RUSH: Okay, Ginni Thomas is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Ginni Thomas is starting a website based on a tea party. The LA Times ran a hit piece on her Sunday, and the LA Times basically said, ‘She can’t do that, why, what about the impartiality of her husband now? Why, everything that she does we’re going to be thinking he’s doing it, too.’ This is absolutely silly, and it’s purposeful. Do you know that Ramona Ripston retired from the ACLU after 28 or so years of heading the damn thing. For 28 of those years — well, I don’t know if it’s all 28 — but for a whole lot of those years, her husband is on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, is the most leftist radical judge on that circus, his name is Stephen Reinhardt. Stephen Reinhardt’s married to the head honcho of the ACLU and not once was his impartiality ever questioned. Oh, no, and she was praised as a liberal lion, and he’s always written up that way, too.
So here’s Ginni Thomas, who has her own life history of being involved as an activist in conservative causes, all of a sudden with a hit piece in the LA Times. This is why, by the way, the LA Times is losing readers: its content, content, content. They are trying to besmirch Ginni Thomas by pointing out that she likes me. This is little Ricky Sanchez on CNN yesterday afternoon.
SANCHEZ: She has started her own tea party branch, loves Rush Limbaugh, refers to the president of the United States’s administration as a hard-left agenda. Usually the wife of a justice, a Supreme Court justice, would not take such a public position. But that does not stop Virginia Thomas, who is publicly, if not downright aggressively taking on the left, taking on the president, and fighting for all causes from the right.
RUSH: Yeah. Yeah. But, of course, not allowed, the liberals can do this. You know, the wives, husbands of liberal judges, they can be all over the place. Here’s Nina Totenberg. This is on NPR’s Morning Edition today, Linda Wertheimer is the host here, and it’s sort of a montage.
WERTHEIMER: Thomas’ new role is raising questions about potential conflicts of interest for her husband.
TOTENBERG: She was a top aide to Republican House leader Dick Armey, and in 2000 while Bush v. Gore was before the Supreme Court, she was working at the conservative Heritage Foundation helping to recruit staff for a possible Bush administration. Thomas describes herself as a fan of Rush Limbaugh.
RUSH: Yeah. This is not hurting her, Nina. Anybody associated with me is only elevated in stature. You’re not hurting her; you’re not hurting her cause. You people at the LA Times and you people at CNN and you people at NPR have given her the greatest gift possible. You have let the whole country know that there is a website out there pushing to save America that they didn’t know about, you’re creating all kinds of traffic for it, all kinds of curiosity. Ginni Thomas minding her own business one day, she started this thing in January, she started putting it together in January. Only now in the middle of March did the LA Times hear about it, and now they’re having conniption fits out there while in the process making it known to virtually everybody. And, as I say, it’s not going to hurt her or her website in the slightest. Here’s Jonathan Turley. He was on MSNBC last night, Lawrence O’Donnell was guest hosting. ‘Did you ever think it could come to this? The wife of a Supreme Court justice appearing at an anti-tax rally on tax day, the day when the government collects most of the money it uses to pay her husband’s salary?’
TURLEY: It’s, in a word, injudicious. I mean you’re talking about spouses of justices who don’t fall directly under the ethics rules but the fact that this is news is an example of the self-restraint used by most spouses previously. I mean this is not much to expect for spouses of justices, there’s only nine of them, to try to refrain from direct political involvement, particularly to start a group like this so far into her husband’s tenure.
RUSH: Come on. For crying out loud, she’s worked at the Heritage Foundation. She has worked at Hillsdale College. She helped recruit and educate members of Congress, she’s been a legislative assistant, she has helped members of Congress, Republicans, come up with arguments to sell issues. They know all this. Besides, I thought women were supposed to seek their own identities? I thought the feminists had taught us that this is exactly what women should be doing, that they should not be appendages of their husband, that their husband should be appendages of them, uh, if you can picture that. Anyway, what happened to all that? Do you think that Ginni Thomas is the first spouse of a judge? Ramona Ripston at the ACLU, for crying out loud, with her husband on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. So they’re squealing like stuck pigs. They will always tell us what they’re afraid of, and they’re doing it here.
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RUSH: To all of you leftists in the media out there who are just beside yourselves that Virginia Thomas, wife of a Supreme Court justice, is starting her own website and that is oriented toward causes that are designed to save this country from the American left: Do you remember the name Hillary Clinton? Hillary Clinton was a spouse. She was a spouse, not of a Supreme Court justice. Hillary Clinton was the spouse of the president of the United States, and because the president of the United States had had dalliances with several women from trailer parks and television studios and pancake houses and so forth, she exacted a price. She got to play a role in policy in order to stay married and present the happy couple face. You don’t think there was something unseemly about that? Hillary Clinton was a spouse and last time I looked she’s the secretary of state and her husband’s an ex-president, and he’s running around making speeches all over the place. Where do you guys find the ability to draw the line here when it comes to Clarence Thomas and his wife? They will always tell us who they fear. They’ll always tell us what they fear. It’s obvious that this just terrifies them. They’re scared to death. If they didn’t care about it, they wouldn’t be going for it. They wouldn’t be going after Ginni Thomas. It’s only helping her. This is what they never understand.
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RUSH: Has anybody ever heard of Tom and Linda Daschle? Tom Daschle was the Senate majority leader, and at the time his wife was a lobbyist working on things that came under, of course, his own work. And they said, ‘Oh, no conflict here! No, no, no. Don’t worry about it.’ Nobody had a care in the world about it. How many members of the media are married to elected officials, or how many members of the media have spouses who work for the media? I know one spouse. I know one CNN infobabe. Her husband was a prime advisor to Jane Harman. They’re since divorced, but I don’t think Jane Harman had anything to do with it. I mean, the resolving door between media and government spouses (non-spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, mistresses, for crying out loud) is all over. It’s incestuous in that town.
All of a sudden Ginni Thomas is going to start a website and the world’s coming to an end. No, the world is coming to an end because of Barack Hussein Obama, who is essentially a Third World president — and what I mean by that is that he’s willing to destroy his own country to save face like a Kim Jong-il or a Castro or a Hugo Chavez. All to save face. Health care is not even about health care anymore. It’s not about insurance premiums. It’s not about expanded coverage. It’s about massive tax increases and saving Obama’s face, so that when he looks himself in the mirror he still loves himself. Now, Nina Totenberg. Nina Totenberg is out there saying, ‘Wow, this is unseemly. We can’t have the wife of a Supreme Court justice involved in partisan politics.’ She’s so concerned, so concerned that Ginni Thomas might create a conflict. This is a reporter, Nina Totenberg, was married to an ex-senator: Floyd Haskell.
She was married to ex-Senator Floyd Haskell. There’s no conflict there, right? She is best friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Nina Totenberg, a reporter at NPR, is best friends with one of the most liberal justices on the court. She’s a parent. She has a kid. She’s involved with Americans for Democratic Action, and she’s a reporter concerned about conflicts? So what should Ginni Thomas do? Where does this end? If she has money invested in real estate and stock, does that mean there’s a conflict whenever issues involving real estate and stocks are before the Supreme Court? What if she is a lawyer who works on anti-trust cases? Does that mean there’s a conflict whenever an anti-trust case comes before the court? The Ramona Ripston- Stephen Reinhardt marriage was no conflict to the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, was it? How about as a taxpayer? Does that mean whenever a case is before the court that involves taxes, that there is a conflict, if Ginni Thomas pays taxes? I mean, it’s just absurd on every level.
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RUSH: Quickly to Houston, this is Preston. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Dittos.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: It seems to me that the LA Times just told Ginni Thomas to sit down, shut up, and get in the kitchen.
RUSH: (laughing) Exactly right. Who does she think she is?
CALLER: Exactly, sir.
RUSH: Doesn’t she know that she is imperiling the US Supreme Court? (sigh) Fat chance. Anyway, folks, they are running around like stuck pigs. Nothing’s going the way it was supposed to go. Health care was supposed to happen last August, if not earlier.