A Supreme Conflict Of Interest

Given how much damage the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision is already doing to our political system where unlimited campaign cash can be poured into any race by anonymous donors at any time, I'm glad somebody is finally beginning to notice the level of influence the Supreme Court has over our political system now, and why the wife of a Supreme Court justice becoming more and more of a player in that system should be sending up red flags across the political spectrum.

As one of the keynote speakers here Friday at a state convention billed as the largest Tea Party event ever, Virginia Thomas gave the throng of more than 2,000 activists a full-throated call to arms for conservative principles.


For three decades, Mrs. Thomas has been a familiar figure among conservative activists in Washington — since before she met her husband of 23 years, Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. But this year she has emerged in her most politically prominent role yet: Mrs. Thomas is the founder and head of a new nonprofit group, Liberty Central, dedicated to opposing what she characterizes as the leftist “tyranny” of President Obama and Democrats in Congress and to “protecting the core founding principles” of the nation.

It is the most partisan role ever for a spouse of a justice on the nation’s highest court, and Mrs. Thomas is just getting started. “Liberty Central will be bigger than the Tea Party movement,” she told Fox News in April, at a Tea Party rally in Atlanta.

But to some people who study judicial ethics, Mrs. Thomas’s activism is raising knotty questions, in particular about her acceptance of large, unidentified contributions for Liberty Central. She began the group in late 2009 with two gifts of $500,000 and $50,000, and because it is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit group, named for the applicable section of the federal tax code, she does not have to publicly disclose any contributors. Such tax-exempt groups are supposed to make sure that less than half of their activities are political.

Mrs. Thomas, known as Ginni, declined through a spokeswoman to be interviewed without an agreement not to discuss her husband. In written responses to questions, Sarah Field, Liberty Central’s chief operating officer and general counsel, said that Mrs. Thomas is paid by Liberty Central, with the compensation set by the group’s board, and that the group has “internal reviews and protections to ensure that no donor causes a conflict of interest for either Ginni or her husband.” 

Right.  Her husband is one of the Justices that decided that unlimited,anonymous campaign donations are free speech, and now she is receiving unlimited, anonymous campaign donations so she can widely influence American elections with her Super-PAC.  Liberal or conservative, this is outright scandalous.  Ginny Thomas's political organization is profiting directly from her husband's decisions on the Supreme Court.

You're telling me nobody finds this outrageous or unethical in any way?

But let's be honest here:  this is all about corporate buying of elections, turning Tea Party votes bought with unlimited campaign cash into more power for the moneyed interests...the 20% of America that owns 84% of our country's wealth want even more and now they can buy it through groups like Liberty Central.

Mrs. Thomas’s supporters said she plays an important role as a bridge between grass-roots Tea Party activists and establishment Republicans in Washington. Ryan Hecker, a lawyer in Houston and a prominent Tea Party activist, said he had heard that Liberty Central was “doing a big get-out-the-vote effort” in some Congressional races. Despite the suspicion of many in the Tea Party that Republicans in Washington are trying to co-opt the movement, Mr. Hecker said the “charismatic and very genuine” Mrs. Thomas is not seen that way among activists.

“She’s been there for a long time, but she hasn’t been corrupted by it,” Mr. Hecker said. So she can be “a medium” to get the grass-roots’ views “to the people that matter.”

Nope.  Nothing corrupt about this at all.