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Left Concedes: Justice Thomas No Lightweight
IBD Editorials ^ | August 31, 2011 | MICHAEL BARONE

Posted on 08/31/2011 4:44:14 PM PDT by Kaslin

In the glossy pages of the New Yorker, in graceful prose and with good reporting, the dreams and nightmares of the admirers of Barack Obama and his policies lie exposed.

The dreams include Ryan Lizza's report last April in which he quoted an Obama adviser as saying the president's policy on Libya was "leading from behind." This week, as Tripoli seemed about to fall, the magazine's editor, David Remnick, hailed Obama's "calculated modesty."

The nightmare appears in last week's issue, in Jeffrey Toobin's lengthy article on Supreme Court jurisprudence, titled "Partners" and subtitled "Will Clarence and Virginia Thomas succeed in killing Obama's health care plan?" It's possible to read Toobin's article as a partisan hit job, echoing the demands of 74 Democratic congressmen that Justice Clarence Thomas recuse himself from sitting on a case challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare because of his wife's involvement in the Tea Party movement.

Never mind that this is a standard neither Toobin nor the Democrats apply to other public officials with spouses active in public affairs — or that they're not asking Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself because of her work in the Justice Department on the issue.

The bulk of the article is worthy of attention because Toobin, despite his obvious distaste for Justice Thomas' views, takes him seriously as a judicial thinker and pathfinder.

"In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court," Toobin writes. "Rarely has a Supreme Court justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication."

(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 08/31/2011 4:44:19 PM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

It doesn’t matter if he’s a lightweight or not. What matters is that he has a lifetime appointment and the liberals can bitch and hate him as much as they want but he’s got the job till God takes him.


2 posted on 08/31/2011 4:46:18 PM PDT by Artemis Webb (Perry 2012! A Conservative who can win!)
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To: Kaslin

Does anyone really care what the Left thinks?


3 posted on 08/31/2011 4:50:46 PM PDT by freekitty (Give me back my conservative vote; then find me a real conservative to vote for)
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To: Kaslin

My favorite Justice. No nonsense and actually ties decisions and reasoning to the original intent of the constitution. He’s usually brief and to the point. A rare bird indeed.


4 posted on 08/31/2011 4:52:44 PM PDT by PapaNew
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To: Kaslin

I want to see happen to Obamacare judicially what happened to that first guy at the dinner table in Alien.


5 posted on 08/31/2011 5:03:08 PM PDT by aruanan
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To: freekitty

I sure don’t


6 posted on 08/31/2011 5:17:45 PM PDT by Kaslin (Acronym for OBAMA: One Big Ass Mistake America)
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To: Kaslin

“Instead, he paints Thomas as a brilliant Svengali, ready to disregard precedent and — the president’s nightmare — overturn ObamaCare.”

NOOOOOO. The real nightmare, as mentioned in the Toobin article is that there is no Constitutional basis for 75% of what the federal government does. So, if original intent is applied here, then we are left with a federal government that runs the military, foreign policy, and the federal courts. Everything else is bye-bye, including Social Security, Medicare, and EVERY other liberal program (sorry, if that scares some of you old-timers that don’t mind bankrupting the country).

Toobin does point that out...and correctly assumes that states will at least try to pick up some of this stuff. And the states will do it much more efficiently (actually he didn’t say that, but it will happen that way).

The federal government will be left with spending about $1T per year, yet still taking in at least $2T, so they really might be able to start paying down the debt. Of course states will have to raise taxes if they want to try to pick up some of that load...but the bottom line is that the country will be far, far, better off.

The liberals fully understand everything above, which is why they are SCARED TO DEATH of a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Right now,they still have Kennedy to bring ‘moderation’, but if he holds out until the next prez, we may wind up with a much, much, smaller federal government.


7 posted on 08/31/2011 6:14:15 PM PDT by BobL (PLEASE READ: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2657811/posts)
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To: Kaslin

Rush expressed the opinion yesterday that this article by Toobin was TRUTH designed to alert the left that they MUST ramp up their attacks on Justice Thomas in order to attempt to force him to recuse himself.

Up until this, they’d managed to pretty much LYNCH Clarence Thomas.


8 posted on 08/31/2011 7:12:38 PM PDT by Twinkie (ANYBODY BUT OBAMA !!!)
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