News & Views

WikiLeaks releases advertisement coinciding with the six month unlawful banking blockage against it.

In an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress, Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT) — the lead sponsor of a bill which would strip Supreme Court justices of their immunity from a code of ethical conduct that applies to other federal judges — suggests that an investigation may be necessary to determine whether Justice Clarence Thomas’ many ethics scandals rise to the level where Thomas is no longer fit to serve on the nation’s highest Court.

Ginni Thomas’ new career advising clients on how to donate money to political causes is striking in light of the fact that this career path was much more difficult to break into just one year ago. In Citizens United v. FEC, Ginni’s husband Clarence cast the key fifth vote enabling corporations to spend unlimited money influencing U.S. elections. As a result of this vote, outside groups spent nearly $300 million influencing the 2010 elections — much of which would have been illegal before Justice Thomas greenlighted this spending.

Jimmy Cliff sang this at the Glastonbury Festival on 24 June 2011, changing the title of his 1960s anti-war hit Vietnam to Afghanistan. His uncompromising anti-war message was broadcast to a huge TV audience.

Imagine the following: President Obama and Speaker John Boehner emerge next week after a series of tense, closed-door meetings to announce a historic deal that cuts the deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade -- more than anyone thought possible. Additional goodies are thrown in that Republicans have been clamoring for as well: an enforceable cap on spending and a vote (symbolic, of course) on a balanced budget amendment. The breakthrough? Republicans agreed to raise $1 trillion in new revenue, mostly through closing various tax loopholes and credits but also by allowing the absolute highest end of the Bush tax cuts -- those affecting millionaires only -- to expire next year.

New details are emerging in this weekend's story that Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser -- a member of the court's 4-3 conservative majority who was just re-elected to a ten-year term in a heated race that involved a recount and vote-tabulating controversies -- allegedly attacked liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley during an argument over the court's recent decision regarding the upholding of Gov. Scott Walker's anti-public employee union legislation. Now, Bradley is speaking up, and saying publicly that she was assaulted by Prosser.

At last weekend’s Netroots Nation gathering in Minneapolis, liberal activists expressed frustration that they lacked the political power or media focus given to the conservative tea-party movement. Former White House environmental official Van Jones is hoping to change that with a new political effort dubbed “The American Dream Movement.”

On Wednesday June 22, President Obama announced that 10,000 US combat troops will return from the war in Afghanistan by the end of 2011 and that all troops will be withdrawn by 2014. The news is profoundly welcomed by the military families.  It’s also hailed by the significant majority of Americans who do not think the war is worth fighting and the growing number of Americans who feel that the killing of bin Laden achieved the original US goal of the war.

Justice Clarence Thomas is an ethics problem in a black robe. Just eight months after ThinkProgress broke the story of Thomas’ attendance at a Koch-sponsored political fundraiser, we learn that Thomas doesn’t just do unethical favors for wealthy right-wing donors — they also do expensive favors for him.

Washington — President Obama will talk about troop numbers in Afghanistan when he makes a prime-time speech from the White House on Wednesday night. But behind his words will be an acute awareness of what $1.3 trillion in spending on two wars in the past decade has meant at home: a ballooning budget deficit and a soaring national debt at a time when the economy is still struggling to get back on its feet.