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

[dead]

Way, way back around 1998 or 1999, Toobin came to this website and posted a thread with the screenname "a writer."

He identified himself and said he "needed help." He was looking for rightwing activist's take on the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

Very quickly, people realized he was just trying to gather "kook quotes" for his upcoming book on the topic and we called him on it.

The whole thread just turned into a great bash Toobin, and leftwing hack journalists in general, thread.

It was alot of fun. He never came back and I can no longer find the thread.

[Bitsy]

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

Where’s Jessie and Al when you need them. Don’t they know Toobin is being a raciest?

[NeoCaveman]

Sharpton protested the Thomas nomination back in the day.

Apparently you can’t rise that high if they don’t consider you “down with the struggle”

[popdonnelly]

“Seems extremely odd that Toobin wouldn’t answer yes or no as to whether he had interviewed Thomas.”

It’s more than odd, it’s dishonest. If he didn’t interview Thomas, why couldn’t he simply say so?

[popdonnelly]

These people did everything they could to trash Thomas when he was nominated, and they’re doing everything they can to trash him today. This is an example of liberal McCarthyism, to contend that someone must be fatally flawed if they don’t parrot the liberal line.

[madprof98]

Justice Thomas went to Catholic school as a child and even studied in a Catholic seminary for a while. He left the Church later on and attended an Episcopal Church, but he is now a practicing Roman Catholic.

Here's how Wikipedia explains his situation:

Since joining the Supreme Court, Thomas requested an annulment of his first marriage from the Roman Catholic Church, which was granted by the Tribunal of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington. He was reconciled to the Church in the mid-1990s and remains a practicing Roman Catholic.

[xzins]

See #39

That explains “calvinist” catholic.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Now that is fascinating. I always thought he had converted to the RCC. But he’s actually a reformed Anglican?

[arthurus]

She prefers the death penalty to be administered in a less formal fashion than we are used to.

[Doc Savage]

Hey, I recognize this guy now! About two years ago I was in a Men’s Room at the Minneapolis Airport when this guy comes into the stall next to me and starts feeling under the divider and trying to grab my leg,.......yeah, that’s him. I beat the hell out of him and left him for dead! So he’s an author, eh?.

[BunnySlippers]

I’ve got to tell yyou I am a big admirer of your posts. Great stuff!

[Lancey Howard]

Toobin....
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Toobin a “legal analyst” for one of the networks during the 2000 Florida campaign hearings? Isn’t he the assclown that was wrong on nearly every single prediction he made about pending rulings?

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

I’m like Mr. Thomas; I couldn’t Tooban out of a line up of turds.

[Alissa]

Did anyone listent to Laura Ingraham’s interview with Toobin on her radio program? If you did, then the perception was this was an inciteful book, favorable to Thomas. What happened? Did Toobin lie to Laura, or did Laura not read the book before the interview?

[xzins]

See #46

Now I’m confused

[irishjuggler]

He started out Catholic, became Anglican and then reverted to Catholicism a decade or so ago.

[BraveMan]

Well, “whoop-dee-damn-do.”

[ripley]

left wing scu^bags.

[ken21]

bork, thomas, gingrich, delay, bush, rush, ...,

it’s the same ol’ democrat attack with

no substance,

but lots of noise.

and tv-morons suck it up.

[Enduring Freedom]

I would guess a faggot.