Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had enemies who tried to keep him off the high court when he was nominated 31 years ago; he has enemies who want to kick him off the court today.
In each instance his enemies were leftist Democrats, headed by Joe Biden.
The Democratic Party was finally able to bully centrist-liberal Justice Stephen Breyer to retire, knowing full-well that their time in power is about to expire, and replace him with what appears to be an activist jurist and tool of the party.
But their real goal is Justice Thomas — the Big Kahuna — who’s 73, 10 years younger than Breyer, although he’s been on the court two years longer. And recent events suggest they’ll stop at nothing to bring him down.
Their latest attempt centers on text messages in early January 2021 to-and-from Mark Meadows, President Trump’s then-White House chief of staff, urging the Trump administration to investigate reports that the 2020 election had been rigged.
But the other person in the textual conversation wasn’t Justice Thomas — it was Ginni Thomas, his wife.
Mainstream media figures immediately began hyperventilating, beginning with CBS News chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa.
“This is an unprecedented entanglement between a spouse close to the judicial branch and a White House chief of staff,” he tweeted. “We're in uncharted territory with a lot of this reporting. We're going to have to see where it goes and pull the thread even more.”
Politico Magazine contributing editor Joshua Zeitz, who describes himself as a “historian,” thought this was unprecedented.
“Abe Fortas rightly had to resign over issues a lot less problematic than what Clarence Thomas now has to answer for,” he said.
Actually, while on the bench, Fortas accepted large periodic payments under suspicious circumstances from a former client — the family foundation of Wall Street financier Louis Wolfson. This eventually led to his resignation from the Supreme Court.
Nevertheless, Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, joined the growing chorus of people calling for Thomas’ head on the block.
“Clarence Thomas needs to be impeached,” she wrote.
Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network and a former clerk for Thomas said this was nothing new — she’d seen it all before.
“Liberals don’t like the fact that he is Black and won’t follow their agenda, so they invent flimsy controversies to discredit him for thinking for himself,” she told the Washington Examiner.
And George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley — who’s neither a Republican nor a conservative — threw cold water over any thoughts of impeaching Thomas Sunday, saying their “mantra has become a raging impeachment addiction.”
He added that “calls for the impeachment of Justice Thomas are ludicrous but there is nothing laughable about the impeachment addiction fueling this frenzy. Impeaching Thomas based on these grounds would expose all justices to the threat of impeachments as majorities shift in Congress.”
Thirty-one years ago then-Senator Biden, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, tried to derail his confirmation with unfounded charges of sexual harassment. Thomas met the charges head on and placed his confirmation back on track.
Thomas was considered dangerous to leftists then and is considered dangerous to them now. As a conservative African American, they believe him to be a traitor to his ethnicity, standing for everything Democrats despise:
- He’s a strong supporter of the First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, and religion.
- Thomas is also a strong advocate for the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
- He believes in the sanctity of life, and that Roe vs. Wade was incorrectly decided.
- Thomas supports the formula for government designed by the Founders, one having limited federal powers.
Furthermore, and perhaps most “dangerously,” Thomas is an originalist, meaning that the words in the Constitution should be interpreted as they were understood at the time they were written. He’s also a textualist, meaning that the words in statutes should be given their plain, everyday meaning.
No judicial activism here; no “super-legislator in robes” for him. And for that he’s pilloried.
Winston Churchill once said, “You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
And Clarence Thomas has. He’s now our republic’s No. 1 defender, and our Constitution’s most loyal guardian. And for that he’s despised by the left and cherished by the right.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter who can often be found honing his skills at the range. Read Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.