Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Should Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas resign ?

In 1969, Justice Abe Fortas resigned in disgrace after the nation learned that he had accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from corporate executives and other wealthy benefactors. Forty years later, Justice Clarence Thomas is caught in a strikingly similar scandal. Similarly to Fortas, Thomas has a wealthy benefactor named Harlan Crow who has shown lavish generosity to Thomas and his Tea Partying wife Ginni. And where Fortas had an ad hoc group of corporate executives to subsidize his lifestyle, Thomas seems to have the American Enterprise Institute AEI a corporate-aligned think tank that once gave him a $15,000 gift. We find it difficult to find daylight between Thomas’ actions and the gifting scandal that forced Abe Fortas off the bench.Like Fortas before him, Thomas received tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from wealthy benefactors, some of whom have an interest in cases before his court.So should Justice Thomas resign for acts that violate his ethical obligation to the Supreme Court Code of Conduct for U.S. judges?

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