Graf 6: you mean "principles"

Couldn't read past the first sentence:
"It seemed like a First Monday in October like most at the Supreme Court."
Who let this writer in?!
Is the writer like a writer in Baltimore like most? Or is he like a blogger like a like a likey like who likes like?
Yeech!!

Clarence Thomas, the great fighter of affirmative action, was in fact an affirmative action acceptance to Yale, and essentially to the Supreme Court.

Climb the ladder and pull it up after them. What naked hypocrites.

Brutal writing. Thomas seems like an angry weird old man.

franglais -- your point is well-taken. Voila. Thanks for reading.

Clarence Thomas, like all of us, is a work in progress. That he championed Affirmative Action and has now changed his mind...well it's no different than smoking and finding out later it is unhealthy and quitting. His journey is uniquely his own, respect that and perhaps your own journey won't get judged by others.

Scalia, Roberts, Alito and Thomas will lead a radical activist program to get us all in line. As the Court indicated in Gore vs. Bush it is willing to override its claim of following "original intent". The Courts real agenda seems to be the protection of power and property. A radical right wing political agenda is now the norm from this body and Thomas.

It's RACE BASED Affirmative Action that he does and has opposed. It's that simple.

From what I understand (which, admittedly, is less than there IS to understand) Clarence Thomas has no business whatsoever sitting on the Nation's highest court. That being the case, he's little more than a fig-leaf for the reigning establishment for whom he acts as a puppet. It's therefore ridiculous to debate whether "his opinions" regarding racism and affirmative action are at odds with his own personal history. There is no "He" to discuss in the matter. Clarence Thomas is a SYMBOL that belongs to other people. It's THOSE people's reasons for placing this symbol on the mantelplace that are important to understand, not the symbol's rather strange vantagepoint on the matter.

mnuez
www.mnuez.blogspot.com

I only have two words to describe him, "UNCLE TOM."

"Thomas comes off now, 16 years after his infamous confirmation hearing, as eternally angry, stung, unforgiving, score-settling."

A popular attack. When you write someone off as angry, his views have less weight. They are not well-reasoned or thoughtfully held, they are the product of passion and impulse. What does this jab plant in the mind of the reader? Thomas is eternally angry. He's stung, fighting from the corner. Gonna throw the low blows and try to win a fight that he's already lost. He's the unforgiving and score-settling vigilante who doesn't care about justice, just making things right according to his point of view.

Thomas will never be capable of providing a reasoned defense to the circus that surrounded his confirmation. And that's just a defense, not even a vindication. Why is it necessary to note his anger? I didn't see it on 60 minutes last night. If anything, the producers went out of their way to make Thomas seem collegial and jovial. This sort of cheap rhetorical trick is really too much. Or, perhaps it's not. As if anyone really was going to think twice before judging him. Judgment has been passed. Nothing new here. If you love him, you love him. If you hate hime, you hate him. Yawn.

Clarence Thomas would appear to be this, or this.
merely a graphic that asks the question(not some geeks crap)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12461951@N03/
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1335/1468753748_c1d62555d4_o.jpg

mnuez:

You first favor us with the claim you understand something about Clarence Thomas – but you don’t tell us what you “understand.” Then you inform us you understand “less than there IS to understand” about him. Then, despite an apparent want of any concrete knowledge regarding Justice Thomas’ abilities as a legal scholar and jurist, you still venture to render judgment against him. You tell us that he has “no business whatsoever sitting on the Nation's highest court.” In a manner entirely consistent with your lack of knowledge, you then round our your condemnation of the man without a single shred of anecdotal evidence to give some sense of justice to your conclusions.

I have some advise for you. If you don’t know anything about someone – then don’t offer opinions about them. You are way off base here.

Contrary to what some of you might think, there is much more good to Justice Thomas than meets the eye. Some people don’t like Justice Thomas, or his approach, because he favors a more traditional (read pre-Warren court) or “originalist” approach to constitutional and statutory interpretation. There is nothing wrong with that approach. In many of the contexts in which it is applied, and in which Justice Thomas sought to apply it in particular, such an approach results in more freedom from government control.

This is not a bad thing when one considers that our federal government is currently the greatest threat to our individual freedom. To those of you who doubt this, I need only direct you to such freedom fighting efforts by the federal government as: 1) the AEDPA; 2) the Patriot Act; and 3) the debates over the use of torture and warrantless searches – which are debates we should never have had. This government is a threat to our freedom now in large part because, in the not too distant past, “progressive” minded individuals believed a strong federal government was good for us and, therefore, gave it vastly more power than that provided in the Constitution.

Now these same people are howling about the abuses of a powerful government. The lesson they never learned is that it is dangerous to give too much power to a government, even if it acts benevolently. Why? Because power, once ceded to government, is almost never surrendered at a later time. That being the case, a powerful, benevolent government can change into a tyrannical one with a change in personnel - while retaining the same power. When that happens, expansive governmental powers can – and have been – changed from instruments of good into engines of evil.

Justice Thomas’ approach has, at least, the virtue of not allowing the federal government any more power than that which is given in the Constitution. That, in the context of the problems we face today with regard to civil rights and liberties, is a step in the right direction.

Clarence is a real class act.

His ridiculous "high-tech lynching" tirade embarrassed me at the time.

Had he an ounce of character, the tirade would instead have been his regretful resignation.

But no, he was going to use the race card to claim a seat on the Supreme Court.

Then he so clearly lied regarding his former employee's testimony.

She was a direct and honest woman telling a bizarre story - unquestionably true and you get bizarre stories about bizarre people - and he simply perjured himself.

She had no motive whatsoever to engage in character assassination. A naive young woman who thought maybe character was important in such an appointment.

Now, all these years later, he harbors his nasty attitudes and calls her a mediocre employee in a book.

In fact, he has been the most mediocre judge to sit on the court in decades. A mind of almost no merit.

And his appointment was the work of the intelligent Bush.

The idiot branch of the Bush family now in the White House leaves the country a world-wide mess and a legacy of oppression.

Great family, the Bushes.

John W,

The beef I have with justice Thomas is his disinterest in asking questions during oral arguments. Isn't that what Supreme Court justices DO? Is there another example of a great juror who never asked questions?

Doesn't his lack of inquisitiveness in questioning imply that he already has the case decided based on his ideology?

I am so disappointed here. 16 years later, that ridiculous confirmation still goes on.

Even the FBI couldn't figure out who was telling the truth. If you'll remember right, the confirmation was over when the Hill accusation got leaked. That accusation, even if true, amounted to nothing. BS. Whoopee. Pubic hair in a coke. Wow. That's some heady stuff.

Race, unfortunately, was a way to get into Yale. Big deal. Thomas didn't invent that idiocy, so he took advantage of it, just like you people do when you get government subsidized loans and grants to go to school. Me, too.

The confirmation was a circus. If in fact, Thomas is telling the truth, which I believe he is, (I can back up what I say here) then Thomas has every right to be PO'ed. That was a malicious, career ending assault. Which clearly, by the comments here still follows him-which is the point he has made.

So while you debate the matter, which in the big scheme of things, is actually pointless-you gotta an election coming with a cattle futures, weird suicide and hidden documents candidate and a cross dressing, albeit funny, affair seeking D masquerading around as an R. One of them will likely be Prez. That concerns me far greater, quite frankly, than any caustic comment here.

So you lynchers, keep up the fine work of that confirmation sub committee. By all means, don't look at Thomas' opinions, his unyielding will to extend eminent domain to the government. Please don't judge him on merit...lord knows that ain't the right thing to do. Cynicism alive and well, what a glorious place we got. Maybe the French are right.

Good comment, John W. Thanks for bringing some sense to this table.

Distrust and Verify:

The reality is that most appellate courts come to a strong consensus of how to decide a case before oral argument. By the time the matter is set for oral argument, the courts already have the Opening, Reply, and Response briefs of all the parties, as well as any other briefing they specifically request. In addition, prior to oral argument, most courts conduct some conference to discuss the merits of the case, and some will even reach a tentative ruling at that point.

Parties are generally limited to arguing something that didn’t make it into their briefs during oral arguments. That’s hard to do, because parties cannot raise new issues for the first time in oral argument. They are limited to expounding upon nuances involved in the arguments already presented in writing.

So, by the time oral argument comes around, there is genuinely little a party can add or gain. It is, at times, the event which makes one undecided justice or another reach their own conclusion, but that is rare. Thus, contrary to what you suppose, asking questions during oral argument – and especially the amount of misuse heaped upon one side or another in the process of asking questions – often betrays how a particular justice has already decided to vote. Asking questions often takes on a flavor of advocacy rather than genuine inquisitiveness.

I don’t suppose the U.S. Supreme Court is any different. From the taped oral arguments I have heard and written transcripts of oral arguments I have read, their questioning tends to be rather adversarial at times too.

Furthermore, Justice Thomas has a specific reason for not asking a lot of questions. He indicated in a recent interview that he prefers counsel to have their say rather than to interrupt them. Thus, he waits until the end to ask any question he may have, if those questions haven’t already been asked and answered by the other justices. I don’t think his position is entirely unreasonable. It is pretty hard to listen to what someone is saying if you are busy thinking about what to ask. Nor, given the limited scope of oral arguments, is it unreasonable to believe that any questions he has will not be shared by other justices and asked by them.

* * * * *

Posted by: brian mcnary | October 2, 2007 1:09 PM

Brian,

Please favor me with an explanation of what you meant by the statement: "By all means, don't look at Thomas' opinions, his unyielding will to extend eminent domain to the government."

Justice Thomas dissented in the case of Kelo v. City of New London, et al., 545 U.S. 469 (2005). That was the case in which the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Connecticut’s taking of private property and transferring it to a private redevelopment agency - against the claim that such a transfer violated the Fifth Amendment’s requirement that taking of property must be for “public use.” In his dissent, Justice Thomas explicitly stated:

“If such "economic development" takings are for a "public use," any taking is, and the Court has erased the Public Use Clause from our Constitution, as Justice O'Connor powerfully argues in dissent. Ante, . . . . I do not believe that this Court can eliminate liberties expressly enumerated in the Constitution and therefore join her dissenting opinion. Regrettably, however, the Court's error runs deeper than this. Today's decision is simply the latest in a string of our cases construing the Public Use Clause to be a virtual nullity, without the slightest nod to its original meaning. In my view, the Public Use Clause, originally understood, is a meaningful limit on the government's eminent domain power.”

Thus, contrary to your assertion, Justice Thomas showed that he is against expanding the powers of eminent domain, and in favor of the rights of individuals to hold property as protected by the Fifth Amendment.

John;

I am sorry if the statement was confusing-I was being sarcastic. You and I are both singing from the same sheet of music...you, apparently with much more clarity...I was appalled at that particular decision. That Thomas saw it, the way it should have been, simply proves to me the majority doesn't always get it right..

Brian

Okay Brian, I understand. But it came from out of left field, a bit.