Justice Thomas Failed To Report Wife's Income

I wrote the other day about the conflict of interest problems swirling around U. S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia that raise questions about their participation in certain cases before the Court. Now the Los Angeles Times has more disquieting news about Thomas who I personnally believe needs to either resign or be removed from the Court. It seems that Virginia Thomas earned over $680,000 from conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation over 5 years, but the Supreme Court justice did not include it on financial disclosure forms. Call me cynical, but I suspect $680,000 is more than enough to influence one's mindset on a number of issues. Add to this income the money Virginia Thomas' far right organization has received from large anonymous donors and it is difficult to not believe that Justice Thomas is at a minimum guilty of the appearance of impropriety, if not far more. Here are highlights from the Times story:
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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife's income from a conservative think tank on financial disclosure forms for at least five years, the watchdog group Common Cause said Friday.
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Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation's IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled "none" where "spousal noninvestment income" would be disclosed.
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Virginia Thomas also has been active in the group Liberty Central, an organization she founded to restore the "founding principles" of limited government and individual liberty. In his 2009 disclosure, Justice Thomas also reported spousal income as "none." Common Cause contends that Liberty Central paid Virginia Thomas an unknown salary that year.
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Federal judges are bound by law to disclose the source of spousal income, according to Stephen Gillers, a professor at NYU School of Law. Thomas' omission — which could be interpreted as a violation of that law — could lead to some form of penalty, Gillers said. "It wasn't a miscalculation; he simply omitted his wife's source of income for six years, which is a rather dramatic omission," Gillers said. "It could not have been an oversight."
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Without disclosure, the public and litigants appearing before the court do not have adequate information to assess potential conflicts of interest, and disclosure is needed to promote the public's interest in open, honest and accountable government," Common Cause President Bob Edgar wrote in a letter to the Judicial Conference of the United States.
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Clarence Thomas has been the lone justice to argue that laws requiring public disclosure of large political contributions are unconstitutional.