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While Supreme Court law clerks can now count on big signing bonuses after their year with the court, they can also count on good and powerful jobs in the government.

And as they rise to power in these jobs, they most likely find themselves working along side other former court law courts, fellow members of an elite club.

Connections count, and the Supreme Court connection counts a lot.

A look at the cast of characters in the ongoing controversy over the Bush presidency’s policies on terrorism and the interrogation of suspected terrorists bears this out.

Several of the key players in shaping these policies were Supreme Court clerks in the 1990s, the majority of them brought to the court by Justice Clarence Thomas.

“We all grew up together,” Viet D. Dinh, an assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003 and the chief author of the U.S. Patriot Act, told the New York Times today. “You start with a small universe of Supreme Court clerks, and you narrow it down from there.”

Dinh clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor during the 1994-95 term.

Some of the other former clerks who have influenced Bush policies in the post-9/11 world are:

Steven G. Bradbury, a Thomas clerk from 1992 to 1993, who is now the head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. He is said by the Times to have made the case for harsher interrogation tactics. (Laura Ingraham, conservative talk show host, also clerked for Thomas during this term.)

John Yoo, a Thomas clerk from 1994 to 1995, worked in the Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 to 2003 and wrote controversial memos on interrogation and made the case for not granting enemy combatants the protection of the Geneva Convention.

Jack L. Goldsmith, a clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy from 1990 to 1991, headed the Office of Legal Counsel for nine months (2003-04) and ruled that some of the previous policies on torture had gone too far.

Patrick Philbin, a clerk for Thomas from 1993 to 1994, served in the Justice Department from 2001 to 2005. While in the Office of Legal Counsel, he advised that terrorist detainees could be tried before military commissions. He is said to have lost favor with the administration when he sided against its position on domestic spying.

While all of these men have the Supreme Court in common, three of them have another link.

Before they clerked at the court, Dinh, Yoo and Philbin were law clerks for Laurence H. Silberman, now a senior judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

An out-spoken conservative who served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Silberman has seen at least 20 of his clerks go on to clerk at the Supreme Court.

He is also said to have urged Thomas to become a federal judge in the late 1980s and they served together on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

After the worst week of her life, pop singer Britney Spears is slowly trying to rehab herself in order to get her children back.

A Los Angeles judge ruled Wednesday that Kevin Federline will retain custody of his two boys with Spears but said the troubled singer can have supervised visitation rights.

The decision was actually a step forward for Spears, who was ordered Monday to hand over her children, Sean Preston and Jayden James, because she had failed to undergo random drug testing, counseling, and parenting classes.

Spears decided to give up her children immediately and then work her way through the judge’s list of demands. One report had her flying this weekend to Antigua to once again check herself into Eric Clapton’s Crossroads rehab center, where she had been briefly treated earlier this year.

“Britney’s team has been working closely with her attorneys to figure out a way to get the babies back,” a Spears source told Muckety. “She is giving up the late-night parties and the alcohol so that there is no questioning if she is drinking or missing any future tests.”

Legal experts told MTV News that the most Spears could hope for in Wednesday’s hearing would be visitation. In fact, Manhattan divorce lawyer Lois Liberman told MTV that it would take at least three months of clean drug-testing and parenting classes to get custody back.

“The court is going to err on the side of caution now,” Liberman said. “It will be a gradual opening of the valve, and hopefully for her, custody in the future.”

Meanwhile, Spears is headed to the top of the music charts despite, or perhaps because of, the negative publicity from the custody battle. Her single “Gimme More” is getting airplay on Top-40 stations, where it’s been one of the top-15 performing songs on pop radio.

The song also landed in the No. 1 position on Billboard’s Hot Digital Songs chart, having sold 179,000 downloads in its first week. It’s been more than eight years since Spears’ breakthrough, “Baby One More Time,” hit No. 1 in January 1999, the newspaper said.

On the web:
Britney’s ‘Gimme More’ a digital hit – Los Angeles Times

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Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, trained to remain cool in the most stressful of situations, was unflappable during his congressional testimony yesterday.

In an appearance before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, he expertly defended his company’s activities in Iraq, where about 1,000 Blackwater guards protect U.S. diplomats and other State Department employees. He described Blackwater as “a team of dedicated professionals” who “risk their lives to protect Americans in harm’s way overseas.”

Prince, a former Navy SEAL, founded Blackwater in 1997. In the early years of operation, the firm did limited business with the U.S. government. However, company fortunes shifted dramatically after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the onset of war in Iraq. By last year, federal contracts totalled $600 million, primarily from protection services provided to the State Department.

Yet Prince, the son of a wealthy Michigan industrialist and brother of former Michigan Republican Party chair Betsy DeVos, said family connections had nothing to do with his success. Questioned about how his company landed a $332 million State Department contract in 2004, he said that neither he nor members of his family contacted the White House for help.

He was also questioned about campaign contributions totalling more than $200,000 to Republican committees and candidates.

“Yes, I’ve given individual political contributions,” said Prince, who was a White House intern during the George H.W. Bush administration. “I’ve done that since I was in college and I did that when I was in the military, and I will probably continue doing that going forward. I didn’t give that up when I became a military contractor.”

Prince would not release profit figures for Blackwater, noting that it is a private company. He said his own earnings last year exceeded $1 million.

The committee hearing was sparked by a Sept. 16 confrontation in which Blackwater employees shot and killed at least 11 Iraqis. Because the shootings are under criminal investigation, Prince and other witnesses were asked not to discuss them yesterday.

In prepared testimony, however, Prince defended his employees. “Based on everything we currently know,” he said, “the Blackwater team acted appropriately while operating in a very complex war zone on Sept. 16.”

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Scooter Libby, Joe Lieberman, Bush 41, Bush 43, and Mitt Romney all have at least one thing in common: They’ve been the recipients of Mel Sembler’s largesse and his fund-raising effectiveness.

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Sembler, a Florida shopping center developer who founded a controversial non-profit group of drug treatment centers for adolescents, helped raise millions for the elections of Bush the elder and Bush the younger.

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He and his wife, Betty, came through with donations when it looked like Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat who supports the war in Iraq, might lose his U.S. Senate seat in 2006.

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And when Libby, assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted for perjury, Sembler helped raise millions for his defense fund.

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Now, Sembler is a one of the founders of Freedom’s Watch. The recently formed advocacy group is spending millions to rally support for the surge in Iraq.

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“A bunch of us activists kept watching MoveOn and its attacks on the war, and it just got to be obnoxious,” Sembler told the New York Times. “We decided we needed to do something about this, because the conservative side was not responding.”

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One of the group’s television ads features a National Guardsman who lost his legs to an explosion in Iraq. He urges the American people not to “surrender” in Iraq.

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Sembler, 77, is a native of Missouri who graduated from Northwestern University. He started building suburban shopping centers in Tennessee and eventually settled his business in St. Petersburg, Fla.

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He made millions and went on to give away millions, some of this to Republican and conservative causes.

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In 1989, the first president Bush named Sembler ambassador to Australia and Nauru. Garry Trudeau lampooned the choice in Doonesbury suggesting the Sembler got the post by making the highest bid at an auction. Sembler served as ambassador until 1993.

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From 1997 to 2000, he was the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. In 2001, the second president Bush appointed him ambassador to Italy. Sworn in by Cheney, he served until 2005.

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Over the years, Sembler has drawn fire for his involvement with Straight Inc., the drug rehabilitation group for young he founded in 1976. Former patients, investigators and members of Congress accused the group of harsh treatment tactics, including sleep deprivation and close confinment. Often sued, it closed in 1993.

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Sembler, his wife and the Sembler company continue to support conservative causes. In July, Mel Sembler and his wife each gave $25,000 to the Republican National Committee.

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FEC records indicate that Romney is the only one of this year’s Republican presidential candidates to receive contributions from the Semblers so far. Mel Sembler serves as a national finance co-chair of Romney’s campaign.

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Outside directors of ExxonMobil are among the highest-paid board members in the world. Each earned well over $300,000 in compensation from the giant oil company in 2006.

And that’s only part of the story.

Because of ExxonMobil’s strong stock, if the directors’ 2007 compensation were calculated based on today’s share prices, it would total about $500,000 apiece.

That may be one reason why ExxonMobil changed its non-employee director pay last week, reducing the annual award of restricted stock from 4,000 shares to 2,500 shares apiece, beginning next year. The company also increased cash payments to each director to $100,000 from $75,000, while eliminating smaller payments for some committee duties.

When ExxonMobil filed its annual proxy statement in April, it put the value of 4,000 restricted shares at $230,680, or $57.67 a share, about the price at the end of 2006. ExxonMobil stock closed Friday, the end of the third quarter, at about $92.50, making 4,000 shares worth $370,000. At current prices, 2,500 shares are worth about $231,000.

Directors are paid regular dividends on their restricted shares, but can’t sell them, generally, until they retire from the board.

At current prices, three directors (Marilyn Carlson Nelson, William Howell and Philip Lippincott) hold restricted shares worth more than $4 million. Nelson is CEO of Carlson Companies, Howell is chairman emeritus of J.C. Penney and Lippincott is the retired chair of Scott Paper and Campbell Soup.

Four other directors (Michael Boskin, James Houghton, Reatha Clark King and Walter Shipley) hold restricted shares worth $3.5 million or more. Boskin is a professor at the Hoover Institution, Houghton is former chairman of Corning, King is former chairman of the General Mills Foundation, and Shipley is retired chairman of Chase Manhattan.

When Sam Palmisano, CEO of IBM, joined the ExxonMobil board last year, he received a one-time grant of 8,000 restricted shares, like all of the company’s new directors. At the time, those shares were valued at $484,640. At today’s prices, those shares are worth $740,000.

Of course, the directors’ highly paid part-time jobs go with the territory. They are helping lead one of the largest commercial enterprises in the world. At the end of third quarter, ExxonMobil had a market cap of about $510 billion, equal to the combined market caps of Microsoft, Google and eBay.

It can be easy to get excited about high tech, but never under estimate the power of $80-a-barrel oil.

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