Activist Court

Anyone on the Right who complains about "activist judges" without tossing their very own John Roberts-led Supreme Court is full of it. Witness how this Court's decision to open the floodgates of corporate spending on elections will now directly benefit the wife of rightwing ideologue Justice Clarence Thomas:

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.

"I adore all the new citizen patriots who are rising up across this country," Thomas, who goes by Ginni, said on the panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "I have felt called to the front lines with you, with my fellow citizens, to preserve what made America great."

The move by Virginia Thomas, 52, into the front lines of politics stands in marked contrast to the rarefied culture of the nation's highest court, which normally prizes the appearance of nonpartisanship and a distance from the fisticuffs of the politics of the day.

Justice Thomas, 61, recently expressed sensitivity to such concerns, telling law students in Florida that he doesn't attend the State of the Union because it is "so partisan." Thomas, who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush, has been a reliable conservative vote since he joined the court in 1991.

This is beyond hypocrisy -- it's out and out corruption.

Virginia Thomas has long been a passionate voice for conservative views. She has worked for former Republican Rep. Dick Armey of Texas and for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with strong ties to the GOP.

In 2000, while at the Heritage Foundation, she was recruiting staff for a possible George W. Bush administration as her husband was hearing the case that would decide the election. When journalists reported her work, Thomas said she saw no conflict of interest and that she rarely discussed court matters with her husband.

Wow, two huge pieces of evil implicating Justice Thomas. First there's the Dick Armey connection -- Armey being the head of the group that has fomented the whole Tea Party movement, astroturfing for GOP-sponsoring corporations and pretending it's "grassroots." So Ms. Thomas knows she's lying here where she claims this is some sort of inspired citizen's movement.

And then there's the Court decision that handed George W. Bush the 2000 election. Which she directly benefited from as well.

Good to know that, yes, Supreme Court Justices can be impeached.