Via JJP, it seems Clarence Thomas went out of his way to make sure his colleagues on the Supreme Court would consider a case questioning Obama's citizenship:
Thomas’s actions were rare because, by custom, when a justice rejects a petition from his own circuit, the matter is dead. Even if, as can be the case under Rule 22, the matter can be submitted to another justice for consideration, that justice out of respect, will reject it also, said Trevor Morrison, a professor of law at Columbia University School of Law.Morrison said that Thomas’s actions are once in a decade. “When that does happen, the case has to be of an extraordinary nature and this does not fit that circumstance,” he said. “My guess would be that Thomas accepted the case so it would go before the conference where it will likely be denied. If Thomas denied the petition, then Donofrio would be free to go to the other justices for their consideration. “This way, I would guess, the matter would be done with. Petitions of Donofrio’s types are hardly ever granted.”
I don't really know why Thomas thinks this is worthy of consideration, since the matter is settled. Eugene Volokh, the conservative lawyer/blogger contradicts Morrison in The Chicago Tribune and argues this is no big deal and not unusual. Curly haired rogue Jeffrey Toobin, who has tentacles deep in the legal world, tells me over email that he agrees with Volokh.
This whole situation though, reminds me of what incredibly different paths Obama and Thomas took. Thomas exploited race at every opportunity, thrashing and wailing at his critics and crying that he was the victim of "a high tech lynching." Well, people don't generally walk away from lynchings, high tech or otherwise. But Thomas' instinctive reaction to hardship was to accuse his critics of racism.
Meanwhile, Obama never did anything of the sort. There were no public temper tantrums, no blaming race for his problems. When confronted with videos of the Reverend Wright on heavy rotation on cable television, there was no moaning about "lynchings." Any time his opponents brought up race, he shrugged it off, loathe to even get into the argument. I can't say whether this is simply because Obama doesn't think about these things that much, or whether he knew he couldn't win by complaining, but the fact is he never attempted to blame his hardships in the campaign on race.
Where Thomas walked through Washington with a chip on his shoulder the size of a meteor, consumed with grievance and self-pity and telling everyone and anyone about the sheer injustice of being Clarence Thomas, Obama just did his thing with grace, never assuming the worst of his critics, and never relying on racial guilt as a way to bully them into submission.
In terms of the binary caricatures regularly employed in discussions of race, who sounds like the "conservative", and who sounds like the "liberal"?
Yeah, I think Clarence Thomas noticed that too.
-- A. Serwer
