From Color Lines: As the Supreme Court marks the halfway point of the 2011-2012 term it seems poised to make several decisions that will have a decisive bearing on our political landscape for years to come. The court has agreed to take on Arizona’s controversial anti-immigration law, a Texas reapportionment case that may determine how the Voting Rights Act will be interpreted and President Obama’s controversial health care law. As if that weren’t enough, the court is also embroiled in controversy over who may sit to decide these cases.

Last year Common Cause and the Alliance for Justice discovered that Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose the source of his wife’s income on the annual financial disclosure forms required of federal judges and most high-level federal officials. At first glance this error might have seemed a slight omission by a busy judge. Justice Thomas claimed he wasn’t even aware that he had to report his wife’s income and corrected the form shortly after the matter was reported.

But this new disclosure simply verified what critics of Justice Thomas already knew. His wife, Virginia Thomas had been a very well paid consultant for the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation and more recently founded Liberty Central, a Tea Party lobbying group that has made reversing Obama’s health care legislation its number one target.

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