Ginni Thomas' latest move . . .

Politico broke the news last Friday:

Justice Thomas' wife, Virginia, now a lobbyist. 

She started as a congressional aide in the 1980s, became a midlevel Republican operative, then briefly left politics, reemerging in 2009 as founder of a tea party group before stepping down amid continued questions about whether her actions were appropriate for the spouse of a Supreme Court justice. 

Now, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, has recast herself yet again, this time as the head of a firm, Liberty Consulting, which boasts on its website using her “experience and connections” to help clients “with “governmental affairs efforts” and political donation strategies.

I did have to giggle (with great dignity) at the wording of that phrase, "governmental affairs efforts." But I'm allowed an occasional giggle at wording, don't you think? And I'm allowed to be grateful that the wording wasn't "judicial affairs efforts." But dignified giggling about the wording has nothing to do with the ethics of Ginni Thomas' actions.

The question is, I guess, can wife and husband refrain from influencing each other professionally? And I ask that question as the legality of health care reform barrels toward the Supreme Court.

Clarance and "Ginni" Thomas

Ginni Thomas has mixed it up with the legality of health care reform before in ways she (or her husband or someone) later thought better of. This was posted on the ABC News website on October 21, 2010, when Ms. Thomas was head of the Tea Party group Liberty Central:

More Controversy for Virginia Thomas; First Anita Hill, Now Health Reform Law: Liberty Central Pulls Memo By Wife of Justice Attacking Constitutionality of Health Care Legislation 

Two days after making headlines for reaching out to Anita Hill, Virginia Thomas' non-profit organization has withdrawn her name from a statement that had been posted on its website advocating the repeal of the Obama administration's health care law. 

In a statement, the non-profit group Liberty Central said the organization "assiduously avoids" taking positions on the "constitutionality" of issues. 

The memo posted by Liberty Central came from the Conservative Action Project. Liberty Central said that Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, was incorrectly listed as the author of the memo. 

On October 27th, NewsOne for Black America joined other news outlets in reporting that Ms. Thomas had stepped down as head of Liberty Central .“She’ll take a back seat so that Liberty Central can continue with its mission without any of the distractions,” the group’s spokeswoman Caitlin Carroll told the Washington Post Monday. “After discussing it with the board, Mrs. Thomas determined that it was best for the organization.”


But now, she's back, with the aim, according to Liberty Consulting's website, of lobbying all those new Tea Party-backed House members.  

With the new ascendancy of constitutional conservatism, Liberty Consulting and Virginia Thomas will continue to serve as a visionary insider who sees political threats, opportunities and can marshal resources to restore our nation's founding principles.

In launching LibertyCentral.org in 2009, Ginni set out to be an "ambassador" between the new citizen activists (tea party movement), the established conservative movement, the entrepreneurial class, the alternative media and principled statesmen and candidates.

Ginni plans to leverage her 30 years of experience as a Washington "insider" to assist non-establishment "outsiders" who share her belief in our core founding principles and values.

 There's a Protect our Elections video posted on YouTube that alleges (with what appears to be strong evidence) that the "office" of  Liberty Consulting is the same P.O. Box used by Liberty Central. Protect our Elections further alleges that:

"both are fake Astroturf organizations putting up a 5 page website and a P.O. box, all to funnel millions of dollars to influence election and legislation, money from donors they don't have to reveal. We call for immediate criminal and ethical investigations to take place surrounding these allegations and we demand that Clarence Thomas get the equal justice under law that everyone else got that came before him seeking justice." 

Conservative firebrand Sean Hannity asks this question on his website: Should Clarence Thomas recuse himself if the Health Care repeal reaches the SCOTUS? And then posts this answer:

All signs point to the Affordable Health Care Act appearing before the Supreme Court sometime next year. This thread really isn't to debate whether or not you personally believe the act is constitutional or effective. My concerns more lie with a potential conflict of interest issue involving Clarence Thomas. 

Mr Thomas's wife, Ginny Thomas, is a well known supporter of the Tea Party. She has spoken at several events and has made her views abundantly clear. That in and of itself is fine with me. We are all entitled to our own opinions and to express said opinions where we wish. 

However, Ginny Thomas recently became a lobbyist for a group known as Liberty Consulting. One of their highest priorities is apparently the repeal of the Affordable Heath Care Act, something that Mrs Thomas would be directly involved in. 

Considering that Mrs Thomas is actively lobbying against the health care law as part of her employment with the lobbying group, would you consider it a conflict of interest for Clarence Thomas to participate in a vote on this subject? If he chose to, it would seem like he has a personal interest in seeing the law overturned.

Seventy-four House Democrats  have sent a letter to Justice Thomas requesting that he recuse himself from any considerations involved with national health care reform because it creates "the appearance of a conflict of interest."


I googled "Ginni Thomas, support" and couldn't find any.


Your opinion?

Anita Hill redux . . .

When I think of Arlen Specter, it's impossible for me not to think about Anita Hill (pictured left, testifying before the Senate in 1991). And Specter's treatment of her during the 1991 Clarence Thomas Senate confirmation hearings.

This is how the Philadelphia Inquirer remembered their interaction yesterday.

In 1991. . .Specter helped win confirmation of conservative Justice Clarence Thomas. And the way it happened became one of the enduring and most controversial episodes of his career.

After Anita Hill, a law professor who had earlier worked for Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, accused Thomas of sexual harassment, Specter shredded her on cross-examination before the Judiciary Committee. He concluded that Hill had been guilty of "flat-out perjury" because she made allegations at the confirmation hearings that appeared to contradict her sworn statement to the FBI.

Specter's treatment of Hill enraged millions of women and motivated an election challenge in 1992 by Democrat Lynn Yeakel, who had no political experience. Specter only narrowly defeated her that November.

Evidently, I'm not the only person on whom Specter's aggressive  handling (he's shown here during the 1991 hearing) of Ms. Hill left a lingering impression. NPR's  Don Gonyea was in Pennsylvania to cover Tuesday's primaries, and he had this to say yesterday on Talk of the Nation . . .

GONYEA: I talked to a lot of voters in Pennsylvania over the last couple of days, and Anita Hill's name came up as often as anything else when you're talking to people who were voting for Joe Sestak and against Arlen Specter.

In the immediate wake of Arlen Specter's defeat, journalist Howard Megdal felt moved to write this on The Perpetual Post.

I was surprised that of all the emotions I felt Tuesday night, watching Arlen Specter give his concession speech, sympathy wasn’t one of them. In short, it was just too hard to develop feelings of attachment for Arlen after decades of thinking of him as a man apart from what I wanted to happen in the country. I’m guessing that’s as good a reason as any for his defeat in the Pennsylvania Senate primary.

For me, Arlen Specter was at first the guy who was mean to Anita Hill. The Clarence Thomas hearings were the first public policy debate I remember being fully engaged in. I recall thinking what a waste of time it was for me to be at Hebrew School on the night Thomas accused the Senate of conducting “a high-tech lynching.”

With sex ed still a few months away, I got to learn about pubic hair in the public forum instead, and in a foreshadowing of the liberalism I came to follow, I knew that there was something creepy enough about Thomas, and truthful about Hill, that this was not a man who should serve on the United States Supreme Court. Yet Specter’s manner toward Hill was so condescending, it was hard to see him as anything other than an agent for the opposing side.

Arlen Specter got the boot Tuesday from Pennsylvania voters for a number of reasons deeply imbedded in the here and now. So, whatever impact he's to have on American history and culture has probably been made. But in going back and reading about his long, long career in the Senate, it seems to me (and I don't think just because I'm a woman in the workplace) that the part he played in the Clarence Thomas hearings may, ironically, do as much good as anything he ever did.

Here's a perspective on the impact of that hearing, offered by the Center for History and News Media at George Mason University.

To the many people who believed Anita Hill's claims or opposed the Thomas nomination on other grounds, Thomas's appointment was a defeat. Yet, the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy had other long-term consequences beyond Justice Thomas's life-term on the Supreme Court. Foremost, national awareness about sexual harassment in the workplace heightened considerably. According to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filings, sexual harassment cases have more than doubled, from 6,127 in 1991 to 15,342 in 1996. Over the same period, awards to victims under federal laws nearly quadrupled, from $7.7 million to $27.8 million.

Another repercussion of the Hill-Thomas controversy was the increased involvement of women in politics. The media heralded the 1992 election year as the "Year of the Woman" when a record number of women ran for public office and won. In the U.S. Senate, eleven women ran and five won seats--including one incumbent candidate. In the House of Representatives, twenty-four women won new seats. Many commentators saw this increase as a direct reaction to the Thomas nomination. His appointment dismayed many women, who felt that Anita Hill's allegations were not taken seriously by a Senate that was 98% male.

In the end, the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy acted as a flash point that illuminated many of the central tensions of life in late twentieth-century America. Justice Thomas's nomination to replace Justice Marshall prompted new retrospection on the accomplishments of the modern Civil Rights movement and sparked more debate about Affirmative Action policies. Anita Hill's accusations heightened public awareness of sexual harassment in the workplace and women's unequal representation in the political sphere. The media frenzy surrounding the event marked a new trend of obsessive and often tabloid-style coverage that has only worsened through subsequent news events such as the O.J. Simpson murder trial and the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton sex scandal. Historians will always turn to the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy to understand race relations, gender politics, and media influences in America at the brink of the twenty-first century.