SwiftVets.com

[shawa]

Thomas is great! The Libs are pulling out the long knives.
I hope President Bush Nominates him as Chief Justice.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6672836/site/newsweek/

RADICAL JUSTICE

Clarence Thomas is no conventional conservative. If he becomes the next chief of the U.S. Supreme Court, his willingness to overturn entire areas of law must be carefully scrutinized.

By Cliff Sloan
Newsweek

Updated: 6:29 p.m. ET Dec. 7, 2004

Who could take the place of William Rehnquist? As questions mount about the possible retirement of the cancer-stricken chief justice, speculation is rampant about his successor. One possibility that has emerged is Justice Clarence Thomas. But there has been little serious attention to Thomas’ record on the Supreme Court. That record leaves no doubt that Thomas is the court’s most radical justice, in the sense that he is far more willing than other justices to uproot entire areas of Constitutional law.

Most people remember Thomas, now 56, from his bruising confirmation fight in 1991, and the searing controversy involving Anita Hill and her charges of sexual harassment. Thomas ultimately was confirmed on a 52-48 vote, the smallest margin of any Supreme Court confirmation. The nomination of Thomas as chief justice would again require Senate confirmation.

For George W. Bush, there may well be powerful logic to a Thomas nomination. Thomas would be the first African-American to hold the post. Many of Bush’s high-profile nominations reflect a pattern of selecting “firsts”—Colin Powell as the first African-American Secretary of State and Condoleezza Rice as the first African-American woman selected for that position, for example, and Alberto Gonzales chosen to be the first Hispanic Attorney General. Like Gonzales, moreover, Thomas has the kind of rags-to-public-riches personal story that Bush prizes.

Most importantly, Thomas is lionized on the right. In 1999, the conservative Weekly Standard lauded him as “America’s leading conservative.” Many on the right see the Supreme Court as one of the highest priorities for Bush’s second term, and are enthusiastic about the possibility of a Thomas Court.

Thomas’ record on numerous issues is unique and explosive. Although he frequently is seen as an identical vote with Justice Antonin Scalia, in fact, Thomas has gone far further in his positions than any justice, including Scalia. In a recent, little-noticed biography of Thomas by Atlanta Journal Constitution writer Ken Foskett, Scalia provides a remarkable assessment of his colleague. Thomas, Scalia says, “does not believe in stare decisis (the doctrine that courts must adhere to precedents set by previous court rulings, period. If a Constitutional line of authority is wrong, he would say, let’s get it right. I wouldn’t do that.”

The aggressiveness of Thomas’ approach can be seen in matters of religion and church and state. The First Amendment addresses religion through two clauses—the Establishment Clause, which limits government’s ability to establish religion, and the Free Exercise Clause, which protects individuals’ ability to exercise their religion. In 1940, the Supreme Court unanimously decided that the clauses apply to state governments as well as the federal government. The Establishment Clause is at the center of controversies ranging from school prayer to aid to parochial schools.

In the recent case about whether children should have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance—with the words “under God”—in school, Thomas suggested not merely that the court should approach these Establishment Clause issues differently (as other justices have proposed), but that the court should conclude that the Establishment Clause does not even apply to states at all. According to Thomas, “it makes little sense” to apply the Establishment Clause to states.

Quite simply, this approach would allow the establishment of official religion by an individual state. Thomas cautioned that no state action should be permitted to intrude on an individual’s free exercise rights, but the scope of his suggestion on the Establishment Clause is beyond anything the Supreme Court has contemplated in decades. That it would require abandoning more than 60 years of settled Constitutional law did not faze him.

CONTINUED>>

Dec. 7 - Another example of Thomas’ readiness to assault settled law is the permissible scope of Congress’ power. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce. The pro-business, activist Supreme Court of the late 19th and early 20th centuries imposed sharp limits on Congress’ authority. It famously used those limits to strike down congressional laws on social and economic matters, including restrictions on child labor and early New Deal legislation. Beginning in 1937, the Supreme Court swung the other way and gave Congress greater authority. The court adopted a highly deferential approach, which has been used to uphold federal laws on matters ranging from labor relations to civil rights.

In the last few years, the Supreme Court again has begun to limit Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause. A closely divided Court struck down two high-profile federal laws on the ground that Congress had exceeded its authority. But, for Thomas, the court did not go far enough. Thomas maintained that the court should entirely jettison the deferential analysis that it has used since the 1930’s. Thomas praised the earlier decisions in which the Supreme Court regularly struck down social and economic legislation as beyond Congress’ power.

Thomas also has staked out a unique position on executive power. In last term’s historic confrontation over detainees in the war on terror, eight of the nine Justices squarely rejected the Bush administration’s sweeping claim that it could detain citizens indefinitely as enemy combatants based merely on the executive branch’s assertion of enemy combatant status. Only Thomas supported the Bush administration’s position. For Thomas alone, “due process requires nothing more than a good-faith executive determination.”

Thomas has received some bum raps. He is not merely Scalia’s “second vote,” and saying so is an insult to his independence. He is generally silent at oral arguments, but some of the court’s greatest Justices rarely asked questions during argument. The part of Thomas’ record that should generate intense scrutiny and broad public debate is his willingness to go further than any other justice in overturning entire areas of law. These are important issues to consider, they are central to the role of the Supreme Court in American life, and they should matter greatly in the confirmation of our 17th chief justice.




.

[blue9t3]

So hows this work? If you support him-shes a liar?
_________________
MOPAR-BUYER