Only for Christians

By Capt. Fogg

You can laugh a bit and console yourself that it doesn't matter all that much if an Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice tells us the first Amendment only applies to Christians -- maybe even if you are like me, not a Christian. It's only Alabama, right?

They didn't bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship, the Mayflower,

Justice Roy Moore announced to the mob at the Pastor for Life Luncheon. Maybe you'll remember that Jefferson owned one however and that he wasn't shy about warning us of religious tyranny. Maybe you'll remember Moore as the former justice who was removed from office for fighting to erect the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, but like that tumor you thought the chemo got rid of he came back two years later singing the same tune:

Let's get real. Let's learn our history. Let's stop playing games.

I would agree with that, but as we know, to the religious right, history is baked fresh every morning. The English colonists brought slaves, white and black, and Moore's ideological ancestors fought like hell to keep them, Bibles in hand.

Buddha didn't create us. Mohammad didn't create us. It's the god of the Holy Scriptures,

said Moore with the authority not granted him by anyone in particular, and grossly misrepresenting Jefferson and Madison and the U.S. Supreme Court with a stream of non sequitur he insisted that freedom of religion is only for Christians.

A newly-released video shows him expounding all this and worse in Jackson, Mississippi last January to a group called Pro-Life Mississippi. Of course it's hardly a game he's asking us to end, it's secular democracy, the pride of the age of Reason and Humanism, and like a stag at bay it's destined to be torn to ribbons and its head displayed on some courthouse wall. For nothing in our Constitution is as important, as hallowed by the blood of patriots, as the cracks, the loopholes, the weak spots that may just allow traitors and secessionist sons of the Confederacy to eviscerate it, hang it from its heels, bleed it and gut it like an animal to be sacrificed to his tyrannical, bloody-handed God.

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What could have been: Robert Bork

By Frank Moraes 

It is a sad day. Robert Bork died this morning. But that's not why it's sad. It's sad because of the great opportunity we missed.

One incident in Bork's career explains everything about him. During the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon wanted Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox fired because, you know, he was doing his job. Attorney General Elliot Richardson refused to do it and resigned. So did his second in command, William Ruckelshaus. But Bork was willing to do it. Why? Because he's an authoritarian.

But we missed a great opportunity to have him on the Supreme Court. Instead, we got Clarence Thomas who is 20 years younger than Bork and, more to the point, is not dead. There is really no daylight between Bork and Thomas in terms of how they rule on the cases. They both think children ought to be forced to pray in public school. Women shouldn't have the right to an abortion. People don't have a right to privacy.

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Supreme Court to hear Prop 8 and DOMA cases

By Mustang Bobby

(Ed. note: For more on this, see my post from yesterday. My initial sense is that Chief Justice Roberts (who, I think, thinks about his and his court's place in history and how he and it will be perceived) will vote with the liberals and that marriage equality will win. Or the majority will punt, refusing to make any sort of definitive ruling. It's hard to see the justices collectively ruling that same-sex marriage is unconstitutional given recent dramatic shifts in public opinion and legislative action. -- MJWS)

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on both the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California's Prop 8. Here's some background on both cases:

The new California case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, No. 12-144, was filed in 2009 by Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, two lawyers who were on opposite sides in the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, which settled the 2000 presidential election. The suit argued that California voters had violated the federal Constitution the previous year when they overrode a decision of the state's Supreme Court allowing same-sex marriages.

A federal judge in San Francisco agreed, issuing a broad decision that said the Constitution required the state to allow same-sex couples to marry. The decision has been stayed.

A divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, also in San Francisco, affirmed the decision. But the majority relied on narrower grounds that seemed calculated to avoid Supreme Court review or, at least, attract the vote of the presumed swing member of that court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

[...]

The second case the court agreed to hear, United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307, challenges a part of the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996. Section 3 of the law defines marriage as between only a man and a woman for the purposes of more than 1,000 federal laws and programs. (Another part of the law, not before the court, says that states need not recognize same-sex marriages from other states.)

The case concerns two New York City women, Edith Windsor and Thea Clara Spyer, who married in 2007 in Canada. Ms. Spyer died in 2009, and Ms. Windsor inherited her property. The 1996 law did not allow the Internal Revenue Service to treat Ms. Windsor as a surviving spouse, and she faced a tax bill of about $360,000 that a spouse in an opposite-sex marriage would not have had to pay.

Ms. Windsor sued, and in October the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, struck down the 1996 law. The decision was the second from a federal appeals court to do so, joining one in May from a court in Boston. The Windsor case made its way to the Supreme Court unusually quickly because the parties had filed an appeal from the trial court’s decision in the case, which also struck down the law, even before the appeals court had ruled.

The two cases will go before the court by March with rulings expected by the end of June.

As expected, both sides are crowing that their side will win (JMG has a compendium of reactions), but since at least one request for a ruling by the Supreme Court came from the losing side, my instinct tells me that marriage equality will win.

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Thomas at twenty

By Mustang Bobby

Nina Totenberg of NPR had a long piece on the twentieth anniversary of the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Aside from the fact that his confirmation hearings and the testimony of Anita Hill turned it into an incredible circus, his tenure on the court has been marked by the fact that he is the most right-wing radical justice to serve since time out of mind. His views make Antonin Scalia sound like William O. Douglas:

He is the only justice willing to allow states to establish an official religion; the only justice who believes teenagers have no free speech rights at all; the only justice who believes that it's unconstitutional to require campaign funders to disclose their identity; he's the only justice who voted to strike down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act; and the only justice to say that the court should invalidate a wide range of laws regulating business conduct and working conditions.

Though his defenders shy from calling his views radical, they trumpet Thomas as the only justice to consistently return to what they see as the original meaning of the Constitution when it was adopted in 1789.

Which is ironic, to say the least; as an African-American, the Constitution of 1789 defined Mr. Thomas as three-fifths of a person in terms of the census. And while the people who work with him in the Court describe him as very friendly and accessible, the rage over the accusations by Ms. Hill that we saw during his confirmation seems to be a part of his make-up as well; he has a chip on his shoulder about affirmative action -- which probably had a part in getting him into Yale Law School -- and he refuses to acknowledge that he even went there.  And is there any doubt that when Thurgood Marshall retired in 1991, President George H.W. Bush basically told his staff to find him the best conservative judge they could find to fill the seat... as long as he was black? Mr. Thomas may despise the cynicism and presumptuousness of affirmative action and the patronizing of white liberals who think that African-Americans cannot make it on their own, but he has no problem using the system that it provides.

It seems that Justice Thomas has done everything to shut out the ugliness of the real world that he grew up in and now lives in. He only hires clerks that agree with his political and judicial philosophies, and only socializes with people such as Rush Limbaugh, who feel that any point of view to the left of the John Birch Society is commie-pinko talk. It's interesting that a man who railed against being singled out for a high-tech lynching by the white male upper class and who holds such a powerful dislike for elitist snobs, has become one himself. 

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Clarence and Virginia Thomas, taking their country back to a time when women didn't matter

By R.K. Barry 

A number of pundits were wondering what Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' wife Virginia was up to when she left a message on Anita Hill's answering machine suggesting that Hill might want to take the opportunity to apologize for events that took place nineteen years ago during Justice Thomas' confirmation hearings.

You may recall that Hill testified that Thomas had sexually harassed her in the early 1980s when she was in his employ at the U.S. Department of Education and later at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 

Her testimony included the following:

He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes. On several occasions, Thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess. Thomas was drinking a Coke in his office, he got up from the table at which we were working, went over to his desk to get the Coke, looked at the can and asked, "Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?"

Despite the fact that several co-workers testified that she was upset about his harassing behaviour at the time and that she agreed to take a polygraph test during the confirmation hearings, and Thomas refused, this ultimately turned into a "he said, she said" kind of thing, though it did serve to make his confirmation vote a lot closer than it otherwise likely would have been.

I have to say that I tend to put a lot of stock in her credibility, knowing as I do what tends to happen to any woman who challenges male sexual privilege. It strikes me that she agreed to testify despite the risks because she deeply resented what he had put her through and saw an opportunity to take back some control and went for it. Good for her.

Men who sexually harass women in the workplace, especially those in a position of authority, always say that they are just having some good-natured fun. But what they are doing is indicating that they have power over women and that in some sort of self-delusional world could have a lot more power if they chose to go there. It's demeaning and I suspect infuriating to women who have to suffer it.

Yeah, Clarence Thomas is a jerk, so I had to love a recent headline to a story discussing statements made by a former lover in a Washington Post interview. The headline read:

Lillian McEwen, Clarence Thomas' Ex-Girlfriend, Talks About His Porn, Breast Preferences, Hill Controversy

The irony that Virginia Thomas phone call to Hill only served to bring out new information confirming her husband's bad behaviour is indeed rich. 

Here are a few quotes from the Post story: 

"He was always actively watching the women he worked with to see if they could be potential partners," McEwen told the Post, adding that he was particularly "partial to women with large breasts" and even would ask woman about their bra size.

"He was obsessed with porn," McEwen also said of Thomas, a claim that is particularly relevant to Hill's allegations that the then-chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had repeatedly relayed scenes from pornographic movies to her. "He would talk about what he had seen in magazines and films, if there was something worth noting," McEwen continued.

There is more in the story, and it's unsettling, but you can check that out for yourself. 

Initially, I was annoyed with Virginia Thomas for making that call to Hill. Then I realized that she is probably a victim too, living with this creep and likely in the kind of state of denial that makes her do really dumb things. 

But then I thought about the fact that Virginia Thomas is a Tea Party organizer, and in fact a leader in the movement with an affiliation to a group called Liberty Central.

The Tea Party is about many things, but it is mostly about harkening back to an imagined past when things like sexual harassment in the work place was not frowned upon. The world to which they would like us all to return is, among other things, a man's world where women know their place and don't or can't complain about inappropriate behaviour.

For conservatives like the Thomases, the question is not whether or not Justice Thomas did those awful things -- of course he did. The question is whether or not anyone should care and why Hill was allowed to make such a big deal out of it.

As to why Virginia Thomas was looking for an apology from Hill at this point, so long after the initial events, it is clear that Tea Party types are feeling their oats and feeling that now is a good time to right historical wrongs -- that now is their moment to "take their country back” to a time when women like Anita Hill would not have been allowed to speak out, to a time when Hill would have better understood her place.

Am I the last person left with long-term memory?

By Edward Copeland

You will see me shedding no tears for Juan Williams' firing from NPR. It's not a First Amendment issue. Free speech gives you the right to say whatever you want, but when you are a paid commentator, it doesn't protect you from getting the heave-ho from your employer when you say something stupid and are being promoted as a representative of their brand. Besides, a $2 million consolation prize from Fox News is a nice consolation prize for someone who is Fox's idea of a liberal the way that Alan Colmes was. The only real liberal I ever saw was on the only show Fox ever aired that used to be truly fair and balanced, "Fox NewsWatch." His name was Neal Gabler but he criticized the boss and co-workers too often so he got shown the door as did the impartial moderator Eric Burns and the show turned into a propaganda fest like every other program. (One of the replacement "liberals" was Juan Williams.)

Before I move on to my other reasons for why I think his NPR firing was long overdue, just let me add that the comment that got him axed showed his ignorance. He admitted getting nervous when he got on a plane and saw people dressed in "Muslim garb." None of the 9/11 hijackers wore Muslim garb, brain wizard. If you saw people dressed in Muslim garb, that probably would be more of an indication of safety.

Of course, I've disliked Williams since long before Fox News even existed. No one seems to remember (and no one would probably have remembered this week if not for the fortuitous timing of that famous Teabagger, Mrs. Clarence Thomas, calling Anita Hill for an apology) that Juan Williams is a sexist moron.

Back during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, Williams, thought of as a "liberal" wrote scathing columns against Anita Hill, saying her story was full of holes. What he didn't say was that he was sympathizing with Thomas because at the time he was being accused of sexual harassment by 50 (you read that right, that's why I put it in bold) Post employees and was disciplined, though it amounted to a slap on the wrist, considering the numbers involved.

Of course, though Firedoglake remembered that and reported it today, I seem to be the only one that recalls that Williams scoured his copy of the novel The Exorcist to find a passage he remembered about a pubic hair and a drink and showed it to Arlen Specter who then brought it up in his questioning of Anita Hill to accuse her of having read the book and having it inspire her to make up the pubic hair on the Coke can incident.

One positive thing did come out of re-opening the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill can of worms: It inspired Thomas' former girlfriend to finally come forward and back up her charges of how he was obsessed with porn and would comment on female office workers' breast sizes. We've always known he committed perjury (I mean, he never discussed Roe v. Wade? Yeah, right), but this is more evidence of it. Still, nothing will come of it. They don't have the balls to pursue the last administration's far more serious crimes, you think they'd try to go after a Supreme Court justice for perjury? They wouldn't have even done that back in 1991.

To me, the most sickening display is watching all the talking heads on all sides of the political spectrum take to the airwaves to defend Williams because they all are on the same D.C. party circuit. Truth doesn't matter. Actions don't matter. No one remembers anything.

The biggest problam facing America today. .

By Capt. Fogg

. . . is pornography. Well at least it has been according to orators at several Republican national conventions in recent memory. It's possible that such things are motivated by a Christian analogue of another right wing obsession: Sharia law, and it's possible that it was a smokescreen to divert attention from other core policies like borrowing on the promise of self funding tax cuts. One thing is clear, Politicians tend to be a randy lot, but Conservative males love porn the way they love money and women: they want it all for themselves.

Remember Ken Starr who wanted to make it a crime to use the word "breast" on the Internet but spent millions and wrote endless words, even on the Internet, about Bill Clinton's penis, Monica Lewinsky's cigar and related subjects? Yes, I know, Democrats like porn too and cheat on their wives and are hypocrites and all that as I'm sure someone will assure me to obscure the fact that they haven't been on a moral crusade for those nebulous but normative "family values" for decades. I've had all the contrived and deceptive equivalences I need for now, thank you.

Which brings me to Clarance Thomas. It was the equivalent of a lynching, said he when accusations were leveled by another conservative that he'd offered her a Coke with pubic hair on it, even though she had little reason to lie and had complained to the FBI only in private. Anita Hill was branded a Liberal, although she wasn't and isn't, in a fashion far more evocative of a lynching than the sworn testimony against Justice Thomas. It seems now that Lillian McEwen, a former girlfriend of the distinguished Justice says he was "obsessed with porn," and often made inappropriate sexual comments about and unwanted advances toward women in his office and she's kept quiet until now. She confirms, for instance, that he asked women about their breast size when at work.

McEwan was, in fact, given as a character witness by Thomas, to show that he had a regular relationship and wasn't the rude, sex-obsessed, predatory little creep he was alleged to be by more than one accuser. Too bad she wasn't called to testify under oath because, as we read in the Washington Post: in her soon to be published memoir, she confirms our suspicions.

Perhaps it was knowledge that the book contained such damning information that prompted his wife's odd early morning call to Anita Hill, but I don't think she need fear that he'll lose his job or reputation when the accusation of LIBERAL still carries the power that the accusation of WITCH used to have in centuries past. We're stuck with an overgrown adolescent and liar on the highest court. We may all have his pubic hair in all the wrong places and we don't have a hell of a lot of choice but to drink from the can.

(Cross posted at Human Voices)

Anita Hill and the despicable "olive branch" of Virginia Thomas, wife of Clarence

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As ABC News is reporting, Virginia Thomas, wife of Clarence, recently left a phone message for Anita Hill:

Good morning, Anita Hill, it's Ginny Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day.

That's right, Virginia asked Hill to apologize for what she did. What did she do? She testified at Clarence's Senate confirmation hearings that he had sexually harrassed her in the workplace, when she worked for him both at the Department of Education and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the '80s.

It may be the case that there is no definitive evidence to support either side -- Clarence denied the accusation, as he has denied it ever since, and claimed he was the victim of a "high-tech lynching" -- but there is absolutely no reason for Hill to apologize for anything. As she told ABC News:

Even if it wasn't a prank, it was in no way conciliatory for her to begin with the presumption that I did something wrong in 1991. I simply testified to the truth of my experience. For her to say otherwise is not extending an olive branch, it's accusatory... I don't apologize. I have no intention of apologizing, and I stand by my testimony in 1991.

Good for her. Good for standing firm. Virginia claims that "no offense was ever intended," but she basically accused Hill of lying, of smearing her husband, and there was certainly no indication that she believes any of Hill's story. It would be one thing to seek to get past what happened by first acknowledging on her end that, at the very least, her husband had behaved inappropriately. It is quite another to heap the blame on Hill and, from that basis, extend an "olive branch."

Utterly, utterly despicable.

Teabagging Thomas: Ginni, wife of Clarence, links to Tea Party "movement"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

See, this is why Chief Justice Roberts's recent little hissy fit over being challenged by President Obama was so ridiculous. (Well, it's one of the reasons why. Basically, Roberts should grow a spine.)

According to Roberts, Obama shouldn't have criticized the Supreme Court -- or, rather, one of its decisions -- in his State of the Union address. Roberts found this "very troubling."

And yet, by his own actions (in speaking out the way he did), Roberts seems to approve of the chief justice of the United States criticizing the president of the United States publicly.

It would seem that the Supreme Court is so supreme, and the justices so spineless (or some of them, including Roberts), that it can dish out whatever it wants, even as it can't take any criticism in return. And what it dishes out is not judicial dispassion, detachment, and neutrality but ideology and a partisan agenda. We all know this, or should, and yet we cling to the myth of the non-partisanship of the Supreme Court. (Did Bush v. Gore tell us nothing?) Those of us who aren't on the right also know that the judicial activism of the right is far more of a nefarious reality than any such activism of the left. (They thought Sotomayor would make up the law? Hardly.) Would Roberts have openly criticized the man who appointed him, George W. Bush? Of course not. Because he's a Republican. Because they both are.

But it isn't just activism from the bench, it's direct political activism, or activism by a degree of separation. The L.A. Times reports:

As Virginia Thomas tells it in her soft-spoken, Midwestern cadence, the story of her involvement in the "tea party" movement is the tale of an average citizen in action.

"I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you," she said at a recent panel discussion with tea party leaders in Washington. Thomas went on to count herself among those energized into action by President Obama's "hard-left agenda."

But Thomas is no ordinary activist.

She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court.

In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative "core principles," she said.

*****

"I adore all the new citizen patriots who are rising up across this country," Thomas, who goes by Ginni, said on the panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "I have felt called to the front lines with you, with my fellow citizens, to preserve what made America great."

I suppose Ginni Thomas has every right to be politically active like this -- assuming that she acts ethically, and that her husband does. But let's not pretend that Justice Thomas isn't fully behind this, supportive of his wife's political aims, and let's not pretend that he and his fellow conservative justices aren't often motivated by similar partisan political priorities.

And, of course, there is at least the appearance of potential conflict of interest here. As Attaturk writes, "[i]f such conflicts involved, say Ginsburg or Stevens, it would be screamed about on Fox News 23:54/7. Glenn Beck would cry himself into a dehydration coma..." True. It's all rather troubling.

But what's also troubling is Ginni Thomas herself.

-- Does she honestly see herself as "an ordinary citizen"? If so, she's deeply delusional.

-- And does she honestly believe that Obama has pursued a "hard-left agenda"? How do bailing out Wall Street, upping the war in Afghanistan, and promoting a compromise market-oriented health-care reform package that closely resembles what Republicans previously supported, including as a counter to Hillarycare back in the '90s, and that has alienated many progressives, including some of his most ardent supporters, amount to anything "hard-left"?

Clarence has long been thought to be a light-weight on the Court, if not thoroughly unqualified to be a justice. While that may or may not be true, it would seem that in the Thomas household it is Teabagger Ginni who is the intellectually lighter of the two.

Sarah vs. Sonia

By Mustang Bobby

Following up on this post, Pat Buchanan says that Judge Sonia Sotomayor is getting a free ride because she's a "self-described 'affirmative action baby' from Princeton," whereas Sarah Palin is an up-from-the-sticks conservative who never got a break. "Pundits here gets hoots of appreciation for doing to a white Christian woman what would constitute a hate crime if done to a 'wise Latina woman.'" Conor Clarke notes that there's a difference.

There's absolutely nothing wrong, much less "arch," about criticizing Sarah Palin for being an anti-intellectual demagogue while simultaneously demanding respect for Sonia Sotomayor. Palin's whole shtick is that she's an ordinary American with ordinary American concerns. Which is completely fine. But I'm of the mind that our leaders should be exceptional people -- hard-working Type-A meritocrats with actual expertise -- and I think Sotomayor is one of those people. (Palin, not so much.) That's my preference, of course, and not necessarily the country's. But I like to think it's a perfectly legitimate distinction, not a "hate crime." [Italics in the original.]

I'll go further than that; it should be a requirement that anyone appointed to the Supreme Court or elected to the White House is by far the smartest person in the room. I do not want someone of an average intellect, much less someone who is anti-intellectual, running the country or interpreting the Constitution. We're not talking about a county commission here. (And even if we were, I don't want an incurious boor on the county commission either.)

A couple of other points. First, if Sonia Sotomayor was an affirmative-action admission to Princeton, all that did was get her in the door. After that, she was on her own. It wasn't affirmative-action that got her to the top of her class. (If it was affirmative-action that got her into Yale Law School, she was following in the footsteps of another justice on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas. Funny, but I don't remember Mr. Buchanan complaining about Mr. Thomas's admissions history.) By the way, what is wrong with affirmative-action anyway? All it does it make it a level admissions playing field for people who were not born with the automatic credentials (white, male, and trust-funded) to get in to a school like Princeton or Yale. It seems that the people who complain the most about people like Sonia Sotomayor getting a leg up have never faced the challenge of getting into a college or getting a job with history and patriarchy stacked against them.

Second, the Republican mantra of being the party of the "common man" is born out of nothing more than a cynical attempt to curry favor with an electorate that they wouldn't dare be associated with if they could avoid it. Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy played on the fear and loathing of white voters who felt assaulted by the civil rights movement in the 1960's and provided a fertile ground for starting the culture wars against reproductive choice, gay rights, and basically anyone who didn't look, act, or have sex like them. It was, and it continues to be, an exploitation of the foolish and the weak, preying on their fears of the unknown and feeding them the pablum of smaller government and lower taxes. It wins elections, but it doesn't run the country very well. What's worse is that the people who master-minded it don't really care.

What it comes down to is that Sonia Sotomayor, even if she had help along the way, has had to work harder for what she achieved than Sarah Palin ever did. It shows in the way they both dealt with the adversity they have both faced in the last month. Judge Sotomayor has faced down an attack machine that questioned everything from her intellect to her choice of clothing, and she has taken it with grace and aplomb. Gov. Palin has dealt with her self-inflicted public mockery festival with all the maturity of a spoiled child. Sarah Palin took it for granted that she was entitled to whatever she wanted because she's believed in the George W. Bush model that anyone can grow up to be president without having to actually, you know, work at it. It's easy for her to quit her job because it doesn't really mean that much to her, and it's easy to give away something you never had to work for. Sonia Sotomayor has never taken anything for granted.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Zero tolerance for zero tolerance

By Capt. Fogg

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

-US Constitution, Amendment IV-

But not if you're in school, not if it's about a commonly used non aspirin anti-inflammatory, not if there's a zero tolerance policy and not if the accusation comes from some other 8th grader who doesn't like your looks.

Did a school principal act illegally by having an 8th grade girl stripped to her underwear while she was searched for "drugs?" (Safford Unified v. Redding, 08-479) Clarence Thomas appears to be the only one on the US Supreme Court who thinks so, who thinks probable cause, a legitimate warrant, a reading of one's rights, and due process is a nuisance and a hindrance to dealing with the "scourge of drugs" by school administrators. He was the one dissenting voice today asserting that equal protection under the law is not equally available and that teachers should have powers the police don't have and far less responsibility and accountability to boot.

“The content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of intrusion,”

wrote Justice Souter for the majority and what an understatement it is. Should some schoolteacher be able to subject his charges to his own version of a totalitarian state; subject small children to sexual humiliation ad libidum; should some dodgy accusation be justification for warrantless intrusion and violation of our civil rights? We would be a sorry excuse for a free country, now wouldn't we? Would warrantless wiretapping and the end of Habeas Corpus and secret enemies lists and secret prisons be far behind? And of course we'd still have drugs anyway.

I'm glad Thomas is here to please the conservatives who loathe judicial activism, because this case points out just how necessary that "activism" can be to preserve justice in the face of the inumanity of some Americans.

Top Ten Cloves: Things overheard on first day of Supreme Court

News Item: US Supreme Court starts new term

By J. Thomas Duffy

10. We might have to do something this term... I think, while we were on vacation, the NSA was tapping my phone.

9. Hey, even if we don't have a case in front of us, can we rule against Hillary Clinton, and ban her from using that laugh?

8. Should we leave room on the calendar for Britney Spears?... I mean, if she comes in here not wearing any panties, she's got my vote.

7. Anybody check the news? The President didn't declare any of us dead, like he did with Mandela, did he?

6. Hey, let's fuck with the Congress this year... We don't reach any decisions... We just issue, non-binding "Senses of the Supreme Court."

5. If Roberts has another one of his siezures, and, God-forbid, anything happens, I got dibs on his office.

4. If we get the Isiah Thomas case, I think Clarence, and Ruth, should recuse themselves... Just to play it safe.

3. That was a nice touch by the Chief Justice... Giving us all Welcome Back gifts... Bongs in the shape of a gavel.

2. I just heard they're replacing our Secret Service details with Blackwater guys.

1. No Clarence, even with the discount, I don't want to buy your book.

Bonus Nine-In-Black Riffs

White House Stresses Roberts' Wife "Not A CIA Agent"; No Knowledge of WMD's; No Plans To Send Husband To Niger

Congress Getting "Weary" Of Roberts' Visits; Senators Feeling Stalked; Roberts Relentlessly Using Meet-and-Greets To Boast Chances

Scalia: "No Pink Robes Needed Here"; Conservative Justice Reacts To Roberts Disclosure On Gay Rights Case; Justice Roberts Sunday In The Making


















(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)