She wasn’t with the Heritage Foundation for 13 years. And sorry, you haven’t actually countered any point I’ve made or detail I offered, including the expert I cited who points out that he is, “not aware of a single case of a judge being penalized simply for this.” You know better. This time, it’s a barbarism that we simply cannot abide.
Answer the question–do you honestly believe Thomas was trying to obscure his wife’s affiliation with the Heritage Foundation, an association that is common knowledge? Here’s another question: aside from the horrifying atrocity of not following this rule as required (“He didn’t* fill out a form* properly! Won’t someone think of the children!”), what bad thing has occurred as a result? What offense against God and man has result from this horror? Can you help me out, I’m missing it? As a result of this omission, he didn’t profit, no conflict of interest resulted–frankly, nothing occurred. Yet, we should impeach him. Sorry, I don’t buy all the manufactured outrage, not for a second.
No. It has absolutely never been established that he committed perjury. You will find lawyers coming down on both sides on this, and not just on political dividing lines. It is by no means clear cut that Clinton would have been convicted in a court of law on perjury charges. Lying under oath and perjury are not the same thing.
My question is what would happen to a federal employee, or a congressional staffer, who made the same false statements on his/her disclosure forms for over a decade (stating spousal income is zero when it is not zero, and said income was derived from lobbying organizations). My guess is that the employee would be sanctioned, possibly fined, would have trouble getting promoted, but probably not fired if this was a first offense. Thomas doesn’t have to worry about promotions. If these charges prove out a sanction or fine will have to do.
I have to wonder if this level of non-disclosure is impeachable, but as has been discussed upthread impeachment is not going to happen as long as at least one house of Congress has a Republican majority. The Dems probably wouldn’t impeach Thomas either - bouncing the other party’s guy from the SCOTUS this way just isn’t cricket.
It’s not just having one party in control of one house of Congress. Impeachment, remember, is just that-- impeachment. So what if he were impeached? That still wouldn’t get him off the Court. You need a 2/3 vote in the Senate to convict, and that ain’t gonna happen.
Clarence Thomas lied to congress during his nomination hearings. However, I don’t want to see congress start impeaching supreme court justices every time there is a change of party in the House.
The purpose of the form is to determine whether a judge would have conflicts and whether he should excuse himself from some cases. It is not equal to a number of dependents claim . It is given to a judge with a serious aim, to keep the court above politics and hopefully to keep the population believing the court is above petty politics or can be bought off. The Repubs have politicized the crap out of the SCOUS . They made it clear long ago that would be an intent of theirs.
I think it’s been reasonably well established that working in government doesn’t mean you aren’t going to fuck up your taxes. Hell, every lawyer I know happily admits that they don’t understand the Internal Revenue Code (except the tax lawyers, and sometimes not even then). I assume the rules governing disclosures of the kind Thomas failed to correctly make are equally arcane and incomprehensible.
The standard, as I’m sure you know, is a “high crime”. I’d argue, for the reasons you gave, that while Clinton was guilty of a crime it did not rise to the level of “high crime”. Nor do I think Thomas’ actions here are a high crime.
I’ve heard this argument since 2003 and it’s difficult to give it any credence. There were plenty of people back before the invasion who were saying the WMD programs did not exist - so it was not some out-of-the-blue idea that nobody could have foreseen. And Bush said that he had the evidence that the nay-sayers were wrong and the WMD’s did exist.
And history has shown that what the nay-sayers were saying was true and what Bush was saying was false. It’s impossible to imagine what evidence Bush could have had that led him to reasonably believe the WMD’s existed. If Bush did not technically lie it was only because he made sure that he didn’t examine the evidence that was available. He either knowingly lied or he knowingly avoided learning the truth.
According to Wikipedia, the 18th century definition of “high crimes” was limited to crimes against the state. Of course, since the Constitution requires removal from public office not just for “high crimes” but also “misdemeanors”, I think it’s pretty clear that a perjury conviction would have sufficed.
The list of public servants who have been impeached and removed from office suggests that the definition is pretty much whatever Congress feels like it should be. For example, Federal judge John Pickering was impeached and removed from office (at the behest of Thomas Jefferson) for being drunk all the time and failing to show up for work a few times.
I’m not sure whether Clinton actually committed perjury (and I didn’t care then and don’t care now.)
People have certainly fucked up government forms before and not been prosecuted because they simply didn’t understand them.
It’s not enough to convict someone of a crime to think that maybe they misled the government on a form. You have to actually PROVE they were engaged in an effort to commit a crime.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/14/top-reagan-doj-official-slams-scalia-for-tea-party-meeting/
The conservative members of this court do not care at all about the illusion of an impartial Supreme Court. The arrogance of Scalia and his right wing caddie, Thomas ,have hurt the court for many years to come. The respect for the court is at an all time low as the conservative judges spend their time and efforts working with far right wing organizations.
In fact, errors in his financial disclosure form is a large part of what got Charles Rangel into trouble.
His challenges with correctly filling out the form over a three decade time frame, according to the article. The House declined to expel him, of course, opting instead to censure him.
That depends entirely upon what your ideological bent is. For my part, I think they’ve done a pretty good job. There are exceptions, of course, but overall I’ve got no complaints.
I’m sorry you’re all butthurt about it, but them’s the breaks. If a Democrat is President when Scalia/Thomas/Roberts/Alito retires they can pick their candidate.
If all four retired at once, I would kind of hope a Democrat in the White House would nominate a couple of textualist, and a non-textualist “conservative” (maybe a law and economics guy) to fill three of those four spots. I think the Court works better when there is a diversity of opinion and jurisprudential theories present.
I deplore what appears to be the current state of the Supreme Court - a faction of conservative justices, a faction of liberal justices, and Anthony Kennedy.
Lots of government forms are not easily comprehensible. You are accountable for them anyway and people have been busted for what Thomas has done (seemingly for just one year misreporting):