But an excellent point. Clarence Thomas (a fellow Husker fan!) is not a small obscure being. He is one of the most powerful men in the world.
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...the authority to enact laws necessary and proper for the regulation of interstate commerce is not limited to laws governing intrastate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce. Where necessary to make a regulation of interstate commerce effective, Congress may regulate even those intrastate activities that do not themselves substantially affect interstate commerce.
J. Scalia, concurring in Raich
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Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything, and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.
J.Thomas, dissenting in Raich
Read for later. Thanks.
Bookmarked!
MUST READ. An absolutely vital article.
The fact that Thomas remains silent during oral arguments reminds me of the story of another Thomas, a very tall heavyset youth who seldom spoke in school, so that all the other students called him the “Dumb Ox.” We know him as St. Thomas Aquinas.
“If we wish to be true to a Constitution that does not cede a police power to the Federal Government, our Commerce Clause’s boundaries simply cannot be “defined” as being “ `commensurate with the national needs’ “ or self consciously intended to let the Federal Government “ defend itself against economic forces that Congress decrees inimical or destructive of the national economy.”
- Clarence Thomas UNITED STATES, PETITIONER v. ALFONSO LOPEZ, Jr. 1995
Very interesting! In The New Yorker yet.
I heard him speak once and he is very brilliant. He’s a very measured speaker so you’re not waiting for any flash and dazzle rhetoric, but he comes out with careful and precise point after point, all right on target.
Mark
Just another Georgia fella getting it right!
You rock Clarence.
Gosh, does that make me a racist?
"...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..."
Hence no need for back room deals, negotiations with liars, libtards and losers...If it is not in there, you CAN NOT DO IT! If it is in there YOU CAN NOT TOUCH IT! In fact your favorite DC Rinos would not even have to grow a spine!! hahahah!!
Great article and artillery for the coming fight in 2012...
The Huffington Post reported on August 16, 2008, following the Saddleback interview with then-presidential-candidate Obama, the following:
"I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas," said the presumptive Democratic nominee. "I don't think that he...' the crowd interrupted with applause. 'I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the constitution.'"
Three years later, and we now have Toobin, certainly not a conservative legal thinker, saying:
"In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court. Since the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in 2005, and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., in 2006, the Court has moved to the right when it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government; in each of these areas, the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more. Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication."
Generally, most might agree that Justice Thomas views the Constitution in a manner which would be somewhat consistent with the following declaration by Thomas Jefferson, America's third President:
"On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." - -Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 12 June 1823
Inasmuch as Justice Thomas over a lifetime, most likely, has immersed himself in study of the writings and speeches of America's Founders, the great fountains of wisdom from which (and from whom) they drew their ideas about liberty, the human tendency to abuse delegated power, and the history of civilization's struggle against tyranny, one understands better his tendency to listen more than to speak, as well as his emergence as an "intellectual leader" on the Court.
As for the value one places on Presidential opinions about "interpretations" of the Constitution, or their personal evaluations of "legal thinkers," then one might need to examine the depth of study of that President and how he/she views the role, reach, and scope of government structured by the Founders' written Constitution for a free society.
One early President, James Madison, who came to be known as the "father" of the Constitution because of his role in the Convention, believed government's beneficial function to be "benign." He said:
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison
In the Year 2011, with our understanding of the stark and sometimes deadly differences between the quality of being "benign" and of being "malignant" as it pertains to our bodies, we are presented with an almost graphic difference between Madison's understanding of a constitutionally-limited government whose "influence" is "benign," and an understanding which favors enormous and invasive government power.
A logical conclusion to such reasoning might be that President Madison's opinion of Justice Clarence Thomas as "legal thinker" and "jurist" might be vastly different than President Obama's.
Would that the author be right that Justice Thomas’ efforts will reverse the federal power grab via the commerce clause. If the next election installs a decent conservative to replace what we now have, perhaps the nation will be steered toward the Founding Fathers’ original vision.
Too bad not even one of them will face up to the fact that the child in the womb is a person, and therefore should be protected by the explicit, imperative requirements of our Constitution.
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bookmarked
I read Thomas’s book a couple years ago and was very impressed by him and what he went through.
--snip--
In that as in so much else Pundit High prepared us to move into the liberal world of the day; we were being given exactly the ideas and opinions that would prepare us to lead the next generation of American liberalism in the New England way. Until very recently the constitutional vision I was taught in my teens remained, as they say, hegemonic. The enlarged role of the commerce clause was uncontested and the two amendments(2nd & 10th) dangled with the other dead constitutional provisions — letters of marque and reprisal, no bills of attainder, the prohibition on quartering — in constitutional limbo.
Res ipsa loquitur: A Latin term meaning the thing speaks for itself. My impression from his current essays was that he was a recent convert from the dark side.
The real problem will come if Thomas can figure out how to get the Tenth Amendment back into constitutional thought in a serious way. The Second Amendment was a constitutional landmine for the left; the Tenth is a nuclear bomb.
--snip--
Jeffrey Toobin is announcing to the liberal world that Clarence Thomas has morphed from a comic figure of fun to a determined super-villain who might reverse seventy years of liberal dominance of the federal bench and turn the clock back to 1930 if not 1789.
Amen!
Thanks for posting in News/Activism. A "Click to Add Topic" and typing editorial and one more click will let it hang in that sidebar.
In the long run, Clarence Thomas, not Barack Obama, will go down as the most important African-American of our era.
Thanks for posting this, it is what Rush was talking about today. I missed a little because of phone calls but now I can take my time and read it. Thanks!