Ken Langone’s letter in today’s Wall Street Journal is worth reading:
A hearty second to Ira Stoll (“ProPublica Buries Its Clarence Thomas News,” op-ed, Sept. 23). The closer you look at the left’s latest attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas and his colleagues on the Supreme Court, the harder it is to take them seriously. The justice was friends with a billionaire? That comes from a news outlet, ProPublica, generously bankrolled by a billionaire to push ideologically tilted investigations. He flew on a private plane? Well, the justices got death threats, and an assassination attempt, after the news media hyped an unlawfully leaked opinion draft.
I recall no journalistic outrage when the nation’s most influential legal reporter penned a book last year about her cozy rapport with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called “Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships.” If billionaires corrupt all they touch, then the scribes at the Washington Post and New York Times might want to research who owns those papers.
I have long admired Justice Thomas, especially through our mutual work with the Horatio Alger Association, which provides scholarships and uplift for young people who, like he and I, came up the hard way.
I also attended some of the events mentioned in ProPublica’s smears, along with Charles G. Koch. They’re intellectually lively, spirited events with—the left may be shocked to learn—genuine and good-faith disagreements about important policy questions. Mr. Koch and I don’t agree on everything, but we’re both passionate about America and we lend our voices to causes that go far beyond our tax rates.
Ken Langone
Co-founder, Home Depot
New York
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