The word "footprints" does not exist in the text of the short column by Jeffrey Toobin, whose point is only that Justice Thomas hasn't written the majority opinion in significant cases. That doesn't say much of anything about the heft of Justice Thomas's presence. The Chief Justice — or, if the Chief Justice is not in the majority, the senior Justice in the majority — decides who will write the opinion, and the person who assigns the opinion tends to take the most important cases for himself.
Toobin writes:
Neither Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who presided over Thomas’s first fourteen years on the Court, nor Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., who has run the court for the past eleven, ever assigned Thomas a landmark opinion for the Court... The truth is that Rehnquist and Roberts never trusted Thomas to write an opinion in a big case that could command a majority of even his conservative colleagues.How does Toobin know enough to speak about "trust"? Perhaps he's merely relying on Thomas's predilection for strong originalist principle:
Why was this? It is because Thomas is not a conservative but, rather, a radical... an extreme originalist... guided exclusively by his own understanding of what the words of the Constitution mean... His vision is more reactionary than that of any Justice who has served on the Court since the nineteen-thirties...Originalism and adherence to text is a bad thing in Toobin's view, but to describe it is to destroy the assertion in the headline. These are very distinct footprints.
Thomas was a young man of forty-three when he joined the Court, and he is now sixty-eight. His views, which never really found favor even in the years of conservative ascendancy, appear headed even further from the mainstream....If the marks he's left appear headed somewhere, then metaphorically, they are footprints.
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115 comments:
A not very complex rationalization to justify simple ideological revulsion.
Cut through the jungle of words in all these things and the gist is usually very simple.
People who write headlines like that do not believe that men like Justice Thomas are human.
I followed the footprints. They led off the plantation.
Anita Hill left footprints.
Toobin is a splitter, not a lumper.
I am Laslo.
I just realized it's Red Meat Day on the blog.
The progressive and tolerant Daily Show referred to him as a puppet for Scalia. His decisions weren't flowery, but were more clear than almost anybody else's. You never asked "What orifice on his body did he pull THAT out of?" unlike with Kennedy, Roberts, etc.
Toobin is a racist. Can I write that?
Only because Justice Thomas is a black conservative does Toobin dare write such trash. Has SS written opinions in any "big" cases?
Just another example of the dishonest media trying to rig the election. Conservatives are radical. Dangerous! Can't have Trump putting any more nuts on the Court.
Thank god only libs read that rag.
Disclosure: Thomas is married to my college and law school classmate who I like very much. Wonderful woman. Brave.
Oscar Pistorius didn't leave footprints.
Better headline: Lefties Hate Thomas
Words have meaning, how retro can you get.
Racism has always been a progressive value.
ANNA
You've got big feet.
WILLIAM
Yes. Always have had.
ANNA
You know what they say about men with
big feet?
WILLIAM
No. What's that?
ANNA
Big feet -- large shoes.
- Notting Hill
They should subcontract the opinions anyway.
I'd make a great opinion writer.
No fuzz.
Ah, once again the Grand Intellectualizer Jeffrey Toobin has showered us with his dazzling analysis, insight, and vision. His tone is crisp and tight, even to the point of pithy. Yet, he clearly missed his own point by declaring that Justice Thomas,no jurisprudential giant, laid the foundation for further court decisions. Did he write Sullivan? Did he pen Brown? No. He had the temerity to lay the ground work for Heller. Ho, Justice Thomas is not worthy of admiration.
jvb
Footprints in the sands of time.
Thomas's existence undermines the legitimacy of [class] diversity schemes and leverage of schemers.
"Big cases" is quite subjective, isn't it? How many have their been in the last 25 years and who wrote the opinions? I would like the definitive list.
Toobin writes:
"...The truth is that Rehnquist and Roberts never trusted Thomas to write an opinion in a big case that could command a majority of even his conservative colleagues."
Althouse writes:
"How does Toobin know enough to speak about "trust"?"
What I find more disconcerting than the usage of "trust" is Toobin's usage of "The truth": does he have provable substantiation for this, or is "The truth" just "What I believe" made to seem bulletproof?
I am Laslo.
Feminism leaves foot-stamping marks, not strictly footprints.
Thomas is probably the favorite at my alma mater. One of my professors clerked for him (now on the Utah Supreme Court) and another one of my classmates also clerked for him. Several other students from our school have clerked there as well.
He's spoken at the law school twice when I was there, and several times since. Almost yearly, in fact. Probably because my law school doesn't scream racist epithets at him like the "tolerant" places like Harvard and suchlike. He's very nice in person, and deserves far better than what the left does to him.
But he is the shining example of leftist racism, to be sure. Never fails: mention Clarence Thomas and the vast majority of leftists start channelling their inner KKK.
--Vance
New Yorker headline with article written by Jeffrey Toobin. No need to go any further as that alone will tell you the gist of the article. Verbose bullshit.
Toobin is trying convince people his view of the court is the right one, without actually acknowledging that there are differences in how people think the court ought to interpret laws. After Scalia passed I'm pretty sure that anyone that describes themselves as an originalist or strict constructionist, thinks of Thomas as the best justice on the court now.
Clarence Thomas "Invisible Man" would have been better.
Why does the NewYorker hate a successful black man? Are they worried that their white wives will find him irresistible? That is racist!
We would have to know what cases were "landmarks" while Thomas was on the bench and then see if Thomas was in the majority to even be in a position to write the opinion. I suspect the number of cases will be much smaller than "25 years" suggests.
Possible landmarks:
Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) A narrowly tailored use of race in student admission decisions may be permissible under the Equal Protection Clause because a diverse student body is beneficial to all students.
Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, 572 U.S. ___ (2014) A Michigan state constitutional amendment that bans affirmative action does not violate the Equal Protection Clause.
Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) A Texas law that criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual conduct furthers no legitimate state interest and violates homosexuals' right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision invalidates all of the remaining sodomy laws in the United States
United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. ___ (2013) Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines—for federal law purposes—the terms "marriage" and "spouse" to apply only to marriages between one man and one woman, is a deprivation of the equal liberty of the person protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The federal government must recognize same-sex marriages that have been approved by the states.
Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015) The Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state.
Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914 (2000) Laws that ban partial-birth abortion are unconstitutional if they do not make an exception for the woman's health or if they cannot be reasonably construed to apply only to the partial-birth abortion procedure and not to other abortion methods.
Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124 (2007) The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 is constitutional because it is less ambiguous than the law that was struck down in Stenberg. It is not vague or overbroad, and it does not impose an undue burden on a woman's right to choose to have an abortion.
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. ___ (2014) Closely held, for-profit corporations have free exercise rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. As applied to such corporations, the requirement of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that employers provide their female employees with no-cost access to contraception violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The NYT emails that Trump's psyche has been studied and it's a defective psyche.
Possible landmarks Part II
Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U.S. 243 (2006) The Controlled Substances Act does not prevent physicians from being able to prescribe the drugs needed to perform assisted suicides under state law.
Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. ___ (2013) Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which contains the coverage formula that determines which state and local jurisdictions are subjected to federal pre clearance from the Department of Justice before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices based on their histories of racial discrimination in voting, is unconstitutional because it no longer reflects current societal conditions.
United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. ___ (2012) Attaching a GPS device to a vehicle and then using the device to monitor the vehicle’s movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.
Riley v. California, 573 U.S. ___ (2014) Police must obtain a warrant in order to search digital information on a cell phone seized from an individual who has been arrested.
Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356 (2010) Criminal defense attorneys are duty-bound to inform clients of the risk of deportation under three circumstances.
Salinas v. Texas, 570 U.S. ___ (2013) The Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination does not protect an individual's refusal to answer questions asked by law enforcement before he or she has been arrested or given the Miranda warning. A witness cannot invoke the privilege by simply standing mute; he or she must expressly invoke it.
I suppose it's appropriate that Psyche was the wife of Eros.
Wait. Radicals are bad now?
Possible Landmarks Part III
Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466 (2004) The federal court system has the authority to decide if foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay were wrongfully imprisoned.
Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004) The federal government has the power to detain those it designates as enemy combatants, including United States citizens, but detainees that are United States citizens must have the rights of due process and the ability to challenge their enemy combatant status before an impartial authority.
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006) The military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay are illegal because they lack the protections that are required by the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002) A death sentence may not be imposed on mentally retarded offenders, but the states can define what it means to be mentally retarded.
Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000) Other than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995) The Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 is unconstitutional. The Commerce Clause of the Constitution does not give Congress the power to prohibit the mere possession of a gun near a school because gun possession by itself is not an economic activity that affects interstate commerce even indirectly
United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000) The section of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 that gives victims of gender-motivated violence the right to sue their attackers in federal court is an unconstitutional intrusion on states' rights, and it cannot be saved by the Commerce Clause or Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005) Congress may ban the use of marijuana even in states that have approved its use for medicinal purposes.
National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. ___ (2012) The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's expansion of Medicaid is unconstitutional as-written—it is unduly coercive to force the states to choose between participating in the expansion or forgoing all Medicaid funds. In addition, the individual health insurance mandate is constitutional by virtue of the Taxing and Spending Clause (though not by the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause).
Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997) The Communications Decency Act, which regulates certain content on the Internet, is so overbroad that it is an unconstitutional restraint on the First Amendment.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) Limits on corporate and union political expenditures during election cycles violate the First Amendment. Corporations and labor unions can spend unlimited sums in support of or in opposition to candidates as long as the spending is independent of the candidates.
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, 572 U.S. ___ (2014) Limits on the total amounts of money that individuals can donate to political campaigns during two-year election cycles violate the First Amendment.
Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002) A government program that provides tuition vouchers for students to attend a private or religious school of their parents' choosing is constitutional because the vouchers are neutral toward religion and, therefore, do not violate the Establishment Clause.
Jimmy Carter was always leaving hoofprints on deals, according to R Emmett Tyrell in the American Spectator back in the day.
Possible landmarks Part IV
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. ___ (2014) Closely held, for-profit corporations have free exercise rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. As applied to such corporations, the requirement of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that employers provide their female employees with no-cost access to contraception violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000) Private organizations are allowed to choose their own membership and expel members based on their sexual orientation even if such discrimination would otherwise be prohibited by anti-discrimination legislation designed to protect minorities in public accommodations.District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and to use it for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense within the home.
McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010) The individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense is fully applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374 (1994) A government agency may not take property in exchange for benefits that are unrelated to the agency's interest in the property.
Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000) The recount of ballots in Florida during the 2000 presidential election violated the Equal Protection Clause because different standards of counting were used in the counties that were subjected to the recount.
Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005) Local governments may seize property for economic development purposes.
Noted for converting the "public use" requirement of the Takings Clause (Fifth Amendment) to "public purpose."
Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 U.S. 497 (2007) Greenhouse gases are air pollutants, and the Environmental Protection Agency may regulate their emission under the Clean Air Act.
His views, which never really found favor even in the years of conservative ascendancy, appear headed even further from the mainstream....
Are Thomas's views changing? No? Then his views are not heading away from the mainstream. The mainstream may well be heading away from his views. Which is surprising, as I don't remember any recent constitutional amendments that the mainstream views might be following. It's almost as if the mainstream view has become entirely unmoored from the Constitution.
Should we take the fact that Justice Thomas isn't assigned the task of writing opinions as evidence of racism?
Clarence Thomas is being assigned to the memory hole. De-humanizing the man is the first step in a planned final solution to end his existence. Why not erase a non-existent man? He is equivalent to being invisible.
Which is another reason to vote for Trump. Clarence will become respected as soon as the next 2 conservative Trump appointed Justices are confirmed.
"I would have avoided that metaphor, which denies the black man's bodily existence."
Who is more racist: the author who used the metaphor or the person who somehow found a racial angle to it?
Ta-Nehisi Coates' most resonating (or at least most repeated) argument in his newest book is that the white man has the power to take the black man's body. You figure he'll use this example in support of his thesis? I'm thinking not.
"His views, which never really found favor even in the years of conservative ascendancy, appear headed even further from the mainstream." Damn the "mainstream." Which rules by mere assertion and brute force.
In a number of the landmark cases Nigel helpfully listed, Thomas laid down markers of his own. Perhaps at some point they will serve as reminders of the country that could have been.
Regardless of one's judicial philosophy, I think we can all agree that Jeffrey Toobin is dumber than a sack of hammers
Toobin is such a tool. He makes me grind my teeth every time I read his worthless drivel. I assume he's lawyer, but reading his work you would never guess it.
The Left is raaaaacist!
It should be "farther" not "further."
Thomas wrote a lot of concurrences, and considering more often than not he was in agreement with the Chief Justice (who is also generally conservative), and the CJ has first dibs on who is going to write the majority opinion or dissent (when he is part of it, of course) Thomas may not have had the opportunities to write those opinions. That doesn't mean he has no influence--you'd get a better sense of that by asking his fellow justices (some of whom are dead) or seeing how often his concurrences or other opinions are cited by lower courts.
I wonder if Toobin felt the same about Thurgood Marshall.
If he doesn't leave footprints, and he's not human, then he might just be a spook.
Eric the Fruit Bat said...
If he doesn't leave footprints, and he's not human, then he might just be a spook.
10/25/16, 11:21 AM
NO you didn't! Who do you think you are, the NewYorker?
No footsteps means he refused to step all over the Constitution. To some that's failure.
The Justices take two oaths:
"I, ________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."
The second oath:
"I, _________, do solemnly swear or affirm that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as _________, under the Constitution, and understanding, agreeably to the constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."
I see nothing about leaving footprints
Toobin is essentially faulting Thomas for being too principled and not being more pragmatic like a Chief Justice Roberts. Good arguments can be made on either side. Sadly for Justice Thomas, we are simply not going to return to the days of a small federal government with limited, enumerated powers. Neither the executive nor the legislative branch wants that. The President and the Congress want a huge federal government with virtually limitless powers to reach into the affairs of not just states but the lives of individual citizens. This is why invocation of the founding fathers by politicos is almost always cynical and self-serving. It's also why the libertarian movement is such a pipe dream. People, for the most part, want a big activist government even so called "conservatives" and "Republicans." The two most popular things the government does are Social Security and Medicare. One is a forced pension scheme, and the other is a single-payer health system. Never mind the hard on our citizens have for a huge global hegemonic military presence. How the fuck do you get small, limited government from that?
"How the fuck do you get small, limited government from that?"
You don't. You get a collapse.
J. Farmer said...
...One is a forced pension scheme,...
You misspelled Ponzi.
Clarence Thomas is my favorite justice. I hope Hillary doesn't get to replace him.
"If he doesn't leave footprints, and he's not human, then he might just be a spook."
Or maybe he did leave footprints and cleaned them up with a spade.
Black conservatives do not exist. The leftist prog Stalinists make sure of that.
I second both J. Farmer and byways.
buwaya not byways. Sorry.
Ignorance is Bliss,
Isn't it ironic that Social Security is constitutional as a ponzi scheme, but would be unconstitutional if it were an actual pension.
Carence Thomas: just another loser like John Marshall Harlan, who was never trusted by his Chief Justice to write a majority opinion (like Plessy v. Ferguson). Harlan, left no footprints, either.
It's interesting to see leftists assume that blacks cannot survive without their ministrations and control.
Thomas refutes that so he must be destroyed. Read his book, "My Grandfather's Son." I got several copies for my children to read.
That latest moronic attack is by some leftists are insisting that Thomas Sowell is an ungrateful beneficiary of affirmative action,
Sowell is 86 and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1958, well before affirmative action existed.
There is no slur on blacks beneath the left.
Why was this? It is because Thomas is not a conservative but, rather, a radical... an extreme originalist...
Don't originalists believe you must conserve the original meaning of the words as written.....which makes them conservatives by definition.
guided exclusively by his own understanding of what the words of the Constitution mean...
As an originalist, he explicitly rejects using his own understanding of what the words mean, and instead relies on the meaning of the words given to them by those who wrote them. And as for "excusively"....what else is his supposed to be guided by besides the meaning of the words?
J. Farmer said...
"Sadly for Justice Thomas, we are simply not going to return to the days of a small federal government with limited, enumerated powers."
I disagree. We will return to those days. It just wont be the way everyone thinks.
As the old joke says, "What do Progressives call a black man with a doctorate who doesn't agree with them?
N*****"
Toobin is a reporter and author on the Court who has sources there. I expect his statement on trust is based on interviews and conversations off the record.
Just yesterday I had to read a case on freedom of speech for schoolchildren. The Bong Hits for Jesus case. It narrowed and distinguished a Vietnam era case (establishing the right in the context of wearing black armbands to school in silent protest). CJ Roberts wrote the majority opinion. Senior Justice Stevens the dissent. Thomas wrote for himself calling for the earlier case to be overruled and free speech rights denied to pupils at school. His analysis based on pre-Revolutionary English pedagogy. Just one example. He is outside the judicial mainstream.
Those are the tracks of Toobin's tears. How could a black man do such a thing? Toobin is tool. If your world view does not coincide with Toobin's you are a pariah.
Toobin's a twat.
In Raich it took Thomas' "radical originalism" to point out that in-state non-commerce was, in fact, not interstate commerce.
Footprints, indeed.
People should be ashamed of how they've treated Justice Thomas.
Add "racist motherfucker" to asshole Toobin's title.
Jeffrey Toobin? Man, that asshole is one racist motherfucker.
"He is outside the judicial mainstream."
This is a bad thing?
Given the disastrous, irremediable mess of your system?
Isn't Jeffrey Toobin the shtik drek that shtupped his friend's daughter's pierick resulting in a bastard child? I wonder who is wife is shupping.
Toobin is not an honorable man, he is fuck quad.
Michael K
Justice Thomas signed my copy when he spoke in Omaha. One up on you.
Big crowd. Long line to sign books. He was very gracious to the workers who brought him water.
As with others above, he is my favorite living Justice. Even over Scalia, whom I thought got too cute at times. He has always been good at cutting through the minutiae, and using a broad brush to paint what, to me, is the obvious. I esp liked his writing on race - discrimination is discrimination, regardless of supposed motives, and illegal to the states under Equal Protection.
"Isn't Jeffrey Toobin the shtik drek that shtupped his friend's daughter's..."
Yes actually.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/cnn-legal-eagle-jeffrey-toobin-baby-mama-drama-daughter-cbs-news-jeff-greenfield-article-1.194924
Black, female or gay conservatives need not apply.
We will return to those days. It just wont be the way everyone thinks.
Yes and the Gods of the Copybook Headings are Retuning.
I'm reading a history of Pompeii and Vesuvius. Useful to prepare for the post apocalyptic era coming.
I've been to Pompeii but should go again. Before Iran nukes us.
We all know that only one person gets to write landmark case majority opinions. On the one side, he is the senior and they are all too happy to let him write since they know he will go full-on loony, while they can remain in near obscurity, having to do nothing except cast a vote on the case. On the other side, he damn well better be allowed to write the majority opinion or he will just go and vote the other way -- and he will write the majority opinion that way.
That was a nasty little piece by the NYT's.
I love EMD's comment that those footprints "walked right off the plantation. Thread winner right there.
All this weeping and moaning over Clarence Thomas has as its origin that he replaced Thurgood Marshall, a hero in the liberal narrative (and deservedly so for his work at the NAACP), and Thosmas was considered by liberals as an unworthy successor. But, the liberal's problem here is their own logic in these cases. When they do things that conservatives hate, they justify it by saying "We won!" Goose. Gander.
Thomas has been characterized by his distance from the mainstreams. That uniqueness is itself a footprint.
I have had some personal experience with Toobin. He's just another liberal journalist who does not move beyond his predilections. Who else would write such an article?
Thou Shalt Not Rebel Against the Plantation . . . boy!
Michael K said...
"I've been to Pompeii but should go again. Before Iran nukes us."
They will nuke Israel before us. They don't have the patience. Then Iran will cease to exist and the progressives get to blame Israel for it.
Not long ago Toobin was on TV saying that the independent recount carried out by a consortium of newspapers showed that Gore won Florida. If he can screw up a basic thing like that, why should we trust him on anything? Maybe Nigel Tufnel should take Toobin's place. He turns up the research to 11.
"They will nuke Israel before us."
Two reasons I doubt this,
One they know Israel will kick their ass, even if they die to do so.
If Hillary wins, there is no certainty.
Two, we are The Great Satan, not Israel. Obama is so smart he thinks they changed,
emp will do the trick, with one of those missiles, the rhodes road show affords,
What on earth would Jeffrey Toobin know about what is conservative or not?
Michael K: "I've been to Pompeii but should go again. Before Iran nukes us."
Better hurry.
have you read robert harris's take in part derived from the diaries of pliny, this was before he went moonbat,
narciso said...
"emp will do the trick, with one of those missiles, the rhodes road show affords,"
They just have to get the nuke into the ionosphere to be a real problem.
One of those nasty little secrets they don't teach you in common core physics.
you want to take a chance on that do you?
That was a nasty little piece by the NYT's.
And no comment section, of course.
Maybe he left no footprints because, at those points, he carried us.
New Yorker hates introverts
The editors of The New Yorker endorsed Hillary a week after they published an article saying her economic policy was a heaping pile of shit.
"emp will do the trick"
A good reason to get back to some basics. I had a refrigerator mother board die twice in one year. I didn't even know the GD things had motherboards.
The New Yorker doesn't care what she says to the rubes. They know she is lying.
Michael K: "A good reason to get back to some basics."
How big a Faraday cage can you afford?
"These tempests obscure a larger truth about Thomas: that this year has also been, for him, a moment of triumph. In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court. Since the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in 2005, and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., in 2006, the Court has moved to the right when it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government; in each of these areas, the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more. Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication." -Toobin August 29, 2011 The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/08/29/partners-jeffrey-toobin
I understand that if you use a "special light" in looking at the NYT masthead, you will be able to read their real motto: TELL A LIE OFTEN AND IT BECOMES THE TRUTH".
The Racist Left feels very comfortable bashing Thomas. Most black folks won't stand up for him; the few Conservatives who do stand up to him are dismissed as, well, only a few Conservatives.
Growing up under real Jim Crowe laws in Georgia, where black lives didn't matter too much, shaped Thomas into the intellectually formidable man that he is. What a great story. I urge y'all to read "My Grandfather's Son". If Thomas towed the leftist party narrative, he'd be hailed as a younger version of John Lewis.
But because he thinks and writes honestly and clearly, and sees the destructive actions and design of the Left, he is hated by them. Oh well, I'll take him - any day of the week.
Good lord woman. What are you prattling about now, A-house? And who cares what New Yorkers think?
Thank you all who recommended "My Grandfather's Son". I'll order it today.
Toobin, as a lefty, can not possibly be racist can he?
No footprints? I think he called Thomas a spook.
Anyone who think Thomas has written an important opinion needs to read his dissents in Kelo and Raich.
Remember, Toobin's book about the Court, The Nine, was primarily a hatchet job on Clarence Thomas - so not much new here.
The only reason I ever read anything at the New Yorker is to know what my totalitarian enemies are saying.
Toobin is a leftist hack. He failed at the practice of law and became a writer where all he can do is repeat leftist tropes.
IANAL, but Legal Information Institute @ Cornell Law has a list that they call "Historic Supreme Court Decisions - by Justice" with a decision by Thomas (United States v. Bajakajian 524 U.S. 321 (1998) THOMAS, J., Opinion of the Court). Rehnquist dissented (w/ Scalia and O'Connor), so I suppose Toobin doesn't think it counts...
Which writings of Jeffrey Toobin have been significant? Can anyone remember anything memorable or important he has written, other than the fact that he writes in a patronizing tone? There are better writers at the New Yorker, so what is his point then? Toobin has left no footprints in journalism.
It's like the Smithsonian whitewash.
They want to disappear him.
This is a racist disgrace.
Absolutely shameful. He's not a Supreme Court Justice, apparently, he's a sexual beast.
This racism is appalling. They certainly tried to assassinate his character. And it continues.
Way to slam Toobin, Althouse. Kudos.
"Toobin is essentially faulting Thomas for being too principled and not being more pragmatic like a Chief Justice Roberts."
**************
Roberts' "pragmatism" in the Obamacare case is allowing him to add a very handsome wing to his Maine summer home.
Mike: "Anyone who think Thomas has written an important opinion needs to read his dissents in Kelo and Raich.". Thanks for the cite but is a word ("not") missing from your comment? As in "Anyone who thinks Thomas has NOT written an important opinion..."?
Because I just read his dissent in Kelo and it's pretty fine stuff. The Court really blew that one, and he schooled them.
You can make a principled argument that Justice Thomas does not belong in the new Black history museum.
You can make a principled argument that Anita Hill should be in the new museum.
I disagree with both ideas, but you could make the arguments.
What you cannot do is make a principled argument that she deserves to be in it (she is) and he doesn't. (He isn't)
قانون جذب
ايمپلنت
دندانپزشکي
دندانپزشک
دکتر دندانپزشک
ايمپلنت دندان
کاشت دندان ايمپلنت
لمينت
زيبايي لبخند
کلينيک دندانپزشکي
سايت دندانپزشکي
Too in never had a cogent thought on his own, ever!
Kudos to EMD who said: I followed the footprints. They led off the plantation.
One of the most cogent comments I've ever seen on this blog.
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