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Bravo to Ruth Marcus for her excellent May 4 op-ed on the crisis of credibility at the Supreme Court, “The justices are eroding their own credibility.”
She was absolutely right: It was not a “high-tech lynching” when Anita Hill made credible allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas in 1991, and it is not one now to consider the ethical status of questionable “gifts” and emoluments to Justice Thomas (or any other justice) now.
The “lynching” phrase was cleverly deployed and caused senators to run for cover in 1991, but the public — and hopefully the Senate — is not that naive now.
Justices are human and make mistakes, but if they are as vulnerable to corruption as seems to be the case with Justice Thomas, they should not be given a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.
Marjorie Schulenburg, Laurel
When I was a program staff member at the National Cancer Institute/National Institutes of Health in 2004, my wife and I received an invitation to a holiday party from the American College of Radiology (ACR). Ordinarily, the correct procedure for me to follow would be to have the Ethics Office review the invitation to determine whether the party was considered a widely attended gathering. If so, I would be permitted to attend; if not, then I would have to decline because of real or apparent financial conflict of interest. However, the invitation had arrived quite late, and there was no time left for the Ethics Office to pass judgment on the invitation. Therefore, I needed to either decline the invitation or attend the party in a manner that could not be construed as a conflict. I chose the latter. My wife and I attended the party but asked the ACR chief executive to invoice us for our attendance. Incredulous as he was, he sent me the invoice, and I paid it.
All public servants in the federal government must follow ethics rules. Why Justice Clarence Thomas and Virginia “Ginni” Thomas should be permitted to live and operate in a bubble outside of any reasonable ethical bounds is beyond me. It will take years for the Supreme Court to recover from the damage these two have done and to regain its reputation, standing and gravitas. But to even embark on that road to recovery, Justice Thomas must resign.
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