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A new documentary about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggests his conservative stance on abortion may have been behind the efforts to stop his confirmation. Time reports the documentary, “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” largely is based on a recent interview with the conservative justice. In it, he speaks about his faith, his philosophy, politics, race and his early life of poverty. Thomas also talked about his contentious confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate in 1991 and Democratic lawmakers’ focus on abortion. “Most of my opponents on the Judiciary Committee cared about only one thing: how...

Clarence Thomas is our eras most consequential jurist.....

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was reportedly absent from the bench Monday as the court reconvened for its new term. Chief Justice John Roberts said in his opening remarks that Thomas was "indisposed" due to an illness but said the conservative judge would still be participating in deciding the three cases the court is hearing arguments about, according to Reuters. Details of Thomas's illness were not immediately disclosed. SNIP

Former U.S. Sen. George Hanks Brown (R-Colo.), who goes by “Hank Brown,” said in a recent interview that former vice president and current Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden is by no means a moderate. “Senator Biden is a pleasant, outgoing individual,” Brown said. He was a colleague of Biden’s in the early to mid-90s. But Brown added that Biden is certainly no moderate: “He was consistently one of the most liberal members of the U.S. Senate. To hear him described as a moderate could only happen only in Washington D.C.”Hanks’ comments on Biden came in an interview with National Review...

Chief Justice Roberts, joined by the four liberal justices (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor), declared that “the evidence tells a story that does not match the explanation the Secretary gave for his decision.” The “sole stated reason” for adding the citizenship question to the census, he observed, “seems to have been contrived.” Federal agencies must “offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public.” Otherwise, judicial review becomes “an empty ritual.” In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, correctly called the...

Ninety-nine years ago, Democrat Sen. John Walter Smith of Maryland provided $50 of his own -- not government -- money to help erect a cross in his home state. He was responding to a request from Mrs. Martin Redman, a mother who had lost her son in World War I. To honor him and the 48 other men from Prince George's County who had lost their lives in the war, she had joined the Prince George's Memorial Committee, whose goal was to erect a memorial not far from the Maryland border with the District of Columbia. In a thank-you note,...

... In addition to being a victory for property owners, Knick v. Township of Scott is also notable for featuring some sharp words from Justice Clarence Thomas directed at the federal government. As Thomas noted in a concurring opinion, the U.S. solicitor general filed an amicus brief in the case which argued that "the failure to provide contemporaneous compensation for a taking does not violate the Fifth Amendment if the government has provided an adequate mechanism for obtaining just compensation." What's wrong with that? Here is a sample of Thomas' rather pointed rebuke to the federal government: The United States…urges...

In a concurring opinion in a Supreme Court case announced Monday, Justice Clarence Thomas issued a lengthy call for his colleagues to overturn "demonstrably erroneous decisions" even if they have been upheld for decades -- prompting legal observers to say Thomas was laying the groundwork to overturn the seminal 1973 case Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to abortion. Thomas' blunt opinion came in Gamble v. United States, a case concerning the so-called "double-jeopardy" doctrine, which generally prohibits an individual from being charged twice for the same crime. But both pro-life and pro-choice advocates quickly noted the implications...

In a concurring opinion in a Supreme Court case announced Monday, Justice Clarence Thomas issued a lengthy call for his colleagues to overturn "demonstrably erroneous decisions" even if they have been upheld for decades -- prompting legal observers to say Thomas was laying the groundwork to overturn the seminal 1973 case Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to abortion. Thomas' blunt opinion came in a case concerning the so-called "double-jeopardy" doctrine, which generally prohibits an individual from being charged twice for the same crime. But both pro-life and pro-choice advocates quickly noted the implications of his reasoning for...

Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday said that the Supreme Court should take more action to overturn prior “demonstrably erroneous decisions.” In a concurring opinion issued in a double-jeopardy case, Thomas wrote that he believes the court was correct in not overturning a doctrine that allows an individual to be charged with the same crime by federal and state prosecutors. However, he wrote that the Supreme Court should revisit its use of the “stare decisis” doctrine, under which a past precedent is not be overturned unless there’s a compelling reason to do so. Thomas wrote that the use of the judicial...

The look on Biden’s face. The forceful, accusatory finger. Her reaction. It all comes together in a photo that captures how certain men see the world. On Tuesday afternoon, a CUNY professor sent out a series of tweets recounting Joe Biden’s flagrantly horny interactions with women in the audience for his speech. As individual cringey lines began their echo chamber orbit through retweets and screenshots, one crucial piece of context was missing. The speech was from 1973. The American people already know where Joe Biden is coming from with regards to women. We know how he treated Anita Hill. We...

It just takes a cursory look at the ages of current Supreme Court justice to notice that Democrats have a distinct disadvantage, for now. That’s because its two oldest justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg at 86 and Stephen Breyer at 80, are both long past the time when normal working folks typically trade in their work boots for fedoras and beach sandals.But SCOTUS is no ordinary job, and these are not ordinary times. Both Ginsburg and Breyer know the politics behind any potential retirement plans, and both are doubtless planning to cling to their jobs like a pair of good dentures until...

Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas is, once again, under attack. And, once again, the attacks are from liberals who cannot tolerate Thomas' consistent, unyielding and faithful commitment to America's founding principles. The latest concerns Thomas' 20-page opinion offered up in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, recently considered by the Supreme Court. Planned Parenthood challenged Indiana law prohibiting abortion for reasons of sex, race or non-life threatening deformity. The challenge was upheld in district court and the law overturned. However, the Supreme Court chose not to rule on the matter for procedural reasons, turning it back to...

Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas is, once again, under attack. And, once again, the attacks are from liberals who cannot tolerate Thomas' consistent, unyielding and faithful commitment to America's founding principles. The latest concerns Thomas' 20-page opinion offered up in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, recently considered by the Supreme Court. Planned Parenthood challenged Indiana law prohibiting abortion for reasons of sex, race or non-life threatening deformity. The challenge was upheld in district court and the law overturned. However, the Supreme Court chose not to rule on the matter for procedural reasons, turning it back to...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas dismissed rumors of his impending retirement in an interview at the Supreme Court Historical Society on Monday. "I have no idea where this stuff comes from," Thomas said, responding to chatter he planned to announce his retirement in June. "One of the things you have to get used to in this business ... is that people can say things about you and for you that have nothing to do with you." Thomas similarly said an exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture misrepresented his thinking on affirmative action and that...

In today's concurring opinion in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Justice Clarence Thomas dared speak the truth about the abortion industry in an area of law and policy infested with euphemisms, deception, and distortion. That "the Constitution itself is silent on abortion," for example, is a most obvious observation that anyone old enough to read can confirm. But to write it plainly in a Supreme Court opinion, as he did, is nothing short of an act of courage in today's day and age, when the darkness of abortion has such a firm grip on our political, legal,...

Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas sits as he is introduced during anevent at the Library of Congress in Washington.On Tuesday, the Supreme Court refused to take up the issue of Indiana's ban on abortion specifically for the sex, race, or disability of the baby to be killed. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a powerful opinion revealing the connections between the racist eugenics movement and the abortion movement. He warned that if Planned Parenthood is able to get sex-selective, race-specific, and disability-targeted abortions codified as a woman's right under the Constitution, that would enshrine a horrific movement rightly left in...

Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas had two very different opinions when it came to a ruling on Tuesday that effectively upheld an Indiana law on disposal of fetal remains. The court’s ruling allowed Indiana to enforce a requirement that abortion clinics either bury or cremate fetal remains following an abortion. The justices said in an unsigned opinion that the case does not involve limits on abortion rights. Ginsburg was one of two liberal-leaning justices who dissented. Ginsburg said in a short solo opinion that she believes the issue does impact a woman's right to have an...

At crucial junctures, the Supreme Court has twisted the Constitution that guarantees liberty toward government oppression. Start with The Slaughter-House Cases (1873) and U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), which blew away the protection of the Bill of Rights with which the 14th Amendment’s framers and ratifiers thought they had clothed freed slaves against depredations by state governments. The result was 90 years of Jim Crow tyranny in the South. “I have a personal interest in this,” Justice Thomas once said. “I lived under segregation.” He grew up in 1950s Savannah, Ga., where the law forbade him to drink out of this...

The new conservative majority at the Supreme Court seems to have everyone on edge. That is evident following the decision of the Nine to overturn a precedent on the question of whether the Constitution — as Justice Clarence Thomas put it in a majority opinion — “permits a State to be sued by a private party without its consent in the courts of a different State.” The court, which had said yes in 1979, now says no. Forget that the case has nothing to do with Roe v. Wade (even the Times concedes that). The liberals’ sudden solicitude for stare...