numbers/bodies, so the “leaders” very actively recruited the “right wing lunatic fringe” (you know who they are) and when they were called out on their “rhetoric” (you know what they said) the AFP and other tea party leaders refused to disavow them.

    So, the Tea Party Movement has a problem, as anyone who follows them can see, they are in fact Extremists!

    Enter, Ms. Virginia Thomas, “an ordinary citizen, from Omaha, Neb., who just might have a chance to preserve liberty, along with you and other people like you” announcing her intention to form and lead her very own tea party faction.

    How very “grassroots” of her!

    That phrase “like you” is very telling because she is not at all “like you” and that fact alone is going to make her a lot of moola!

    Yes, there is still even more money to be made, even after factoring in all the other grifters and repugs; like Dick Armey’s Freedomworks, Newt’s PAC, and Sister Sarah’s speeches, that was some chunk of change Palin was paid to speak at the first National Teabaggers Convention etc. etc.

    You see Ms. Thomas, is a unique “teabagger” who can never be accused of being a racist; though all will know she is still an uber “classist” and that will make all the difference!

    So Lady Liberty, join your tea party protests, and know that in all likelihood “you and others like you” are working against your own best interests. Proclaim, your proud “righteous” moniker “teabagger” until you see the light, wake up, and find that you’ve been used.

    For alas, yes in fact, “teabagging” is just for nuts!

  17. I think the problem here is the idea that a wife of a Supreme Court Justice is publicly rallying a group that seems to be calling for armed revolution, or at least is not distancing itself from those members of its party that are making public statements to that effect. I’m not sure a Supreme Court Justices wife should be out in public rallying the cause of a group that seems bent on treason.

    1. Nal:

      I will only accept if you promise to editing all of my opinions. Those typos could be quite embarrassing!

Comments are closed.