Tales from the Trail

It has turned out that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has amended his annual financial disclosure forms dating back more than 20 years to add his wife’s employment.

“It has come to my attention that information regarding my spouse’s employment required in Part III B of my financial disclosure report was inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions,” he wrote in a letter to a committee handling financial disclosure reports.

During the 20-year period, his wife, Virginia Thomas, held a number of jobs, working for the U.S. Labor Department, then-U.S. House Republican Leader Dick Armey, The Heritage Foundation conservative think tank, and Hillsdale College.

Thomas amended his annual financial forms the same day that the group Common Cause issued a news release saying he had failed to disclose his wife’s income.

“Common Cause is concerned about omissions in Justice Thomas’s annual financial disclosures,” the group’s president, Bob Edgar, said in a statement.

Is your tea getting cold? A new poll suggests the Tea Party movement may be losing some of its steam in the run-up to Election Day.

The ABC/Washington Post survey found that only 18 percent of registered voters now say they are more likely to vote for a Tea Party affiliated candidate. That’s down from 30 percent in July. Those less likely to vote for a Tea Party candidate remains at 28 percent.

Overall, 47 percent of the 1,002 Americans polled Sept. 30-Oct. 3 oppose the Tea Party, vs. 40 percent who support it. The split was even among likely voters, according to results that have a 3.5 percentage point margin of error.