60 Minutes last night did a damning section on the H1b Program which brings workers from foreign countries such as India, China, and Russia to fill American jobs, at salaries less than half what an American Worker makes under the guise that the “is a shortage of qualified American born talent”.
The H1b program has become a complete fraud, stealing over 800,000 of American technical Jobs. Over the past six years, 775,957 H-1b visas were issued to foreign workers, according to the State Department, which is the last of three federal agencies to approve each successful petition.
These are the legal immigrants taking your jobs dumb-fuck Trumpazoids. Not Jose’ sneaking across the border to pic grapes.
Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos resigned on Tuesday from his tech editor position with Breitbart News following outcry over unearthed video appearing to show him defending pedophilia. “I wouldn’t give nearly such good head if it wasn’t for [Father Michael],” he joked in one interview, while dismissing concerns about pedophilia being abuse: “It was perfectly consensual. When I was 14, I was the predator.” Yiannopoulos on Monday was removed as a featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) after the video went viral and board members objected to his booking. Additionally, Yiannopoulos lost his book deal with Simon & Schuster as a result of the comments. “Breitbart News has stood by me when others caved,” he wrote. “I would be wrong to allow my poor choice of words to detract from my colleagues’ important reporting, so today I am resigning from Breitbart, effective immediately.” Breitbart News, in turn, released a statement saying they accepted his resignation.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell told his successor, Hillary Clinton, that he used his own personal computer to communicate with friends and foreign leaders and sent emails without going through the State Department server, according to emails released Wednesday by congressional Democrats.
Clinton has previously said she reached out to Powell when she began serving as the nation’s top diplomat to find out how he used personal devices. In a four-paragraph email response from Powell, he told Clinton he didn’t use a BlackBerry, but detailed how he got around having his communications with both employees and people outside the State Department becoming part of the agency’s official record.
What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient). So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department on their personal email accounts. I did the same thing on the road in hotels,” Powell wrote.
Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state has loomed over her presidential campaign and spurred intense criticism from Republicans. The email exchange between Clinton and Powell was released Wednesday by the State Department after Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pressed for it. They complained the full exchange was not part of earlier email document releases from the department that Republicans in Congress have asked for as part of their probe into Clinton’s email use….
Powell’s spokesperson recently told CNN that he wrote a memo about his own use of an AOL account to Clinton and said the account was for “unclassified messages and how it vastly improved communications within the State Department.”
Colin Powell is defending his use of a personal email account during his time as secretary of state, as Democrats stepped up complaints that the intense focus on Hillary Clinton’s email practices reflects a double standard.
Powell’s statement came after a top Democrat released an email Powell sent Clinton in early 2009 describing his use of personal communication devices in State’s secure executive suite despite warnings from security officials that such use could jeopardize classified information.
“Secretary Clinton has stated that she was not influenced by my email in making her decisions on email use. I was not trying to influence her but just to explain what I had done eight years earlier to begin the transformation of the State Department’s information system,” Powell said.
Powell adopted one of Clinton’s defenses Thursday, saying his actions didn’t jeopardize government record-keeping because official emails would have found their way into State’s official systems.
“With respect to records, if I sent an email from my public email account to an addressee at another public email account it would not have gone through State Department servers. It was a private conversation similar to a phone call. If I sent it to a state.gov address it should have been captured and retained by State servers,” Powell said. “I was not aware at the time of any requirement for private, unclassified exchanges to be treated as official records.”
In the email exchange released Wednesday by House Oversight Committee ranking Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings, Powell appeared proud that he had defied security officials by using hand-held devices in the agency’s secure spaces.
“They gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals and could be read by spies, etc.,” Powell wrote, referring to personnel from State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. “I had numerous meetings with them. We even opened one [device] up for them to try to explain to me why it was more dangerous than say, a remote control for one of the many tvs in the suite. Or something embedded in my shoe heel. They never satisfied me and NSA/CIA wouldn’t back off. So, we just went about our business and stopped asking.”
Republicans don’t mind sacrificing Powell because he told the truth about the Iraq War.
Former NY Rep Anthony Weiner, a guy who a few years ago was a fast rising politico in the Democrat Party looking at a Senate run, and even possibly a VP slot before news of a “Sexting” scandal, and adultery surfaced…
Has done it again.
Weiner is married to Hilary Clinton’s good friend and top aide Huma Abedin,
Looks like Weiner’s inability to keep his pants on means the end to that marriage, and any possibility of a future career as a politician.
Former Congressman Anthony Weiner begins the documentary “Weiner,” released earlier this year, after mumbling about the fact that he’s even participating in such a film, by directly addressing the camera and calmly stating, “I guess the punch line is true about me. I did the things, but I did a lot of other things.” That may be true, but Weiner has now guaranteed that his prophetic name will be forever synonymous with his sexting scandals, given his most recent round of images, sent to a “busty brunette” and exposed in today’s New York Post.
As Jamieson Webster argued convincingly in The Guardian, “Anthony Weiner wanted to be caught, and caught and caught. It isn’t enough that he sent out the pictures himself in 2011. The latest rendition is revealing on a whole number of levels if we look closely.” After all, this isn’t the first or the second or the third time this has happened — or that he’s been caught. Who knows how many incidents of sexting Weiner has engaged in, whether out of lust, boredom, self-sabotage, a power trip or any other number of possibilities?
It seems utterly bizarre that he would continue to do this so often, knowing that he could so easily lose any modicum of political respect that he’s built back up or any semblance of a career. According to CNN, Weiner has been put on “indefinite leave” by TV station NY1, for which he had been a contributor.
And, of course, Weiner was also risking the demise of his marriage, which has now happened. Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Hillary Clinton and vice chair of her current presidential campaign, announced this afternoon that she was separating from her husband. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that she had decided long ago that one more scandal would be the one that went too far. Whether this was ever explicitly stated, Weiner had to know that, especially in the midst of a heated election year, the last thing Abedin would want was yet another return to what is likely one of the worst things she has ever faced in her personal life.
The New York Times categorized the documentary, in addition to being about Weiner’s repeated political rise and fall, as also being about “a portrait of a marriage in disarray,” describing Abedin as “present in much of the film, ready to stand by her man but clearly worried. Visibly shaken by the latest revelations of sexting, she doesn’t verbalize her anger, but you feel the tension of her crossed arms.” Though it was, of course, Abedin’s decision to not only stay with Weiner but also to join him when he campaigned for mayor of New York, it’s hard to not feel sorry for her now that she’s being cast back into the spotlight, linked to her boss by her job and their shared status as scorned women.
Given all that was at stake — namely, his marriage and intact family unit, his career and reputation — what made Weiner send what The New York Post described in its headline as “baby-sitting — Anthony Weiner-style,” given that his bare torso and the outline of his crotch are visible right next to his son in an early-morning July 2015 image? It’s impossible to know his exact motivation, but one thing is clear: If there were any way to make himself look worse, Weiner has now managed to do so, by involving his child in such a risqué and inappropriate photo and series of messages. As Webster noted, since Weiner’s specialty isn’t dick pics of the naked variety but rather crotch shots where his bulge is quite visible beneath his clothes, these images don’t need to be censored by media outlets the same way ones of his nude genitals would, lending further credence to his desire to be exposed.
Things are really getting Kinky in the Tea Party Delegation to Michigan’s Congress. When an anti Gay Marriage, male Tea Party Congressman gets caught having an affair with a female, bible thumping Tea Party “harlot” what to do?
Come out with a memo apologizing for getting caught with a gay male escort!
One socially conservative Michigan lawmaker was expelled from office and another resigned early Friday after they were embroiled in scandal over their extramarital affair and an attempt to hide it with a strange fictional email.
Republican Rep. Cindy Gamrat became just the fourth legislator to be kicked out in state history shortly after 4 a.m. An hour earlier, GOP Rep. Todd Courser resigned, effective immediately, when it became clear majority Republicans had secured votes from enough Democrats for his expulsion in exchange for the House asking the attorney general and state police to investigate the lawmakers.
Both were immediately escorted out of the chamber.
The self described deviants
“I put everybody through a whole bunch — across the state, my own family, the constituents, the people in this room,” Courser told reporters. “Whether it was the third vote or the fourth vote or the fifth vote, they were going to eventually get me.”
Gamrat, who was tossed on a 91-12 vote, declined comment while leaving the Capitol.
“I have done everything I can to redeem the situation,” she said shortly before in her speech asking for a censure, which would have let her stay on the job with restrictions. “I am sincerely sorry for what it’s caused.”
Courser, 43, of Lapeer in Michigan’s Thumb region, admitted sending an “outlandish” phony email to GOP activists and others in May claiming he was caught with a male prostitute. The email was intended to make his affair with the 42-year-old Gamrat appear less believable if it were exposed by an anonymous blackmailer who Courser said was demanding his resignation.
The self-smear email called Courser a “bi-sexual porn addicted sex deviant” and “gun toting Bible thumping … freak” and Gamrat a “tramp.”
Gamrat, from Plainwell in the southwestern part of the state, said she discussed the plot with Courser but did not know the email’s sexually explicit content before it was sent.
On Thursday, a special House committee recommended the expulsion of both legislators. But the full chamber then deadlocked for hours, as more than two dozen Democrats refused to vote.
They attacked the “sham” investigation as rushed and self-serving. They questioned why two “whistleblower” aides to Courser and Gamrat were allowed to be fired by GOP leadership, since the speaker’s office had known of problems in the lawmakers’ combined office.
The House was six votes short of the two-thirds supermajority needed under the state constitution. More than two dozen minority Democrats initially abstained from voting and criticized the process.
In calling for both legislators’ expulsion, Rep. Ed McBroom, a Republican from Vulcan in the Upper Peninsula who chaired the disciplinary panel, said: “These two members have obliterated the public trust. They’ve obliterated the trust of their colleagues. And each day that they continue here they reduce the public trust in this institution.”
The scandal unfolded last month after a staffer the couple shared was fired in July. Ben Graham gave The Detroit News a secret audio recording of Courser demanding that he send the email to “inoculate the herd,” an apparent reference to Courser’s supporters. While Graham refused and the email was likely legal, the plot was unethical, according to a House Business Office probe that alleged dishonesty, misconduct and misuse of public resources extending beyond the affair and fictional email.
State police are investigating the alleged blackmail and this week obtained a warrant for records from a phone company related to a prepaid, or “burner,” phone from which Courser said he received threatening text messages.
Geez, whatever happened to just ‘fessing up and copping a plea?
The Marching 100 returned yesterday to a Half Time show between FAMU and Mississippi Valley State. It’s reputation as one of the elite Marching Band units at the College level is sadly tarnished, and it’s reputation as an HBCU tradition is at it’s lowest point. Hopefully the new School President, Band Leader, and students can return the unit, and the traditions it represented before the scandal back to the heights the band once enjoyed.
Twenty-two months after Florida A&M University’s band was suspended in the wake of a hazing death of a drum major, it was back on the field Saturday, performing at the season-opener against Mississippi Valley State.
The Marching 100 was not allowed to perform after Robert Champion collapsed and died after a hazing ritual on a bus in November 2011. That suspension was lifted in June, after the resignation of the band’s longtime director and the university president.
The scandal resulted in charges of manslaughter and felony hazing being placed against 15 former band members. Seven have made plea deals, another has a deal but has not been sentenced and the other seven await trial, according to the Associated Press.
The parents of the hazing victim, who have filed wrongful death lawsuits against FAMU and the bus company, told the AP that they believed the return of the band was “too soon.”
“I don’t see anything that’s different to ensure the safety of those students,” Pam Champion said. “Everything that has been put in place is not something that was done voluntarily.”
Larry Robinson, the university’s interim president, announced the decision to strike up the band, saying it would be “a model of excellence for other bands across this nation. It will actually focus on its founding principles of character, academics, leadership, marching and service.”
On Saturday, the band was back on the field at Orlando’s Citrus Bowl.
Rush Limbaugh has certainly lit the fuse on a bigger keg of dynamite than even he could have envisioned with his comments about Sandra Fluke and the Georgetown women.
Anyone has a question about who has the power in this country just needs to check out Drugbo’s example. It took COlor of Change over a year to make a definitive dent in Glenn Beck’s Faux News racism…
Looks like it is only going to take the ladies about a month to take Drugbo down.
At least 39 companies have pulled their ads from the “The Rush Limbaugh Show” since the conservative talk show host called a law student a “slut” on the air last week, as the social media blitz against the popular radio program showed no signs of slowing down Wednesday.
Companies are continuing to join the rapidly growing list of businesses that have ceased advertising on Limbaugh’s show, responding to the flood of grievances that are pouring in from disgruntled customers.
The list of companies that officially announced on Twitter, Facebook or in statements to other media outlets that they would stop advertising on the radio show include: AccuQuote Life Insurance, Allstate Insurance, AOL, Bare Escentuals, Bethesda Sedation Dentistry, Bonobos, Capital One, Carbonite, Cascades Dental, Citrix, Consolidated Credit Counseling Services, Constant Contact, Cunningham Security, Freedom Debt Relief, Girl Scouts, Goodwill Industries, Hadeed Carpet, JCPenney, Legal Zoom, Matrix Direct, Netflix, Norway Savings Bank, Philadelphia Orchestra, PolyCom, Portland Ovations, ProFlowers, Quicken Loans, Regal Assets, Reputation Rhino, RSVP Discount Beverage, Sears, Sensa, Service Magic, Sleep Train, Sleep Number, St. Vincent’s Medical Center, Tax Resolution, Thompson Creek Windows and Vitacost.
According to Karl Rove, the Cain campaign had 10 days to prep a story for this scandal…
So why does the “Sperminator” keep changing his story?
I mean – this is before the Long Knives even come out – of the victim’s testimony. There are a lot of other shoes that can drop here – so why is Cain buckdancing around, changing his story?
This one is hitting dead center at Cain’s fitness to hold office.
It’s a time-honored strategy in politics: When bad news strikes, hit the airwaves, tell your story—and hope that it sticks and limits the damage.
But for that strategy to work, the story has to be consistent.Herman Cain was anything but in a series of interviews Monday, leaving some to wonder if another shoe in the burgeoning sexual harassment scandal is going to drop.
Cain started the day by not talking about the subject at all during a forum at the American Enterprise Institute, saying he wanted to stick to the topic at hand, his 9-9-9 plan. Then, in his first interview on Fox News Channel, he called the allegations that he harassed two employees of the National Restaurant Association when he was its CEO “false” and “baseless.” He also, as he would later claim during a speech at the National Press Club, said he was unaware of any settlement struck between the association and either of the women.
Cain told Bloomberg News that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had investigated allegations that he had harassed an employee and found no merit to the claim—a key detail, if true, that Cain did not mention in subsequent interviews.
Indeed, by the time Cain sat down with Fox News Channel’s Greta Van Susteren, that assertion regarding the EEOC had vanished and Cain’s story had changed. Now, he said he recalled a situation involving one employee where Cain said he made a gesture comparing her height to his wife’s height, a gesture that employee apparently found offensive, he said.
He also said he now recalled a settlement with the woman, a “termination settlement” as he termed it. The situation was resolved “without a major payout,” he said.
“Maybe three months’ salary. I don’t remember. It might have been two months. I do remember my general counsel saying we didn’t pay all of the money they demanded,” Cain told Van Susteren.
The charges, he said, had been found baseless he said, but now he couldn’t recall who had investigated them.
Cain muddied the waters further in an interview with PBS’ Judy Woodruff in which he, when asked whether he had engaged in any inappropriate behavior, he replied by saying he hadn’t but “it’s in the eye of the person that thinks that maybe I crossed the line.”
According to ABC News, Cain is continuing his media blitz Tuesday, hitting, among others, CNN and Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, giving him more opportunities to find a version of events that he can stay with.
Karl Rove, the Republican strategist, said on Fox News that Cain’s shifting story wasn’t helping him—and suggested that Cain needs the National Restaurant Association to provide further details of the alleged incidents…
At issue is Thomas’ failure to report “at least $1.6 million” in earnings by his wife Virginia for her work at the conservative Heritage Foundation between 2003 and 2007. Virginia Thomas has been one of the most vocal critics of the federal health care law. The Supreme Court will hear a case this term determining the law’s constitutionality.
The letter also asked the committee to examine “air travel and yacht stays and other gifts from wealthy supporters.”
“Reports of potential ethical lapses by Justice Thomas’s actions give rise to concerns about conflicts of interest undermining appellants’ rights of due process and also raise substantive questions about Justice Thomas’s ability to retain his seat,” said the letter, which was written by Blumenauer and will be delivered today.
“We urge that your committee hold hearings regarding the nature of these questions, their factual basis, and their potential to undermine the public’s trust in the Supreme Court,” it says.
During a news conference Wednesday, Blumenauer also said a similar letter will be sent to the Democratic-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee in coming days.
“Nobody is unaccountable in our system of government and we need to take steps to make sure this is always the case,” he said. “These are fundamental questions about the administration justice and it doesn’t necessarily need to be partisan to make sure there are rules of the road for the Supreme Court.”
In January, Thomas eventually amended several years of financial disclosures he is required by law to file after media reports raised questions about the omission. Simultaneously he released letters saying his wife’s income was “inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions.”…
Looks like the phone hacking scandal involving Rupert Murdoch’s “News of the World” tabloid published in the UK is about to go international. Murdoch, the worlds largest media mogul and owner of hundreds of newspapers and other media properties around the world including Faux News is trying to limit damage through a legal ploy by shutting down”News of the World” and seeking protection under British liquidation laws which seal the company’s property from law enforcement review.
The question now is how far illegal phone hacking and tapping extends into the Murdoch media empire, and whether this sort of seedy activity was directed from the top, or acknowledged with a wink-wink.
Another Seedy Murdoch Property
Is Faux News, the tabloid news broadcaster and right wing propaganda outlet in the US next?
The phone hacking scandal widened on Monday, as new reports emerged that papers beyond the News of the World were also involved in criminal behavior. In addition, Rupert Murdoch’s bid to take over BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster, looked to be in serious peril.
Multiple outlets reported that former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to claim that several News International papers illegally obtained his personal details.
According to The Guardian, The Independent and the BBC, investigators working for the News of the World, The Sun and The Sunday Times obtained information about Brown’s family, his legal and his medical records. This marks the first time that any allegations about News International have targeted papers outside the News of the World…
In addition, new revelations about the criminal behavior inside the News of the World continued to be unearthed. Among the latest details:
–The BBC reported that emails written in 2007 show that the News Of The World was paying police guarding the royal family for information–but that nobody was alerted about this evidence of corruption. BBC reporter Robert Peston uncovered emails from then-royal reporter Clive Goodman (who was the first person to be jailed over phone hacking) to then-editor Andy Coulson (who went on to become Prime Minister David Cameron’s top communications aide) asking for money to pay police officers for huge amounts of personal information about the royal family.
–The Guardian reported Monday morning that Prince Charles and his wife Camilla were recently warned by the police that their phones may have been hacked.
—The Daily Mirror also floated allegations that News of the World journalists tried to hack into the phones of victims of the 9/11 attacks. A source told the Mirror that a then-New York City police officer (now a private investigator) was approached and offered money if he would hack into the victims’ voicemail. The officer reportedly declined the offer.
I watched this video, which is currently making the right wing outrage circuit – and I find it hard to be upset at the NPR executives.
They are telling the truth. The Tea Party is racist. The best thing that could happen is for NPR to be able to get off of the small subsidy provided by the Government. And quite frankly, I see no difference between the Republican Party today, and what the Republicans accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of. Simply domestic terrorism versus the threat of foreign terrorism.
Indeed, being a businessman who doesn’t like my time being wasted – I feel that NPR should sue Mr O’Keefe and Veritas for wasting their executives time. NPR is probably too chickenshit to do it – which is the problem in this country. The forces of fairness, progressivism, and any sort of intellectual honesty in this country aren’t smacking these right wing scumbags in the teeth with a 2 x 4 …
Yet. Although Wisconsin is becoming a shining beacon of hope.
Insofar as the Jewish owned or influenced media in this country, that is true. It isn’t an evil thing, or a bad thing – it is a minority which has been very successful at advancing their issues and supporting their ideas relative to Israel. You want to change that view to more pro-Islamic, or pro China, or pro anything – then you have to invest in American Media – whether through training and developing higher caliber news people and reporters, or by buying networks like Faux to propagandize whatever you want to sell as Murdoch did.
It’s one of the reasons Russia TV and Al Jazeera are now more trusted names worldwide than any of the American News media. Our Media is for sale to the highest bidder, often to say whatever they are paid to say, courtesy of Faux.
I think the folks quitting their jobs at NPR is utterly bullshit – and wish they would stand up to this type of sleazy blackmail.
Instead of the standard Orange Jumpsuit...Perhaps an Orange Robe would be more apropos?
This one is beginning to gain momentum. As I said in a previous post, there are a lot of questions as to the conduct of Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Samuel Alito in terms of their cozy relationships with ultra-right wing groups funded by the Koch Brothers.
Thomas in particular – seems to have been the beneficiary of a lot of cash – well north of $1 million funneled through his wife’s work on conservative “causes” including for the Heritage Foundation and her own PAC which anonymously was “gifted” $550k…
Thomas also failed to report his wife’s income from 2003-2009…
Editorials across the country are beginning to call for a full investigation, or a resignation…
The 1978 Ethics in Government Act requires federal officials to disclose income from spouses. When federal judges ignore the law, the act directs the Judicial Conference to refer those matters to the attorney general. This seems like a clear case. Despite Thomas’ efforts to correct the record, the matter should be pursued.
Clarence Thomas should step down from the US Supreme Court. Immediately. Before, he was merely a bad judge; now he is a judge in violation of the law.
His excuse is that he didn’t know the law. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” It is especially bad that a Supreme Court Judge has choosen this flimsy garb to mask his naked transgressions.
The New York Times reports on January 24th that Judge Thomas admitted that he has failed to disclose his wife’s income for the last six years. This is not bake sale money; she earned $686,587 from 2003-2007. This came from the Hertitage Foundation, a fairly-to-the-right political think tank. She also began and directed a political action committee that took in $550,000 and they aren’t saying who donated that bit of extra change.
Judge Clarence Thomas must resign. It the only right thing to do.
And this may be just the tip of the iceberg – WikiLeaks next exposure is making public private Swiss Bank Accounts held by Americans…
Apparently a number of Judges have popped up, and the sources of the money are, in at least the initial cases from big banks… Apparently in the form of bribes. One needs to wonder if Mssrs Thomas, Scalia, Alito, or Roberts also have secret accounts at this point, with their cozy relationships with the far right’s financiers.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas might not be the only judge feeling a tad uncomfortable in the coming days. Thomas is under scrutiny for his failure to disclose his wife’s income for at least five years–and possibly going back more than 20 years. But we are seeing signs that other stories soon will be breaking about judicial chicanery.
Federal and state judges are among those likely to hold Swiss bank accounts that have become the subject of a WikiLeaks investigation, reports a California-based human-rights organization.
Closer to home, we’ve had considerable interaction in recent weeks with two federal judges–William M. Acker Jr. and Abdul Kallon, both of the Northern District of Alabama. We soon will be presenting detailed information showing that Acker and Kallon are violating their oaths to uphold the law. We have seen evidence that at least one of these judges has engaged in a possible criminal conspiracy.
Used to be only the criminals hid money... Now it's the judges.
One of the “abilities to rule by the law” of the conservative justices appointed by the Bushes is the wealth their family members suddenly came into when they were appointed to he bench. Need a vote in a critical case? Drop $500k in Virginia Thomas’ PAC. Hire a judges kids for a high paying job…
By all rights, Scalia and Thomas (and Roberts) should be removed from the bench and join the ranks of Orange Jumpsuited criminal politicians.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife’s income from a conservative think tank on financial disclosure forms for at least five years, the watchdog group Common Cause said Friday.
Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation’s IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled “none” where “spousal noninvestment income” would be disclosed.
A Supreme Court spokesperson could not be reached for comment late Friday. But Virginia Thomas’ employment by the Heritage Foundation was well known at the time.
Virginia Thomas also has been active in the group Liberty Central, an organization she founded to restore the “founding principles” of limited government and individual liberty.
In his 2009 disclosure, Justice Thomas also reported spousal income as “none.” Common Cause contends that Liberty Central paid Virginia Thomas an unknown salary that year.
Federal judges are bound by law to disclose the source of spousal income, according to Stephen Gillers, a professor at NYU School of Law. Thomas’ omission — which could be interpreted as a violation of that law — could lead to some form of penalty, Gillers said.
Charles Koch’s invitation to their 2011 secretive retreat, to be held in Palm Springs, Ca., on January 30-31, states that the “action-oriented program brings together top experts and leaders to discuss – and offer solutions to counter – the most critical threats to our free society.” It added that past “meetings have featured such notable leaders as Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas,” along with a host conservative leaders and elected officials, like Glenn Beck, Haley Barbour and Jim DeMint.
Common Cause President Bob Edgar said the group has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to examine whether Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas should have stepped aside rather than vote in the Citizens United case.
The case, handed down a year ago on Friday (Jan. 21), struck down a portion of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law that had barred corporate expenditures for political advertisements during campaign season.
Mr. Edgar said the justices were featured speakers at invitation-only retreats sponsored by Koch Industries, a private company whose officials have played an active role supporting Republican candidates and conservative causes.
He also said Justice Thomas may have had an undisclosed financial conflict of interest through his wife’s work as founder and CEO of a conservative advocacy group, Liberty Central. Edgar said the group stood to benefit from the Citizens United decision through easier fundraising and easier political spending. [Ms. Thomas has since stepped down as CEO of the group.]
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is facing an uncertain future following the decision of Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter to walk away from the embattled civil rights organization.
The Rev. Bernice King said this week that she would not take the helm of the group that her father founded in 1957 and that elected her president in 2009.
The once-proud organization has split into two factions, had its finances scrutinized and saw its former chairman indicted last week on theft charges.
Former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young says the group might have run its course and that Bernice King made a wise decision. He says “we should’ve closed it down years ago.”
Young was a close adviser to Martin Luther King Jr., as the group led nonviolent protests for equality for African-Americans and social justice.
One of the “abilities to rule by the law” of the conservative justices appointed by the Bushes is the wealth their family members suddenly came into when they were appointed to he bench. Need a vote in a critical case? Drop $500k in Virginia Thomas’ PAC. Hire a judges kids for a high paying job…
Campaign finance ruling: Should Supreme Court justices have recused themselves?
Btx3's Blog 