A Supreme Case Of Conflicting Interests

Justice Clarence Thomas's wife is pursuing a career as a hard right lobbyist (Via AmericaBlog)

As Virginia Thomas tells it in her soft-spoken, Midwestern cadence, the story of her involvement in the "tea party" movement is the tale of an average citizen in action.

"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 said at a recent panel discussion with tea party leaders in Washington. Thomas went on to count herself among those energized into action by President Obama's "hard-left agenda."

But Thomas is no ordinary activist.

She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court.

In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative "core principles," she said.

The group plans to issue score cards for Congress members and be involved in the November election, although Thomas would not specify how. She said it would accept donations from various sources -- including corporations -- as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme Court.

That's nice. Funny how this lobbying career only started just after the decision that granted corporations nearly unfettered access to donate as much money as they want to to whomever they wish.  But the real tale here is the silly defense of this from K-Lo:

Does the fact that she's married to a Supreme Court justice give her an unfair advantage in politics? Maybe sometimes it does give her an advantage. In some crowds — like the Los Angeles Times — it probably does just the opposite. Either way, it is a free country. We're allowed to be married and still have careers, even careers involving politics. Ginni wants to do what she can to preserve freedom. And the Supreme Court, mercifully, doesn't stand in her way. 

That's her defense.  Pray tell, what should happen if a company that donates to Virginia Thomas's Liberty Central group finds itself before the Supreme Court as a litigant?  Lopez doesn't say.  Nor, apparently, does she find that situation even remotely objectionable, after all it would be "standing in Ginni Thomas's way" for her to exercise her free speech rights in order to influence Congress.

With news that 89-year-old Justice Stevens will be retiring before the end of Obama's first term, we've seen the Supreme Court already balance on the edge of a knife and go over that edge on a number of occasions, most notably that recent Citizens United ruling that effectively struck down campaign finance laws.  If you don't think the goal here is for conservatives to win back Congress in 2010 and make replacing Stevens impossible for anyone other than another Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia, giving them a 5-4 edge that will allow them to freely dismantle Roe v. Wade and 80 some odd years of post New Deal liberalism and civil rights protections, you're kidding yourself.

And of course, conservatives find nothing objectionable about this.