Seth Cotlar: Just read Thomas's concurrence in the Trump case and OMG, the mendacity! Thomas says yes, the President is immune, but also the appointment of special council Smith was an abuse of Presidential power that threatens the foundations of American liberty. He cites Thomas Paine to back this up. Wut?....

Just read Thomas's concurrence in the Trump case and OMG, the mendacity! Thomas says yes, the President is immune, but also the appointment of special council Smith was an abuse of Presidential power that threatens the foundations of American liberty. He cites Thomas Paine to back this up. Wut?....

Paine helped draft the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776. That constitution created a 13 PERSON EXECUTIVE because the people who wrote it were anxious to constrain the power of that branch. It's the exact opposite of Thomas's "unified executive" theory. avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century...

The Avalon Project : Constitution of Pennsylvania - September 28, 1776avalon.law.yale.edu

Now let's talk about Thomas's mendacious citation of Gordon Wood's Creation of the American Republic. Again, Thomas has just said the original intent was to create a unitary executive with virtually unchecked power. Here's what Wood says about the founding generation's thoughts on executive power.

Just 6 pages before the section of Wood that Thomas cites to support his argument that the appointment of Jack Smith is a terrible threat to liberty, Wood talks about Pennsylvania's very non-unitary executive that Paine had played a hand in crafting.

The question of what "the founding generation" thought about executive power is immensely complicated. What Thomas is doing here is not "originalism" in any meaningful sense, it's just history a la carte. It's "living constitutionalism" as done by pro-Trump judges.

The idea that the greatest threat to liberty in the US today is the power to appoint a special counsel rather than, oh I dunno, a President inciting an insurrection to overthrow the results of an election and then claiming immunity for those actions is...I mean...Thomas has to be trolling us, yes?

To be completely fair, I should admit that there were a number of quite trollish Federalist judges back in the era of the Alien and Sedition Acts...so in that sense, perhaps Thomas really is acting in the spirit of originalism.

Hippies.

No. Fox News broke his brain and into the cracks went money from the billionaires. He also wasn’t a good person to begin with.

He has been a nihilist ever since his early 1970s disillusionment with black nationalism. He isn’t concerned with history, jurisprudence, or logic. Only in a simplistic Hobbesian world of unchecked power through strength.

Clarence Thomas’s Radical Vision of Racewww.newyorker.com Thomas has moved from black nationalism to the right. But his beliefs about racism, and our ability to solve it, remain the same.

However brilliant the founding fathers were, they did not envision the world in which we now live. If they had, I believe they would have worded many things differently and would have relied less on people being honorable, but put real enforceable ethics into the Constitution. Times have changed!

My bet is that Thomas never even saw the book. And his clerks this year...not a single history major. Their undergrad degrees: 1. Economics at Creighton 2. Government and Economics at UVa (grandson of Scalia) 3. Sociology at Wheaton 4. Political Science and Psychology at Auburn

Yes and yes!

to quote the kids way back in the Shrub-Cheney days, "we are ruled by monsters." (and the kids had no idea what real monsters are...)

How dare you let facts get in the way of Thomas' preferences!

They're trying to rewrite our history. Now, this idea of a Unitary Executive was their goal loooooong before Trump. They may despise Trump secretly but grabbed this case as the vehicle to realize this goal.

Protects but does not bind; binds but does not protect

He’s channeling Scalia in Morrison v Olson

seems like the founders were pretty concerned with an overly powerful executive, seems relevant

I know this is totally beside the point, but is this Thomas's way of bragging that he received a really old book as a gift from his ol' Bohemian Grove drinking buddies?

"also the appointment of special council Smith was an abuse of Presidential power...." Yes, contradictory, but that doesn't bother them any more. This is the latest fringe theory floating around the right (is anything fringe?). Didn't Cannon just hold a hearing on it? Watch her toss the case now.

Yep, she sure did. You nailed it.

I am sorry to be right.

This case was doomed once she was just randomly assigned to the case the second time around. There was no way it was going to get close to a trial date before the election. So, don't be too hard on yourself :)

She was always going to drag it out. And this timing does two things. It makes sure the criticism of her is muted considering what's going on this week. And while it will be appealed, it's likely not coming back down before the election.

BTW, this might be a good thing in the long run. It might start the process of getting her removed. You just know that she'd find a way to rig this case once the jury was impaneled. And then double jeopardy might attach and he'd skate. She's, um, a loose Cannon. Better to address it now.

he genuinely believes the election was stolen

So we can’t have a swarm of new offices to help constrain the power of the one office which we wish to invest with absolute power? Did I get that right?

Feckless…completely feckless, the entire lot of conservative justices.

He seems to be going on and on about the problem of the King amassing too much power …

Not a lawyer, but Thomas has preferred 15th Century English law instead of Constitution, especially 19th Century Amendments for a while now.

The Nazis aren't coming.... THEY'RE HERE!

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