Mike Rosen: Dissing Uppity Blacks

Columnist and KOA Radio Denver talk host Mike Rosen addresses Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s comments about Clarence Thomas in the December 17 Rocky Mountain News:

…if Clarence Thomas were an African-American, liberal Supreme Court justice, you can be sure Reid would never have “dissed” the man like that. (He might even have called him a “credit to his race.”) A white Republican saying such a thing about a black jurist would have been accused of racism. But rare black conservatives, like Thomas and Condoleezza Rice, are apparently fair game.

I suspect it’s not the quality of Thomas’ opinions that Reid objects to; it’s the substance. Thomas bases his decisions on the principles of limited government and strict constitutional constructionism. It’s not like Thomas is a lone wolf, winging his opinions and jotting them down on the back of a napkin while watching NASCAR races on TV. He, and every other justice, is supported by the cream of the crop of law school graduates and brilliant staffers anxious to pad their résumés by clerking for the Supreme Court. The opinions they help their bosses write are painstakingly researched, crafted and vetted.

But Reid was just warming up. Here comes the best part and an insight to the mindset of judicial activists. Reid volunteered that he could support Thomas’ fellow conservative on the high bench, Antonin Scalia, for chief justice. (It should be noted that Scalia and Thomas routinely vote on the same side employing similar reasoning. I guess Reid finds these decisions more palatable coming from a white conservative than from an uppity black who fails to vote just like Thurgood Marshall did.) Said Reid, “I cannot dispute the fact, as I have said, that (Scalia) is one smart guy. And I disagree with many of the results that he arrives at, but his reasons for arriving at those results are very hard to dispute [italics mine].” Aha!



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