Free Republic

A little publicized IRS decision should have conservatives who write about politics very alarmed. The IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of a conservative political organization, the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty (PHCIL), due to a handful of articles that founder Gary Aldrich wrote in his personal capacity. His decade-old articles simply criticized Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, which the IRS claimed constituted electioneering. The articles were linked to as "alerts" from the PHCIL website. The American Spectator noted, “Although the literature demands that those like Clinton and Kerry be kept out of power, it never specifically says, ‘Don’t vote...

Virginia Thomas earned over $680,000 from conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation over 5 years, a group says. But the Supreme Court justice did not include it on financial disclosure forms. Reporting from Washington — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife's income from a conservative think tank on financial disclosure forms for at least five years, the watchdog group Common Cause said Friday. Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation's IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income...

Virginia Thomas, political activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has decided to relinquish control of Liberty Central, the conservative group she founded less than a year ago, so that the organization can escape the "distractions" of her media celebrity, a spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman, Caitlin Carroll of CRC Public Relations in Alexandria, said Monday morning that an announcement was scheduled for later in the day or Tuesday morning detailing the merger of Liberty Central with another organization and Thomas's decision to step down as chief executive. "She'll take a back seat so that Liberty Central can continue...

RICHMOND, Va. — As one of the keynote speakers here Friday at a state convention billed as the largest Tea Party event ever, Virginia Thomas gave the throng of more than 2,000 activists a full-throated call to arms for conservative principles. For three decades, Mrs. Thomas has been a familiar figure among conservative activists in Washington — since before she met her husband of 23 years, Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. But this year she has emerged in her most politically prominent role yet: Mrs. Thomas is the founder and head of a new nonprofit group, Liberty Central,...

Throughout the 111th Congress, constituents have pressed Representatives and Senators for an explanation of where the Constitution grants them authority to pass legislation such as cap and trade and the Dodd-Frank Financial Overhaul bill. Instead of listening to the people, Members of Congress, including Speaker Pelosi (D-CA), glibly dismiss these requests with comments like, "[a]re you serious?" Well, thanks to the outcry from patriots at town hall meetings across the country, liberals are finally paying attention to these questions.

Justice Thomas's wife's fundraising makes her tea party force By: Kenneth P. Vogel July 6, 2010 06:31 PM EDT When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife announced in 2008 that she was going to help run Washington operations for a Michigan college once described as “a citadel of American conservatism,” she said the move was her “way of pulling away from politics” and the “safest place for me to be when it comes to conflicts” with her husband’s position on the court. But, less than two years later, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas has returned to partisan politics as a fully engaged...