How To Win Friends And Influence Supreme Court Justices, Part 2

Justice Clarence Thomas, to his credit, has come clean on his wife's employment.

"It has come to my attention that information regarding my spouse's employment required in Part III B of my financial disclosure report was inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions," Thomas wrote in a letter to the committee that handles the reports.

The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 requires all federal judges to disclose their spouse's employer. They are not required to list the total income.

Thomas' formal recognition of the errors follows a complaint filed Friday by the group Common Cause that had expressed concern about the "apparent gaps" in his disclosures as required by law.

"Justice Thomas sits on the highest court of the land, is called upon daily to understand and interpret the most complicated legal issues of our day and makes decisions that affect millions," Common Cause president Bob Edgar said after viewing the amendment. "It is hard to see how he could have misunderstood the simple directions of a federal disclosure form. We find his excuse is implausible."

Thomas amended the reports today noting that his wife, Virginia Thomas, drew income from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank where she worked from 1998 to 2003. Thomas also noted that she worked at Hillsdale College for three months in 2008.

None of Thomas' forms, covering activities through Dec. 31, 2009, mention his wife's work at Liberty Central, a conservative political education group she co-founded in January 2009 in part to energize Tea Party activists.

But the group did not officially launch until May 2010, which will only be covered during in the next disclosure period.

"We also continue to be puzzled by omission of Liberty Central as Virginia Thomas's most recent employer," Edgar said. 

You would think a Supreme Court Justice would be a skosh more detail-oriented and all, and would, I dunno, pay attention to the fine print on legal documents he'd been ignoring for years.

Silly me.  I'm sure it's totally normal for somebody on the Supreme Court to overlook the law.  (Again and again and again.)

Happens all the time, I suppose.  Dude should hire a few more clerks.