The one thing that is worse than having a Supreme Court justice compromised by the high profile, extremist activism of their spouse is having that Justice's colleagues and the media standing silent in the face of this obvious ethical breach. If the same recusal rules that federal judges are subject to were applied to the Supreme Court - as they SHOULD be - Clarence Thomas would have already been forced to recuse himself from dozens of cases involving issues on which Ginni has loudly lobbied. Once again, as the media takes a knee, we are left to wonder what the reaction would be if the "best friend" spouse of a Dem appointed justice was fervently spreading extremist nonsense about issues in front of the Court. Don't wonder - it would be front page and lead story until that justice resigned or was impeached. IOKIYAR.
agree that press is sleepwalking the Thomas story - but, also, what's with all the focus on Biden's "gaffe" when anyone with 3 brain cells understands that Putin should not hold power? spare me Richard Haas and Susan Page and all the other supposed foreign policy pundits. at least we finally have a President whom, when he says what he thinks, makes sense.
The lack of attention being paid to this is astonishing. TFG has so normalized assaults on our democracy and deranged behaviour from our politicians that a story like this one barely causes a ripple in the news cycle.
Telling the truth about Clarence and Ginni would cost the Beltway media access to Republicans and Republican donors. And that, more than anything else, is what they value. Also telling the truth about Clarence and Ginni might generate so much public outrage that the Republicans find themselves forced to act, and then forced to find ways to keep Biden from filling the seat, an equally uncomfortable story for the Beltway hacks to cover.
This same Clarence Thomas, whose wife is an apparent seditionist, was accused of sexual harassment by reputable witness Anita Hill 31 years ago. What happened? A women of high integrity was ignored by 14 white men and a conservative judge was voted on to the court. The media's lack of accountability for the behavior of Republicans is not new but it is getting worse. The MSM's take was to look the other way in matters of relationship scandals regarding Republicans but now they are doing it when our democracy hangs in the balance. Short of some left leaning billionaires putting a whole lot of cash behind Eric, Thom Hartmann, and all progressive news outlets, I'm not sure what we do.
Apropos Ginni, she’s been a known far right extremist since shortly after Clarence (wholly unqualified) was confirmed to the SCOTUS bench.
As for Clarence’s conflict of interest: Please, it’s nothing compared to the GOP majority’s fealty to the Federalist Society agenda, often executed by a complete disregard for precedent and the rule of law. I note Eric’s noting that SCOTUS’ rep amongst the great unwashed is fairly low and I wonder how much lower it would be were the press to report on it honestly and with proper framing. The Republican-dominated court’s hand was tipped with Bush v Gore and has only gotten far, far worse.
Many in the media had to have known for years about Clarence Thomas’s serious conflicts of interests caused by his wife’s business and political activities but chose to ignore the problem. I have heard the point made that a wife has a right to her own career in several discussions. It seems to me that might be one reason that so many have been reluctant to give this issue the attention it deserves even though Ginni Thomas’s political activism and lobbying firm are well known in DC circles. It was only after Jane Mayer’s article published in January that there was some attention given to her activities:
However even after that article most of the people I heard discussing it ignored the fact that some of her clients at her lobbying firm have brought cases before the Supreme Court so she not only supports their position, she — and therefore Thomas — makes money from it. That is as blatant a conflict of interest as possible.
The other thing the media is ignoring is that Ginny made it clear to Meadows in her texts that she was talking to her “best friend” about what she and Meadows were discussing — I.e. overthrowing the election. It is well known that both Thomases have repeatedly referred to each other as their “best friend”:
“My wife is my best friend,” Clarence Thomas told students at Stetson University College of Law in 2010. “I can rant with her.”
“I love to spend time with my wife, who is totally my best friend,” Thomas said at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual lecture in 2019.
“It’s his wife, it’s his best friend, his most trusted confidante, and he loves her unconditionally,” former conservative pundit and Thomas friend Armstrong Williams recently told told The New York Times about the voicemail Ginni Thomas left for Anita Hill, the former Thomas aide who accused him of sexual harassment in 1991.
“My wife is my best friend in the whole word,” Clarence Thomas said in a 2012 speech to University of Florida law students.
“It’s great to be married to your best friend,” Thomas said at a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society in 1999.
Meadows knew exactly who Ginni meant when she texted she had just had a conversation with her “best friend” about the issue — overturning our election — she and Meadows were texting about. Thomas’s vote against releasing White House records on Jan 6th was to protect not just his wife, but himself from being implicated in the effort to overthrow our government.
As I've previously written in my Press Run comments, the American mainstream media is ignoring the crisis in American democracy when it downplays the Republican Party/GOP shift toward the far right and their focus on endless "culture wars" so that their mostly white voter base will keep being angry and scared of Dems, progressives, independent women, LGBTQ, Blacks, Latinx, Asians, atheists & Non-Christians because they're threat to the "American way of life."
The MSM have also ignored the lack of actual foreign, economic, social & environmental policies being proposed by the Republican Party/GOP aside from those that will enrich their billionaire donors (e.g. tax cuts for the super-rich, cuts on various social services).
MSM refuses to see the forest for the trees. Pardon the ageism, but these reporters don’t know what they don’t know historically. Is it that they know nothing about our history pre TFG? We boomers who were born at the end of WWll lived thru the Cold War that came after, particularly the threat of nuclear holocaust. Today, Ukraine is being decimated by Putin. When will the msm draw the through line that begins w/the breakdown of US norms and the rise of autocracy? The Thomases are among the elitist class on the right. Neither is being held to the ethical standards that were the norm before some of the msm were born. The Rs play in the swamp. With delight and impunity. I shake my head every day at the news. My heart sinks at the blinding chutzpah with which the msm operates.
We’re all so screwed. When our “Free Press” starts spewing that “truth to power,” “Fourth Estate” and “First Amendment” I just believe any of it anymore. Do they?!
Calling it treason is a bit of a stretch and a tiny bit hyperbolic.
Biden's statement will blow over, mostly because so many people agree with it, including the Republicans. I was more alarmed and incensed by reading that the press not only dutifully reported the "drop to its lowest point" of Biden's "approval rating" but that the NY Times and the NY Post have resurrected the "Hunter's Laptop" story. It seems Darryl Issa wants to start an investigation in hopes it will damage the Democrats in the midterms.
Which brings us back to the fact that the GOP depends on crumbs and scraps to serve up its rancid feasts to the voters, and that the media loves to help.
Once again the corrupted DC Press Corpse is locked in "Both Sides Do It" mode and nobody exemplifies that more than Bob Woodward who was enough of a wimp to say that on Morning Joe. Even after he got smacked down he still continues with it.
That the diseased streetwalkers who comprise our major media are burying this story is the biggest surprise since Captain Renault's shock at gambling at Rick's Place.
By the way, all you need to know about the media is this. Certainly, the Oscars are a big local story for the LA Times. But if you go to their web page, the entire top is taken up by the slap heard 'round the world, and you have to scroll down considerably to reach the decision by the California federal judge saying Orange Hitler probably committed crimes.
The one thing that is worse than having a Supreme Court justice compromised by the high profile, extremist activism of their spouse is having that Justice's colleagues and the media standing silent in the face of this obvious ethical breach. If the same recusal rules that federal judges are subject to were applied to the Supreme Court - as they SHOULD be - Clarence Thomas would have already been forced to recuse himself from dozens of cases involving issues on which Ginni has loudly lobbied. Once again, as the media takes a knee, we are left to wonder what the reaction would be if the "best friend" spouse of a Dem appointed justice was fervently spreading extremist nonsense about issues in front of the Court. Don't wonder - it would be front page and lead story until that justice resigned or was impeached. IOKIYAR.
agree that press is sleepwalking the Thomas story - but, also, what's with all the focus on Biden's "gaffe" when anyone with 3 brain cells understands that Putin should not hold power? spare me Richard Haas and Susan Page and all the other supposed foreign policy pundits. at least we finally have a President whom, when he says what he thinks, makes sense.
The lack of attention being paid to this is astonishing. TFG has so normalized assaults on our democracy and deranged behaviour from our politicians that a story like this one barely causes a ripple in the news cycle.
Telling the truth about Clarence and Ginni would cost the Beltway media access to Republicans and Republican donors. And that, more than anything else, is what they value. Also telling the truth about Clarence and Ginni might generate so much public outrage that the Republicans find themselves forced to act, and then forced to find ways to keep Biden from filling the seat, an equally uncomfortable story for the Beltway hacks to cover.
This same Clarence Thomas, whose wife is an apparent seditionist, was accused of sexual harassment by reputable witness Anita Hill 31 years ago. What happened? A women of high integrity was ignored by 14 white men and a conservative judge was voted on to the court. The media's lack of accountability for the behavior of Republicans is not new but it is getting worse. The MSM's take was to look the other way in matters of relationship scandals regarding Republicans but now they are doing it when our democracy hangs in the balance. Short of some left leaning billionaires putting a whole lot of cash behind Eric, Thom Hartmann, and all progressive news outlets, I'm not sure what we do.
Apropos Ginni, she’s been a known far right extremist since shortly after Clarence (wholly unqualified) was confirmed to the SCOTUS bench.
As for Clarence’s conflict of interest: Please, it’s nothing compared to the GOP majority’s fealty to the Federalist Society agenda, often executed by a complete disregard for precedent and the rule of law. I note Eric’s noting that SCOTUS’ rep amongst the great unwashed is fairly low and I wonder how much lower it would be were the press to report on it honestly and with proper framing. The Republican-dominated court’s hand was tipped with Bush v Gore and has only gotten far, far worse.
Many in the media had to have known for years about Clarence Thomas’s serious conflicts of interests caused by his wife’s business and political activities but chose to ignore the problem. I have heard the point made that a wife has a right to her own career in several discussions. It seems to me that might be one reason that so many have been reluctant to give this issue the attention it deserves even though Ginni Thomas’s political activism and lobbying firm are well known in DC circles. It was only after Jane Mayer’s article published in January that there was some attention given to her activities:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/31/is-ginni-thomas-a-threat-to-the-supreme-court
However even after that article most of the people I heard discussing it ignored the fact that some of her clients at her lobbying firm have brought cases before the Supreme Court so she not only supports their position, she — and therefore Thomas — makes money from it. That is as blatant a conflict of interest as possible.
The other thing the media is ignoring is that Ginny made it clear to Meadows in her texts that she was talking to her “best friend” about what she and Meadows were discussing — I.e. overthrowing the election. It is well known that both Thomases have repeatedly referred to each other as their “best friend”:
“My wife is my best friend,” Clarence Thomas told students at Stetson University College of Law in 2010. “I can rant with her.”
“I love to spend time with my wife, who is totally my best friend,” Thomas said at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual lecture in 2019.
“It’s his wife, it’s his best friend, his most trusted confidante, and he loves her unconditionally,” former conservative pundit and Thomas friend Armstrong Williams recently told told The New York Times about the voicemail Ginni Thomas left for Anita Hill, the former Thomas aide who accused him of sexual harassment in 1991.
“My wife is my best friend in the whole word,” Clarence Thomas said in a 2012 speech to University of Florida law students.
“It’s great to be married to your best friend,” Thomas said at a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society in 1999.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/clarence-thomas-ginni-thomas-supreme-court-ethics_n_623dd29be4b0bcc5b4787724
Meadows knew exactly who Ginni meant when she texted she had just had a conversation with her “best friend” about the issue — overturning our election — she and Meadows were texting about. Thomas’s vote against releasing White House records on Jan 6th was to protect not just his wife, but himself from being implicated in the effort to overthrow our government.
Does Ginni wind him up everyday? He barely seems human.
As I've previously written in my Press Run comments, the American mainstream media is ignoring the crisis in American democracy when it downplays the Republican Party/GOP shift toward the far right and their focus on endless "culture wars" so that their mostly white voter base will keep being angry and scared of Dems, progressives, independent women, LGBTQ, Blacks, Latinx, Asians, atheists & Non-Christians because they're threat to the "American way of life."
The MSM have also ignored the lack of actual foreign, economic, social & environmental policies being proposed by the Republican Party/GOP aside from those that will enrich their billionaire donors (e.g. tax cuts for the super-rich, cuts on various social services).
MSM refuses to see the forest for the trees. Pardon the ageism, but these reporters don’t know what they don’t know historically. Is it that they know nothing about our history pre TFG? We boomers who were born at the end of WWll lived thru the Cold War that came after, particularly the threat of nuclear holocaust. Today, Ukraine is being decimated by Putin. When will the msm draw the through line that begins w/the breakdown of US norms and the rise of autocracy? The Thomases are among the elitist class on the right. Neither is being held to the ethical standards that were the norm before some of the msm were born. The Rs play in the swamp. With delight and impunity. I shake my head every day at the news. My heart sinks at the blinding chutzpah with which the msm operates.
We’re all so screwed. When our “Free Press” starts spewing that “truth to power,” “Fourth Estate” and “First Amendment” I just believe any of it anymore. Do they?!
Calling it treason is a bit of a stretch and a tiny bit hyperbolic.
Biden's statement will blow over, mostly because so many people agree with it, including the Republicans. I was more alarmed and incensed by reading that the press not only dutifully reported the "drop to its lowest point" of Biden's "approval rating" but that the NY Times and the NY Post have resurrected the "Hunter's Laptop" story. It seems Darryl Issa wants to start an investigation in hopes it will damage the Democrats in the midterms.
Which brings us back to the fact that the GOP depends on crumbs and scraps to serve up its rancid feasts to the voters, and that the media loves to help.
We’re doomed. Seriously. TFG should, at the very least, be barred from ever running again but he won’t be. It’s so disheartening.
I am ever grateful for you and your fellow muckrakers of the press but regardless of what you do, the beat goes on. It’s depressing.
Also - thank you for featuring Collin Hay. I love his music.
Once again the corrupted DC Press Corpse is locked in "Both Sides Do It" mode and nobody exemplifies that more than Bob Woodward who was enough of a wimp to say that on Morning Joe. Even after he got smacked down he still continues with it.
Shows just how useless the DC Press Corpse is.
So damn frustrating, is the collective effort of the destruction of our democracy even deeper than we know?!
That the diseased streetwalkers who comprise our major media are burying this story is the biggest surprise since Captain Renault's shock at gambling at Rick's Place.
By the way, all you need to know about the media is this. Certainly, the Oscars are a big local story for the LA Times. But if you go to their web page, the entire top is taken up by the slap heard 'round the world, and you have to scroll down considerably to reach the decision by the California federal judge saying Orange Hitler probably committed crimes.