Walter Russell Mead writes that the left has gone from declaring Clarence Thomas a dunce to ringing all-hands-on-deck alarm bells over the horrible realization that this justice has been patiently sapping the very foundations of New Deal statism for over 20 years. Shock and horror, ladies and gentlemen: The left has finally realized, hopefully too late, that Justice Clarence Thomas is a brilliant constitutional scholar of formidable intellect.
What we didn’t know, and what the world at large didn’t know until very recently, was that the New Deal constitution was not as permanent or unalterable as it looked. Intellectually its foundations were shaky, and after two decades of a Clarence Thomas-led assault, the constitutional doctrines that permitted the rise of the powerful federal government could be close to collapse. (New Blue Nightmare: Clarence Thomas)The Sun Also Sets
In the case of the Second Amendment, the collapse has already come. Back in my Pundit High days, anyone who dared to suggest that the Bill of Rights gave individuals the right to bear arms would have been laughed out of the class as an ignorant yahoo. These days, that is the accepted view of the US Supreme Court and most of the legal profession. The resurrection of the Second Amendment proves that the “dead letter” clauses of the Constitution can come back to life — and suggests that Clarence Thomas understands how this can be done.Justice Thomas is the intellectual firepower that will eventually blow the Obamacare Battlestar Gallactica out of the sky...
...which is why liberals are screaming for him to recuse himself on such a flimsy premise: His wife, instead of being an angry feminist footsoldier in progressivism's long march, instead has become a tea party activist. Liberals hate how conservative male chauvenist pigs control their women, but hate it more when they don't.
The next topic for Constitutional revisionism is the expansive reading of the commerce clause that the New Deal judges used to justify the Roosevelt administration’s ambitious economic programs. The Obamacare health reform depends on that kind of reading of the commerce clause; the penumbras must stretch pretty far for the Constitution to give Congress the right to require all Americans to buy private health insurance. And if the commerce clause can be stretched this far, one must ask whether there is anything that the Constitution blocks Congress from doing.The terrified left realizes that this is not the end of Thomas' efforts, but rather just the beginning...
The Second Amendment was a constitutional landmine for the left; the Tenth is a nuclear bomb.A strict reading of the 10th Amendment would invalidate many expensive and expansive federal programs. Thomas's cogent arguments in a few key cases could restore personal liberty to its rightful primacy and return us to a serious reading of the enumerated powers, finally arresting the progressives of all parties who have hijacked the ship of state.
Taken seriously today, that approach to the Constitution would change the way Washington does business. Radically. The list of enumerated powers is short and does not include, for example, health care, education, agricultural subsidies, assistance to the hungry or old age pensions. Most of the New Deal and Great Society (with the interesting exception of civil rights laws which enforce the Civil War era amendments) would be struck down. Whole cabinet departments would close.Mead tempers expectations, saying none of this will happen tomorrow, if at all. But it is the single greatest threat the all-encompassing progressive state has ever faced. Even if nothing dramatic transpires, Justice Thomas has moved the intellectual football and advanced the cause of liberty, actually changing scholarly legal thought, and that will redound to our good for decades to come.
I've only given you a taste of this erudite and entertaining writer's article. I recommend you go read the whole thing. It will lift your spirits while enlightening you. He couches this entire article in a Lord of the Rings theme, making the reading of such weighty matters an absolute delight.
All quotes from: New Blue Nightmare: Clarence Thomas
Please go read the original Jeffrey Toobin article, Partners. You will gain a great appreciation of just how badly Justice Thomas and his brilliant wife frighten the left.
45 comments:
Welcome to Black Liberal Democrat Progressive Regressive University where Victimization 101 is a required course.
The gun loons are at it again. Robert Bork felt the second amendment gave you the right to join a militia, nothing more.
See that's the thing with judges. A judge is nothing but a schmuck with an opinion. If the judge agrees with you - brilliant. If the judge does not - activist.
Thomas is a sour little man who blames affirmative action for being perceived as mediocre. He can't accept the fact that he is mediocre.
If you look at his wife's political PAC you find out who's running a game with this fool or are you so blind that you think he's acting on his own for the good of the nation.
Damn, we are a sorry f---ing people.
Quite a contrast from the mind bending candidates Obama installed into our highest court. Kagan's highest achievement at Harvard was removing the Constitutional Law Course requirement, and implementing Foreign and Internatinal Law. Yes, indeed.
Thomas is no great intellect, and neither is he any greater a threat to American working and middle classes than any other rightwing activist judge.
Scalia is the brains. Thomas simply votes however Scalia does.
The Constitution in no way stops the government from raising a tax and spending it - as with Medicare, SS, and other such programs. It also gived the federal government the authority to override or bypass the states if they do not provide for the general welfare of the people.
The problem with the healthcare reform act is that it essentially taxes people for not doing something - a tax on a non-transaction. Many liberals, including myself, have always been contitutionally leery of that. The public option, of course, would have been the answer. I always suspected the tax penalty was a poison pill in the bill.
Hopefully, if it is overturned, we can one day have the public option, once we get rid of the greedy consrevative pig majority in the House.
JMJ
We are indeed blessed to have Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. The achievements you mention are all the lore reason we need to win the Presidency in 2012 and make sure the Court stays with a conservative balance. If Obama should be reelected the balance of the court will surely change.
It helped to read PARTNERS by Toobin before commenting. He certainly is his own man, that's clear.
His autobiography is a wonderful read, particularly for young people if anybody's considering a good gift.....Particularly educational and sad is Yale's treatment of Blacks in their "oh so liberal open minded" soft bigotry of low expectations.
I wrote Thomas a note about his book and, a while later, rec'd a hand written note thanking me.
He's quite a man, long may he live. Without him, ..well, I can't let my mind go there.
I can't help but laugh. Here you have a black man -- and one who is not especially good looking, highly vocal, overtly opinionated or particularly charismatic -- in other words nothing flashy, nothing that could help him become a demagogue -- who not only pulled himself out of poverty by his own bootstraps, and managed to get himself thoroughly educated with excellent credentials, but who also was able to win the enduring affection of Virginia Lampe, a very attractive, well-bred, educated blonde lady of good background, and THEN went on to face trumped up charges at the Circus Maximus starring Anita Hell the Democrat operatives set up to derail his nomination to the Supreme Court, and WON his place on the High Court despite the vicious chicanery.
Instead of regarding this as a great TRIUMPH of the Civil Rights Movement, which it most certainly is, the Left constantly derides the man, and claims he is "An Affirmative Action Hire" with a sub-standard intellect.
It would be comical, if it weren't so pathetically transparent.
The left never has -- and never will -- care a fig about Children, Workers, Negroes, Jews, Hispanics, Women, Cripples, The Medically Challenged, etc. The only thing leftists care about is the acquisition of DICTATORIAL POWER. They merely USE the concerns of various splinter groups to further that end.
The most ludicrous -- and infuriating -- aspect of leftist character is their arrogant, puffed up assumption of MORAL SUPERIORITY, when in fact they are among the foulest hypocrites who ever lived with an infinite capacity for self-delusion.
I hasten to add that many followers of the left are well-meaning, but too easily deceived by glib, shallow, angry, self-righteous rhetoric, and woefully ignorant of the ramifications of policies they support.
The consistent application of double -- even multiple -- standards by the left should be obvious to everyone, but their showy assumption of RECTITUDE has an intimidating -- even paralyzing -- effect on purveyors of Truth, Logic, Decency and Practicality.
I mean how can you come out against "Better Working Conditions," "Civil Rights,""Clean Air" and "Access to Medical care for the Poor," and even pretend to be a decent human being?
That's because we have allowed glib, pushy, demonically clever, highly manipulative, utterly unprincipled leftists define the terms on which we must base our arguments.
Keep digging into the depths of you mind. Don't deal in canned rhetoric and soiled and tattered shibboleths. THINK.
~ FreeThinke
As I sailed (flew, actually) across the Atlantic the last two week, I read this book by Les Adams -Second Amendment, which covers the right to keep and bare, dating back to before the colonies, when the right of able body men in Europe, had the unalienable right to bear arms.
http://www.palladiumpress.com/primers.asp#1
Jersey "It also gived the federal government the authority to override or bypass the states if they do not provide for the general welfare of the people."
The constitution does not state 'provide for the general welfare of the people' It says to provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States.
Big difference there.
Jersey and Ducky: Yes, Thomas is not smart... Keep telling yourselves that...
FT: Extremely well said!
Mark: The right to keep and bear arms is axiomatic to a people who believe in the fundamental natural rights of life, liberty and property.
It has always been axiomatic. It was only in the age of 20th Century progressivism reinventing reality that the foolish nonsense of it belonging only to militias crept in.
Is that a pubic hair in my Coke?
bd: I don't know. Your food and drink preferences are your own business.
Come on bd, admit that you'd dig sitting down with Clarence and his wife as 'ol Clarence slipped a copy of "Long Dong Silver" into the CD tray.
Jersey and Ducky: Yes, Thomas is not smart... Keep telling yourselves that...
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Thomas is not smart ...
Thomas is not smart ...
Thomas is not smart ...
Thomas is not smart ...
Thomas is not smart ...
Thomas is not smart ...
I notice the NRA opened new branches in Nevada and NYC recently.
I guess the inference went over your head Silverfiddle. Thomas is a tool and has said very little about anything of substance in his time on the bench.
Pure Poetry. Godspeed Justice and Mrs Thomas !
I see I must remind people that mass murder only happens in gun free zones. And that since and 13 yr old can get heroine if they want it, you are naive beyond description if you think criminals, crazy people and any other category of vermin won't have guns.
"The gun goons are at it again"
Ducky: Don't throw a hissy fit because the recoil from your uncles 30-06 you shot at age nine still has you traumatized.
I recommend some solid therapy. Start out with a small caliber like a 22. Then get back to us.
As I remind people, I have a .50 Barrett lockered in Maine.
It says that not only don't you get past the perimeter but neither does your vehicle.
I got about two-thirds of the way through Toobin's article before I started to feel suffocated in the welter of gratuitous, mind-numbing detail so characteristic of every New Yorker article I've seen in the nearly sixty years I've been reading the publication.
I was amazed at how fair Toobin was to Justice Thomas considering the extreme left tilt of the New Yorker and Toobin's own status among "The Elite," as Justice Thomas describes them with mild-mannered contempt.
Of course, Toobin just had to begin his article with a couple of paragraphs of snarky negative trivialities, but after the obligatory poor start he soon painted a very positive -- even flattering -- picture of the Justice.
I just loved what Justice Thomas had to say about Yale Law School -- his alma mater. If you read nothing else in Toobin's lengthy, rather turgid analysis, don't miss that.
I suspect it was put in there to reflect poorly on the Justice, because who would dare denigrate Yale -- or any of the other "ivies" for that matter? Aren't they supposed to be the ne plus ultra of American higher education -- the sine qua non of academic quality and intellectual advancement?
One thing our bevy of quasi-belligerent "Detractionists" need to learn is that florid displays of what-may-pass-for brilliance may not stand up in comparison to quiet, relentless, methodical application of effort on behalf of Principle. It's Aesop's old story of the Tortoise and the Hare all over again.
"... As gold the pyrites would shun..."
He who laughs last ...
~ FreeThinke
Freethinker, the question is whether or not he is an exceptional jurist.
He may be steadfast and methodical but that only means in this case that he's a good corporate pimp for his corporate whore wife.
Duck Boy, you're a hateful little bastard aren't ya?
What do you think of obama's lesbian and totally incompetent SC picks, Sotomayor and Kagen?
I think you could find better picks at the homeless shelter but I'm deeply interested in Your opinion.
So you are just a typical leftist who wants to take others guns away? Nothing like saying one thing and doing another. Pathetic!
Trestin, tie a can on it. What is this "typical leftist"?
Are you that thick that you believe there isn't a gradient in people's views.
When have I ever written that I believe in confiscation? Buy a damn vowel. I do believe in point of sale control especially a strict ban on bulk sales.
What makes Thomas’s silence even more peculiar is his behavior in the courtroom, especially in recent years. The Justices all sit in high-backed leather swivel chairs, and Thomas has set his so that he can recline so far that he appears almost to be lying down. He stares at the ceiling. He rubs his face. He does not appear to be listening. He closes his eyes and sometimes appears to be asleep. The over-all effect is rude, if not contemptuous.
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That's Slappy for you.
Hey Duck Boy, Furthermore.
I've got you as a total failure who hates Anyone who is successful, let alone a wonderful tasteful class woman such as Mrs Thomas who is entirely successful beyond your infantile dreams.
Typical liberal in fact, but with the added stigma of having to live your life 24 hrs a day in cyberspace trying o construct an alternate reality for yourself. You're not worth the typing but I was bored and in between chess moves, etc.
I'd say you are an only child who's father was missing early in your childhood and who is seriously pissed at how your Mother gave you no discipline, so now you're out on the web making a total assclown of yourself trying to get some. It won't work my friend. You need more than reality tossed at you from cyberspace.
Go see a doctor. At least.
Sure you do, anyone with half a brain can see that restrictive gun laws are a long march approach. No person who has ever really thought it out would come to the conclusion that one day the government is just going to take everyone's guns away. No they will do it just like you are proposing, a few fees a few laws, then some more fees and laws and in a few decades hardly any law abiding person will have one.
No thanks comrade, I can see your snake oil for what it is.
Hey kid, my mother died when I was five. Go fuck yourself you pig.
@Bd: Thomas is a tool and has said very little about anything of substance in his time on the bench.
A tool? How original!
You must be a racist who hates the fact that a black man sits on the nation's highest court.
He hasn't said much? Do you read?
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf
As I remind people, I have a .50 Barrett lockered in Maine.
It says that not only don't you get past the perimeter but neither does your vehicle
You've said that twice now, and I don't know what you're trying to say. You're bragging that you own a gun that you have locked up in another state?
Hey Duck, I don't believe you but If that's true.. then we're not too far off are we.
And are you looking for sympathy? Ya get none with me.. Billions of people dealing with stuff well beyond their Mother dying when they were 5. I have my own story but you won't hear it.
Another punk who thinks the world owes him something. Another punk who hates successful people because they remind you 24 hours a day what a failure you are.
Another fantasy addict that hates facts and reality so much that they strike blindly like a heroin addict at anything that tries to pull them back into real life.
Life is hard, I'll give you that. Trying to avoid reality though makes it a few times harder.
Seriously, you're a piece of glass dude. Get a new act. See if you can actually affect some Positive change instead of taking pot shots at anything everything on some websites.
Seriously. we all know you don't have the slightest clue what the Thomas's do, have done for themselves let alone for America, yet here you sit striking out at people you don't have the slightest clue about calling people whores. Do you think that's mentally stable?
You are WTF is wrong with America.
Get a clue. Get a job. make something of yourself. Hell if you're young enough yet, join the service. They'll help ya out.
They are illegal in Massachusetts, Silverfiddle.
A few friends and I like to shoot once in a while.
What I am saying is that the likes of Tristan with their caricatures are often wildly off the mark.
It's like one of you guys trying to describe Marx's writings. You have no more idea than a hammer but you plow on. On the other hand, many on the left have read Hayek, digested some of it and thrown away the shell.
You're ignorant and you don't seem to care or have any intent to resolve the matter.
Hey kid, go fuck yourself you little right wing diaper pisser.
Right now I have enough in my checking account to buy an Aston Martin and you don't have a fucking pot to pee in.
If you want to compete making decisions in the market place I'll rip strips of raw flesh off your lousy pauper ass.
Duck Boy. BOREing and totally expected. Like I said, piece of glass.
Well post your picks and let's see how they turn out.
You know -
you're either doing it or talking about it. Know what I mean?
Put up or shut up.
Put your money where your mouth is.
Money talks and Bullshit walks.
You called the game. You say WHen.
Can you think of any ore cliche's?
Anyway, Gimme what you got and I'll come back.
Try reading Toobin's article in the New Yorker, Ducky. It may get a little too bogged down with its endless recital of factual data in the latter half, but it's revealing and amazingly fair-minded -- for a leftist publication.
Or have you decided now that Toobin too must be a tool of the rotten corporate establishment -- a man who's been given his marching orders by the monstrous moguls who enable him to pay the rent?
Alas! the necessity of eating and paying bills makes whores of us all -- at times.
~ FreeThinke
This is exactly why the progressive left so hates him. They see what he is doing and are beginning to realize just how much of a threat he is to everything they have managed to establish over the last 80 years.
Ducky,
I'll pay you the ultimate insult by telling you that you're beginning to sound a lot like Beamish.
Use a little more discretion when trading insults, please.
The Padded Cell awaits those who lose control of their impulses. Not much room for an Aston Martin in there.
I doubt you'd enjoy having your tailor measure you for a straitjacket.
Regards,
~ FreeThinke
"Scalia is the brains. Thomas simply votes however Scalia does."
Hi, Jersey. Toobin's article indicates there is considerable variation in the written opinions handed down by Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas. Toobin even quotes a noted liberal law professor as saying that of the two Clarence Thomas may prove to have had the weightier, more principled and more serious approach to jurisprudence.
The article doesn't appear to be a farce, a parody or a burlesque. Don't you think maybe you ought to read it?
~ FreeThinke
Ducky,
I actually have read The Communist Manifesto. It's a perfect shower of shit.
Once basic principles are understood, it's unnecessary to study material based on faulty premises in detail.
Only a fool would quaff down gallons of diarrhea in order to prove that it makes a most unappealing beverage. A masochist, of course, might come to an entirely different conclusion, but we needn't let ourselves be guided by the appetites of of the mentally ill -- unless we are mentally ill, ourselves, n'est-ce-pas?
~ FreeThinke
Let's take a Levity Break:
JESUS AND THE DEMOCRAT
A Republican, in a wheelchair, entered a restaurant one afternoon and asked the waitress for a cup of coffee. The Republican looked across the restaurant and asked, "Is that Jesus sitting over there?"
The waitress nodded "yes," so the Republican requested that she give Jesus a cup of coffee, on him.
The next patron to come in was a Libertarian, with a hunched back. He shuffled over to a booth, painfully sat down, and asked the waitress for a cup of hot tea. He also glanced across the restaurant and asked, "Could that that Jesus, over there?"
The waitress nodded her assent, so the Libertarian asked her to give Jesus a cup of hot tea saying, "My treat."
The third patron to come into the restaurant was a Democrat on crutches. He hobbled over to a booth, sat down and hollered, "Hey there baby! How's about you gettin' me a cold mug of Miller Light?"
He too looked across the restaurant and said, "Hey! ain't dat God's Boy over there?"
The waitress nodded, so the Democrat directed her to give Jesus a cold beer. "On my bill," he said loudly.
As Jesus got up to leave, he passed by the Republican, touched him and said, "For your kindness, you are healed."
The Republican felt the strength come back into his legs, got up, and danced a jig out the door.
Jesus passed by the Libertarian, touched him and said, "For your kindness, you are healed."
The Libertarian felt his back straightening up, and he raised his hands, praised the Lord, and did a series of back flips out the door.
Then, Jesus walked towards the Democrat, smiling.
The Democrat jumped up, drew back and yelled,
"Don't you touch me, man ... I'm collecting disability."
~ Submitted by FreeThinke
Well kid with the Fed announcing that interest rates aren't going to move much between now and the election I think mortgage backed REITs which are yielding around 14% are solid and should beat the half percent your seeing.
Talking to my broker today.
Well bird brain. I have read several of the Works of Marx, as well as Engels, De Leon, Gramsci, and Gillette.
And you are the perfect little trooper. Many of the ideas I've seen you champion here are almost word for word out of De Leon. This is why I like to call you Comrade Ducky. You try so hard to pass yourself off as an objective independent thinker, but you are just poorly disused communist. It's kind of sad watching you make such a fool of yourself.
When the left are squealing and squawking, that's when you know you're on the right track.
And regarding the right to bear arms, it's not really the fantasy high rate of gun crime and daily massacres that frighten the left. That's just trotted out to make them seem like they care about people.
No, that's not why the left hate guns, they hate it because an armed populace is far less likely than an unarmed one to embrace socialism and various forms of limiting individual freedom.
The proof is in the people facing prosecution here in Australia and jail time in Britain [see my latest post] for daring to speak freely. When we stupidly gave up our guns, we also gave up our right to free speech as well. We just didn't know it then.
Duck,
What 1/2% are you talking about. I tripled my trading account in the last two years.
A couple of the names that have been good to me are FAS/FAZ, and NGD.
Good luck with the REITs. Careful with the shadow inventory. Especially in places like Phoenix Arizona.
There is lots of it and more repos coming this year. More in 2011 in total than in 2010.
I don't have any long term picks. Gold is actually a bubble now and could pop anytime but I'm going with junior gold miners with properties in stable countries like the US and Mexico. They are way undervalued and many are takeover targets.
As far as the market which generally follows the financials, there are land mines all over the place from unknown liabilities in mark to market assets that are off balance sheet because FASB-157 isn't being enforced to unknown liabilities at all large banks because exposure to the PIIGS in Europe still susceptible to defaulting. Italy and Greece most notably.
In summary, it's going to be a stock pickers market. Companies like SanDisk who are on top of the SSD's are going to do well, market conditions dependent. The leaders coming out won't be the leaders going in, which is also a red flag for real estate related investments since they were the leaders going in. I'll be just trading until further notice. If we get anywhere near the last low S&P500=666, I'll toss it all in and close my eyes.
That's my honest take.
Anyway good luck.
but you are just a poorly disused communist.
Who seems quite proud of making money off of investments in an evil, capitalist free market and brag about an alleged six figure bank account and a .50Cal phallic substitute.
Not to mention a fixation with Ken dolls.
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