High-tech lynching, part II

The liberal attempt to paint Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as having a conflict of interest due to his wife’s work with a Tea Party group partisan Democrats hate is a bit too uncomfortable even for the best of the left — that is, retired Justice John Paul Stevens and current Justice Stephen Breyer. 

According to The Associated Press, Stevens made his position clear during a recent talk at Princeton University. “I would say that I wouldn’t think there’s any possibility that any of the activities of Mrs. Thomas have had any impact on the analysis of Judge Thomas,” Stevens said. “He has definite views; he’s been consistent over the years.”

{mosads}Breyer recently said at the Aspen Ideas Festival that it’s a “false issue,” when an audience member coyly asked a “what if” question mirroring the Thomas situation. “As far as what your wife does or your husband does, I myself try to stick to a certain principle, and feel very strongly about it, that a wife or a husband is an independent person and they make up their own minds what their career is going to be.” Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was on the panel, and concurred with Breyer that the current court is not politically influenced in any way.

While clearly a disappointment to those on the left out for blood in a high-tech lynching redux of 1991, let’s hope this will be the last word, given the reverence and respect Americans have for their justices on the highest court in the land. 

The issue seems also to center on Thomas’s clerical error in listing his wife, Ginni’s, income on the annual public filings — an excruciatingly detailed and lengthy administrative process, according to other justices. Ginni Thomas had been employed at the Heritage Foundation and has ties to Tea Party-related groups working to repeal President Obama’s healthcare law. ObamaCare will almost certainly come before the Supreme Court, due to its obvious and already well-documented flaws. The most enthusiastic activity in the world can’t force an issue to the court on mere wishing alone, whether it’s a Tea Party rally or an Occupy Wall Street protest. Yet Justice Thomas’s enemies and detractors on the left are demanding that he recuse himself from any Obama healthcare reform repeal case and accuse him of hiding his wife’s past employment, which was public, well-known and well-documented for years.

It was disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) who first led the charge last winter before his lies and naked photos hit the Twittersphere. Weiner slammed Thomas for needing to amend his filing documents, while artfully neglecting to address nearly identical amended filing issues by some of his Democrat congressional buddies.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) corrected his filings from 2004 through 2006, claiming a clerical oversight on his part regarding his wife’s income.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) erred when listing his wife’s assets in his 2009 disclosure. (Mrs. Conyers currently occupies a prison cell for a three-year term after selling her vote on the Detroit City Council for bribes.)

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) publicly attacked Justice Thomas in a statement to the press. He also neglected to reveal his spouse’s income for 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.

And let’s not forget that sweet deal Michelle Obama scored from the University of Chicago Medical Center after her husband became a U.S. senator. The wife of newly minted Sen. Obama saw her annual salary more than double, from $129,000 to $317,000.

Goose, meet gander.

Legal experts of all stripes have shot down the Weiner charges. But when it comes to bringing down Clarence Thomas, the bitter far-left is obsessed. It’s not like Ginni took a $10,000 investment in cattle futures and magically turned it into an overnight profit of $100K. That was Hillary Clinton’s neat financial sleight of hand as she and her husband rose to power.

That the George Soros-funded far-left group Think Progress has at the center of its smear campaign the allegation that the gift of a carved bust of Abraham Lincoln from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) would sway Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court is an illustration of just how frivolous and mean-spirited the left is when it comes to Clarence Thomas. Not to mention desperate.

Jacobus, president of Capitol Strategies PR, has managed congressional campaigns, worked on Capitol Hill and is an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management. She appears on CNN, MSNBC and FOX News as a GOP strategist.