Clarence Thomas Confirms CNN's Toobin Never Spoke To Him; Toobin Calls Thomas 'a Nut'

NewsBusters.org ^ | 10/4/2007 | Tim Graham

[Pyro7480]

During his Monday smackdown on the Laura Ingraham radio show, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin declined to say yes or no when Laura asked him if he had ever met or interviewed Justice Clarence Thomas before he claimed the Justice was "furious all the time." Toobin declined to say yes or no, but suggested Laura should ask Thomas. In a soundbite Ingraham aired at the top of the 10 am hour on Thursday, after his hour-long interview was done, Thomas confirmed that he granted no interview to Toobin. Thomas said he "would have no clue" who Toobin was if he saw him on the street.

Deep into his Monday interview on NPR’s Diane Rehm show, Toobin explained the difference between Justice Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia. Thomas was "a nut." He added at show’s end that Thomas’s legal views were "highly unusual and extreme." He also predicted that if elected president, Hillary Clinton would nominate Barack Obama to the Supreme Court, a "political masterstroke" for Hillary since Obama would be an "unassailable nominee."

\\

When a caller from Texas asked if Thomas was competent enough to be on the Court, both Toobin and NPR’s other guest, Jeffrey Rosen of The New Republic, agreed he was competent – but Thomas was a nut:

TOOBIN: I think he’s perfectly competent. I don’t think that is the issue. I think what matters about these justices is what their ideologies are, and he is the most conservative justice to serve on the court, I think, since the 1930s, but is he capable –

REHM, sounding stunned: More so than Scalia?

TOOBIN: Oh, much more than Scalia. I was at a synagogue where Justice Scalia was giving a speech not too long ago and someone asked him to compare your judicial philosophy and Justice Thomas’s, and he talked for a while, and he said, ‘well, look, I’m a textualist. I’m an originalist, but I’m not a nut.’ And I think that sums up a little bit the difference between the two. Justice Thomas believes that much of the New Deal is unconstitutional. Justice Scalia doesn’t.

ROSEN: Diane, you’re looking shocked!

REHM: Wow, yeah!

(Patterico isn't buying that Scalia would imply Thomas was nutty. He's objecting to Toobin's book describing a 2005 synagogue event. Apparently, according to his links, Toobin also tried this line on another book-plugging NPR interview, on Fresh Air with Terry Gross on September 19.)  

Rosen disagreed with Toobin’s theory that ideology was what mattered. It was still the question of Thomas’s roiling anger: "Temperament, personality matter. It’s the fact that Thomas is so angry...the fact that he can’t get over this wound, this indignity, that he’s always been so angry, that makes him more radical than people who are essentially ofthe same ideology like Scalia or even Roberts. This is an example of someone undone by his temperament."

At the end of the hour, a caller from Hillary’s adopted area of Westchester, New York worried strangely that Thomas had returned to a " a fundamentalist, Calvinistic form of Roman Catholicism." (Calvinism and Catholicism are rarely confused as synonymous.) Toobin said religion doesn’t matter: "What matters about Thomas is his legal views and they are highly unusual and extreme."

When asked what kind of Supreme Court justice Democrats would pick, and whether those picks would oppose the death penalty, Toobin placed Hillary in the political center:

TOOBIN: Hillary Clinton...she’s no radical. She supports the death penalty. Not that you asked, but if Hillary Clinton’s president, I think she’ll appoint Barack Obama to the Supreme Court. [Rosen laughs.] It’s no joke, absolutely.

ROSEN: You think before the primary?

TOOBIN: Before the primary, no, I think it would be a political masterstroke; legally, I think he’d be an unassailable nominee, and it would also have that great Clinton Machiavellian edge of getting him out of the way.

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center

[Uri’el-2012]

Parse it ! Bill

[truemiester]

Toobin?

Isn’t that where you ride an inner tube down a slow moving creek? Tubin or Toobin.
Both are all wet and full of hole(s).

[facedown]

Toobin is mentally ill.

[NeoCaveman]

So Toobin too is attempting a high tech lyniching of an uppity black man.

he should be ashamed of himself.

[truemiester]

Calvinistic form of Roman Catholicism?

Is that like an ‘oily form of vinegar’?

2 things so far apart they can never be mixed.

[Rummyfan]

Justice Thomas believes that much of the New Deal is unconstitutional

What a coincidence, so do I!

As for B Hussein Obama on the Supreme Court - thanks, I needed a laugh today.

[roses of sharon]

Another CNN leftwing hack.

[Renderofveils]

About as much as the executive experience that qualifies HillaTon for president.

[pepsionice]

I can’t think of a single real bit of work in Obama’s career that would get him into the supreme court. This was the most bogus statement...hinting that Hillary would appoint him. Obama would never get any support in the senate.

[steamroller]

the slimy bitch supports the death penalty without trial or appeal for her enemies-obama would be a horrendous choice-is he an attorney?i really never checked-he opposes private ownership of firearms and he is a hard left radical -why does everyone pussyfoot around the fact that he was a community organizer-show me one that isn’t a saul alinsky clone

[IronJack]

Does anyone actually believe Justice Scalia would call Justice Thomas “a nut,"

He DIDN'T. Read the exchange. Scalia didn't even MENTION Thomas. This is something these propaganda phonies are simply making up out of whole cloth!

If you want to see "nuts" on the Supreme Court, look at Ruth Bader Ginsburg! Or William O. Douglas. Or Earl Warren. Or Hugo Black. All either bonkers or such extremists they'd be dangerous as a Traffic Magistrate.

[ml/nj]

I was at a synagogue where Justice Scalia was giving a speech not too long ago and someone asked him to compare your judicial philosophy and Justice Thomas’s, and he talked for a while, and he said, ‘well, look, I’m a textualist. I’m an originalist, but I’m not a nut.’ And I think that sums up a little bit the difference between the two. Justice Thomas believes that much of the New Deal is unconstitutional. Justice Scalia doesn’t.

I call BS. There's lots I don't like about Scalia but he has to know that all of the New Deal programs except Social Security were eventually declareded unconstitutional by the Court itself.

ML/NJ

[blue-duncan]

Segments of the Episcopal Church were Calvinistic. Thomas goes to one of the churches pulling out of the ECUSA.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Actually, not odd at all. It sounds like Thomas wouldn’t give Toobin the time of day. But Toobin can’t just say he wasn’t INTERESTED in talking to Thomas, because that would sound like he was biased.

And he certainly can’t say he TRIED to talk to Thomas and failed, because then it would question is influence and ability to do the job.

So instead, he passes it off, and puts it to Thomas to explain why they didn’t talk. When Thomas says there was no talk, it won’t rub off so much on Toobin.

[WOSG]

I’ve never heard of any type of Catholicism being called Calvinistic. And the caller surely wouldn’t know Christian theological distinctions from a hole in the ground.

They are saying basically Clarence Thomas is a real “strict” Catholic Christian, and not a modern-rainbow-sash Church attendee or pseudo-Christian of Hillary-type.

Yes, I can see how that real grounded faith would be scary to Hillary boot-lickers.

[xzins]

So he’s an anglican.

That’s not exactly Roman Catholic, is it?

How you been?

[WOSG]

TOOBIN is clearly a nut.

[A.A. Cunningham]

A scholar and legend in his own mind.

[blue-duncan]

“So he’s an anglican. That’s not exactly Roman Catholic, is it?”

He is “high church”, it’s close. He attended Holy Cross College with one of my ex-law partners who is now a state court judge. They were on the track team together while at college. Although he was a rabid Democrat, he had nothing but high praise for Thomas as a person, a student and an athlete.

[traviskicks]

“Justice Thomas believes that much of the New Deal is unconstitutional.”

As did most of the justices at the time till Roosevelt tried to pull a Chavez and stack the court...