Perhaps you're familiar with Clarence Thomas, the Long-Dong-Silver-loving US Supreme Court Justice. With a new term recently beginning on The Court, he passed the five-year mark for not only saying nothing of value while hearing cases, but nothing at all.

Yes, you read that correctly--while no US Supreme Court Justice in over two centuries has gone even a single term without speaking from the bench during arguments, Thomas has managed to do it for five in a row.

To quote Stephen Colbert, "the man is a rock...in that he could be replaced by a rock and I'm not sure anyone would notice."

Sadly, it shouldn't really come as much of a surprise that if someone were going to set this record, it would be Justice Thomas. He certainly never even approached being "the most qualified" person in the land to sit on the Supreme Court, as President George H.W. Bush, who nominated him to the High Court, said after offering his name.

I'm quite sure that Bush didn't even believe that himself, unless he was limiting the field of competition to Thomas, then-vice president Dan Quayle, and his namesake offspring. But if he was clearly unworthy then--and he was--he is now about as appropriate a judge as Newt Gingrich is a marriage counselor.

While he doesn't seem to even want to participate in his day job, Thomas certainly does engage in the kind of partisan politicking that is not only unseemly, but sets a terrible precedent in a democracy. And at least in theory, the judiciary is supposed to be impartial, and therefore above politics.

Yet, in only the past few weeks, a number of embarrassing episodes have not only turned this legal tracheotomy into a punch line for late night comics, but have quite honestly raised questions about whether any fully-functioning democracy would allow him to continue rendering judgments so important in deciding not only the law, but values of our society.

First, there was the fact that Thomas, whose wife has earned almost $700,000 for--as far as I can tell--being his wife, finds government disclosure forms so difficult to fill out that he accidentally put $0 where $700,000 was supposed to be under "spousal income."

Continue reading »

It's about time someone in this administration noticed. Now what are they going to do about it?

As the Fed updated its forecast last week, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission held a forum on discrimination against unemployed job seekers. Members of Congress had urged the commission to explore the issue, after reading press reports of numerous instances in which employers and staffing agencies refused to consider the unemployed for openings.

The message — “the unemployed need not apply” — has at times been explicitly stated in job announcements. In other cases, unemployed job seekers have reported verbal rejections after a recruiter or employer learned they were not currently working.

One of the questions for the E.E.O.C. is whether excluding unemployed applicants is illegal. Jobless workers are not specifically protected by antidiscrimination laws, but various laws outlaw hiring bias on the basis of sex, race, national origin, religion, age and disability. Since African-Americans, older workers — especially older women — and disabled workers have been hit particularly hard in the downturn, discriminating against unemployed people in those groups may violate the law.

Take African-American workers. They make up 12 percent of the work force, but 20 percent of the unemployed. Even college-educated black Americans are far more likely than their white peers to be unemployed.

Another question for the E.E.O.C. is whether it is acceptable for employers to use current employment as a proxy for relevant experience, or as an expedient to screen applicants. Testimony at the forum by Helen Norton, associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School, rebutted those and other possible justifications. Current employment is not relevant to jobs that provide on-the-job training. And even for jobs that require up-to-date skills, an interview or a test would be a more accurate and less discriminatory way to evaluate a candidate’s qualifications.

Simply excluding unemployed workers also excludes candidates who may have been employed until recently as well as those who have used a period of unemployment to receive additional training or education.

You remember Ken Blackwell, don’t you? He’s the guy who in 2004 served simultaneously as Ohio Secretary of State and co-chair of the Committee to Re-Elect George W. Bush. He used, and abused, his office to help the Bush campaign – including rejecting voter registration forms that weren’t on 80-pound paper stock.

Anyway, he must have been prepping for CPAC when he wrote his latest op-ed on FoxNews.com. Here’s what he said about the Obama administration:

What we are witnessing right now is an anti-Christian programmatic pogrom. What is a “pogrom” it’s the word that describes anti-Jewish raids by Cossacks and others in czarist Russia, but a programmatic pogrom best describes what is happening right now. These are not isolated attacks. And while we no longer have Cossacks to threaten, we now have left-wing bloggers who actually call themselves Kossacks (after the Daily Kos).

A “pogrom,” let’s recall, is “an organized massacre of helpless people; specifically: such a massacre of Jews.” And Blackwell, who most recently served as the vice chair of the RNC Platform Committee, contends that President Obama’s nominees would be leaders of this “pogrom” if confirmed.

He said this about Dawn Johnsen, who was nominated a year ago to lead the Office of Legal Counsel: “If she is confirmed, we will see a radical anti-Catholic, pro-abortion zealot influencing policy throughout the Justice Department—but also policy throughout the entire federal government.”

Johnsen, as it happens, is Christian and teaches Sunday School. She has prominent Republican supporters and a sterling record of commitment to the rule of law. But Blackwell thinks her confirmation is on par with the mass slaughter of Jews.

But he didn’t stop there. He also singled out Chai Feldblum, Obama’s pick to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying that “if confirmed, she would be in position to pursue the pogrom nationwide.” As Ben Smith pointed out, Feldblum is a “Jewish law professor and disability rights scholar… whose father survived the Holocaust in the forests of Poland after losing most of his family.”

Feldblum is also a widely acclaimed academic and vigorous advocate for religious freedom. But that doesn’t matter to Blackwell, who isn’t really big on rational argument. As Rabbi David Saperstein wrote today, “Blackwell’s use of rhetoric invoking the pogroms, the widespread destruction of countless Jewish lives in Eastern Europe, is aimed at quashing reasoned political discourse,” and it “desecrates the memory of those who died in the pogroms.”

One thing is clear, Blackwell isn't trying to convince people – he’s trying to incite them. So will the RNC and Republican leaders denounce the remarks or just pretend not to notice? I think we all know the answer.

The arbitrator says the illegal overtime practices are "ongoing." However, there are mitigating circumstances - namely, that BushCo cut agency resources to the bone (they've lost 25 percent of their staff in the past eight years). Apparently job discrimination wasn't all that big a priority under Bush:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, responsible for ensuring that the nation's workers are treated fairly, has itself willfully violated the Fair Labor Standards Act on a nationwide basis with its own employees, an arbitrator has ruled.

The agency's practice of offering compensatory time off to its employees rather than overtime pay amounted to "forced volunteering" and was a knowing violation of the law, according to the ruling.

"The case before me, in my view, demonstrates action that went beyond mere negligence," arbitrator Steven M. Wolf wrote in a decision released last week.

The union representing EEOC employees said the decision lends credence to its frequent complaint that the agency is undermanned and its staff is overworked.

"This overtime ruling against the EEOC is vindication that the 'model employer' should not be exploiting the dedication of its hardworking employees," Gabrielle Martin, president of the National Council of EEOC Locals, said in a statement.

The Fair Pay Restoration Act is being voted on TONIGHT

From the ACLU: (.pdf)

H.R. 2831, which addresses wage disparity based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, and disability, clarifies that such discrimination is not a one-time occurrence that starts and ends with a pay decision, but that each paycheck represents a continuing violation by the employer. Critically, this legislation will ensure employers do not profit from years of discrimination simply because their employees were unaware of it. Far from imposing a new rule on employers, however, reversing the Ledbetter decision would restore Congress' legislative intent, as well as the law that prevailed in the majority of federal circuits and at the EEOC before the Supreme Court's ruling. It reaffirms the fundamental principle that our civil rights protections are intended to have a road remedial purpose - to make persons whole for injuries suffered because of unlawful employment discrimination. American workers should know that they are protected from wage discrimination and are able to challenge such discrimination no matter how long it takes them to discover it.

The ACLU strongly urges you to vote in support this legislation.

Contact your congressperson and urge them to vote for this legislation.