| Submit your comments on this article | ||
| Home Front: Culture Wars | ||
| New Blue Nightmare: Clarence Thomas and the Amendment of Doom | ||
| 2011-08-30 | ||
In fact, Toobin suggests, Clarence Thomas may be the Frodo Baggins of the right; his lonely and obscure struggle has led him to the point from which he may be able to overthrow the entire edifice of the modern progressive state. This is one of the most startling reappraisals to appear in The New Yorker for many years. It is hard to think of other revisions as radical as the declownification of Clarence Thomas: Herbert Hoover as the First Keynesian? Henry Kissinger as the Great Humanitarian? Richard Nixon, the most liberal president ever (that one might even be true)?
| ||
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #4 Thomas is brilliant. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2011-08-30 19:10 |
| #3 Thomas's concurring opinion in McDonald v. Chicago, the great gun rights case, was some of the most brilliant and definitive legal argument seen in the last hundred years. It completely went over the heads of the left side of the court, and the right side of the court were both awed and amazed. And it seemed to come out of the blue. While everyone else was focused on the 2nd Amendment and its case law, Thomas completely focused on a single clause in section 1 of the 14th Amendment, the "privileges or immunities" clause. In a 100 page dissertation, he brought that clause back from obscurity and made it matter. That opinion should be front and center in legal textbooks for the next hundred years. It took complete control over the other 2nd Amendment arguments. And Thomas's reason for doing this had a much deeper meaning. The 1st section of the 14th Amendment has been under challenge right now over its "naturalization" clause, that anyone born in the US is automatically a citizen. Yet the 14th Amendment is perhaps the most important civil rights amendment, as far as black Americans are concerned. Thomas does *not* want even the possibility that it could be damaged beyond a congressional reinterpretation of the naturalization clause. With his arguments in McDonald, he has guaranteed that this will not happen. So in one fell swoop, he took control over the gun rights issue, the illegal immigration issue, major civil rights issues, and the federal authority to prevent states from oppressing their citizens. Making him one of the top jurists the US has ever had. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-08-30 10:20 |
| #2 From Walter's lips to God's ear. The left has spent years trying to destroy Justice Thomas. Payback is a b*tch, you know? |
| Posted by: SR-71 2011-08-30 09:22 |
| #1 Best read all week by far. Thomas is one of the last stalwarts of proper Constitutional Justice and a fine Man to boot. |
| Posted by: newc 2011-08-30 01:18 |