Tag Archives: her-soft-spoken

Actor Peter Graves Found Dead at His Home in Pacific Palisades – Updates and Obituaries

March 14, 2010 | 5:08 pm Lanow.graves Actor Peter Graves was found dead Sunday at his home in Pacific Palisades, according to law enforcement sources. Graves, who stared in “Mission: Impossible,” “Airplane!” and Billy Wilder's “Stalag 17”–apparently died of natural causes, the sources said. Graves was 83, according to a biography on the website IMDB.com. In a Times story late last year, Graves said he initially turned down the role for “Airplane!” because he thought it was in poor taste–until actors Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges and Leslie Nielsen signed on to the cast. “They say you are supposed to stretch as an actor, so let's go stretch it,” he told The Times' Susan King. A full obituary is coming shortly from The Times. –Andrew Blankstein and Cara Mia DiMassa added by: EthicalVegan

Justice’s wife launches ‘tea party’ group

The nonprofit run by Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is likely to test notions of political impartiality for the court. Reporting from Washington As Virginia Thomas tells it in her soft-spoken, Midwestern cadence, the story of her involvement in the “tea party” movement is the tale of an average citizen in action. “I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you,” she said at a recent panel discussion with tea party leaders in Washington. Thomas went on to count herself among those energized into action by President Obama's “hard-left agenda.” But Thomas is no ordinary activist. She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court. In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative “core principles,” she said. (Continued) http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-thomas14-2010mar14,0,6505384…. added by: Chique