Who better to defend Clarence Thomas from the scandals swirling around him than a truthy conservative stalwart like Stephen Colbert?
To recap, the
least troubling aspect of Clarence Thomas' tenure on the Supreme Court is that he hasn't uttered a word or asked a question during Court proceedings in more than
five complete terms, even though over the last four decades, no other Supreme Court Justice has gone even a full term without asking at least one question.
It is, however, deeply problematic that he failed to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars to his wife from right-wing interest groups, even though disclosure of such payments is required by law.
And it is also problematic that he, along with Justice Antonin Scalia, attended a secretive meeting of wealthy right-wing activists and power brokers funded by the Koch brothers. Now we've learned that he was actually compensated for attending by the Federalist Society, another right-wing organization.
In a slower news cycle (or if Justice Thomas were the target of the right-wing machine), these ethical question marks would be a national scandal. Calls for Thomas to recuse himself from political cases like health care reform are well-intentioned, but by all appearances, Thomas is so deeply compromised that the question shouldn't be about recusal, it should be about impeachment.
At a minimum, there needs to be an independent investigation. And if what appears to be the case actually is the case, Justice Thomas ought to be impeached.