Did the Koch Brothers buy the United States Supreme Court?

The New York Times broke a story today.

Common Cause Asks Court About Thomas Speech

When questions were first raised about the retreat last month, a court spokeswoman said Justice Thomas had made a “brief drop-by” at the event in Palm Springs, Calif., in January 2008 and had given a talk.


In his financial disclosure report for that year, however, Justice Thomas reported that the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative legal group, had reimbursed him an undisclosed amount for four days of “transportation, meals and accommodations” over the weekend of the retreat. The event is organized by Charles and David Koch, brothers who have used millions of dollars from the energy conglomerate they run in Wichita, Kan., to finance conservative causes.

Both Justices Scalia and Thomas attended the Koch event as speakers, THEN went on to cast the deciding votes in the controversial Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case.

The vote was 5-4. But, considering Scalia and Thomas had financial and political ties to the Koch Brothers, should they not have recused themselves from the case?

The result of this court decision opened the floodgates of special ( corporate ) interest money into the waiting arms of politicians.

Had these two Justices recused themselves as would have been proper, the vote would have gone the other way 3-4, thus preventing the corporate political lobby from spending tens of millions of dollars on negative ads attacking both Democrats and Rebublicans for the "leftist" leanings.

In other words, in this decision, we see the funding to push America further and further to the right. So far right that Reagan, Nixon and Eisenhower policies would be considered leftists and in some cases, even socialist, by comparison.

How can Supreme Court Justices participate in political strategy meetings with ultra conservatives and then rule on the rights of those ultra conservatives to spend tens of millions of dollars to further their own political agenda? Is this not a conflict of interest?

Were Justices Scalia and Thomas legislating from the bench in favor of their billionaire friends? Should they have recused themselves? Should they be allowed to stay on the highest court in the land when the integrity of their decisions is now in question?