We're working our way backward through the '90s. With OJ Simpson again on the national stage, it was inevitable that Clarence Thomas would follow. The Thomas confirmation hearings were a milestone in real-time mass-mediated American psychodrama. Before the Juice, there was Long Dong Silver. Before the bloody glove, there was the pubic-hairy Coke can. Before the suicidal white Bronco driver, there was the victimized black conservative martyr. Before there was OJ's jury nullification, there was Thomas' "high-tech lynching," which acquitted him right onto the Supreme Court.
I still recall being so obsessed by the Judiciary Committee hearings that I listened to them through an earphone while pushing a baby stroller through the mall. I remember watching Arlen Specter and Orrin Hatch hard at work, attempting to destroy Anita Hill, and finally understanding what the Salem Witch Trials must have been like. I remember being torn between awe at Chairman Joe Biden's pomposity and amazement at the goings-on in his scalp. I remember calling my friend Jack Rosenthal, then the editor of the editorial page of the New York Times, nearly every day, haranguing him to stiffen the Senate's opposition. To this day, I recall my revulsion at George H.W. Bush's cynically gleeful, preposterous attempt to frame the Thomas nomination as a filling of the Thurgood Marshall seat.
It turns out, of course, that the alarming character traits Anita Hill observed in her boss Clarence Thomas were nothing compared to the nutcase judicial temperament he has since revealed. At his confirmation hearing, Thomas -- like Marshall before him, and Roberts and Alito after him -- paid tribute to stare decisis, the importance of precedent in guiding Supreme Court decisions. But no less an authority than arch-conservative fellow Associate Justice Antonin Scalia told Thomas' biographer, Ken Foskett, that Thomas "doesn't believe in stare decisis, period." If you think nutcase is too strong a word to summarize that view, listen again to Scalia, as quoted in this Terry Gross interview with Jeff Toobin about his new Supreme Court book, The Nine:
Mr. TOOBIN: Clarence Thomas is not just the most conservative member of the Rehnquist court or the Roberts court. He's the most conservative justice to serve on the court since the 1930s. If you take what Thomas says seriously, if you read his opinions, particularly about issues like the scope of the federal government, he basically thinks that the entire work of the New Deal is unconstitutional. He really believes in a conception of the federal government that hasn't been supported by the justices since Franklin Roosevelt made his appointments to the court. You know, I went to a speech that Justice Scalia gave at a synagogue here in New York a couple of years ago, and someone asked him, `What's the difference between your judicial philosophy and Justice Thomas?' I thought a very good question. And Scalia talked for a while and he said, `Look, I'm a conservative. I'm a texturalist. I'm an originalist. But I'm not a nut.' And I thought that...
GROSS: Meaning that he thinks Thomas is one.
Mr. TOOBIN: Well, that was certainly the implication.
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
Mr. TOOBIN: It was pretty amazing. I mean, Thomas is well outside the mainstream, even of the conservatives on the court.
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Hope he didn't think that interview was going to change things. His grandfather would be ashamed.
By default, this makes the Executive Branch even more powerful, because they have to power to appoint officials to the bureaucracy and judges to the courts.
We no longer have equal balance of powers, and everyone should be worried.
For the first time in history, Congress did not pass a budget in 2007, choosing politics instead, they just continued the government under a resolution. Looks like they will do it again in 2008. This is no longer governance, and our blooming debt and expenditures are no longer under evern modest budgetary control.
This is a wonk's point of view and gets a bit arrid at this altitude, who out there in the blogosphere even knows or cares how federal budgeting works?
When we cede our elected officials to a ceremonial role, they reneg on what was designed to represent our local interests, and is the beginning of tyranny.
Maybe we have to know what tyranny tastes like before we actually care, but by then, it may already be too late.
is the principal reason that the moron runs this country. Remember election 2000?..This Thomas was the swing vote in the Supreme Court sending the "vote(?)" back to Harris and Jeb so they could do their magic. He is not Black, only a beneficiary of affirmative action. He is a thomas!!
The interview was all background and softball questions by long-time acquaintance Armstrong Williams (?), but I was struck by how self-absorbed Thomas was.
His life experiences affected his self-view much more than his world-view. His vision of the future is acceptance of the past.
While he was philosophical about his experiences growing up as a black man in America, and as a former Catholic seminarian, I did not hear anything about how those experiences inspired him to help others. Instead he emphasized how he learned to let go of anger, stop dwelling on the negatives -- in segregation, of all things -- etc.
His apocryphal moment came after being at a big demonstration (riot?, I forgot), he passed a church and was overcome with a sense of calm, and acceptance of fate.
Not once did I hear him say, "These experiences inspired me to fight for justice for those who had been treated unjustly." Nope. More like, "People just have to let it go."
Religiously-grounded zen in the face of injustice.
Clearly, from the reviews of Thomas's book, he only fakes the zen sh*t for patsy interviews. Inside, he's a bitter and fatalistic man. Give Scalia two votes and send Thomas to anger management.
needs serious re-adjustments, and the prognosis is indeed poor; especially when you ally America's
hopes with that of a fallen Rome.
That civilization, as far as I know, surely did not rise again.
Anyone taking bets on our civilization's mimicking Lazarus?
Supreme court judges should not be appointed for life. Lifespan was a lot shorter when it was determined they should serve for life unless they voluntarily retired. The constitution should be amended to change that. I realize that with age comes wisdom, but if someone doesn't have wisdom to begin with, there is nothing to grow. Clarence Thomas is a perfect example - it wouldn't matter if he were purple or green. He's a bitter fool and all persons responsible for his seating are fools. When you have corrupt presidents appointing corrupt and single-minded supremes for life, we are in a huge pile of manure.