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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (111693)	12/12/2000 7:57:43 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Then they will sit inert, and may as well be disposed of. If, for historical purposes, one opposes that, I have no objection to archiving them, as long as they are not to be touched except by scholars, and after a judicious interval.......

To: Brumar89 who wrote (111693)	12/12/2000 7:58:58 AM
From: Mao II	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Thomas joins Scalia in Conflict Derby. December 12, 2000 CHALLENGING A JUSTICE Job of Thomas's Wife Raises Conflict-of-Interest Questions By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS ASHINGTON, Dec. 11 — The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said today that she was working at a conservative research group gathering résumés for appointments in a possible Bush administration but that she saw no conflict between her job and her husband's deliberations on a case that could decide the presidency. The comments from the justice's wife, Virginia Lamp Thomas, a former Republican Congressional aide, came as a federal judge in Nashville said Justice Thomas faced a serious conflict of interest as a result of his wife's work for the Heritage Foundation. The foundation has close ties to the Republican Party and would probably have a say in the hiring of key government officials if Gov. George W. Bush assumed the presidency. In e-mail distributed on Capitol Hill earlier this month, Mrs. Thomas solicited résumés "for transition purposes" from the government oversight committees of Congress. A decision by Justice Thomas to recuse himself could alter the outcome of the case now before the court, which is weighing whether to allow a manual recount of votes in Florida. On Saturday, by a vote of 5 to 4, the court blocked the recount for now. Justice Thomas, who was appointed to the court by President George Bush, Governor Bush's father, was in the majority. If Justice Thomas were to recuse himself, it could result in a 4-to-4 tie in the case now before it, which would allow the ruling by the Florida Supreme Court to stand. "There is no conflict here," Mrs. Thomas said in an interview. She insisted that she rarely discussed matters before the Supreme Court with her husband and that Justice Thomas therefore should not consider recusing himself from the landmark case. A spokesman for Vice President Al Gore said he had no comment on accusations of a conflict of interest. "The Vice President has the highest regard for the independent judiciary, so we're not going to comment on the various questions that have been raised," said Mark Fabiani, a Gore campaign spokesman. Ari Fleischer, a spokesman for the Bush transition team, said he was aware that the Heritage Foundation regularly collected job résumés during presidential transitions, but he said he did not know if the organization was coordinating its efforts with the Bush camp. "Like many professional women, Mrs. Thomas should not be judged by her spouse," Mr. Fleischer said, denying any conflict of interest. "She should be judged on her own merits and qualifications." He suggested that the accusations were the work of the Gore campaign. A federal appellate judge, Gilbert S. Merritt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, said he saw a serious conflict of interest for Justice Thomas in deciding a case that could throw the election to Governor Bush. "The spouse has obviously got a substantial interest that could be affected by the outcome," he said in an interview from his home in Nashville. "You should disqualify yourself. I think he'd be subject to some kind of investigation in the Senate." Judge Merritt, who has long association with the Gore family and was considered a leading contender for the Supreme Court early in the Clinton Administration, said he would not launch a formal complaint against Justice Thomas. nytimes.com