Fox News Commentator Megyn Kelly Pwned by Anthony Weiner

Virginia Thomas Brings Up Ancient History In Asking Anita Hill For An Apology

I can still remember it, and it's stunning to think that it was like 19 years ago the nation experienced the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill drama as it played out on national television during Thomas's U.S. Supreme Court nomination hearings.

Fast forward to present-day U.S.

This is from Media Matters for America:

A few days ago, Brandeis University professor Anita Hill received a message on her voice mail at work.

"Good morning, Anita Hill, it's Ginny Thomas," said the voice. "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."

Are you serious? Is she still so troubled by that episode that she wants to bring it back into the national spotlight - nearly two decades after it all went down?

Well, the answer seems to be, "YES."

Now, as a full confession, this all happened during the days when I was more of a conservative (prior to my personal enlightenment). At the time, my feelings were that Thomas had the right to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice (even though I had no reason and have no reason to doubt Anita Hill's story).

Still, it is interesting that Ginny Thomas is back on this story.

Here's more from the article originally posted by ABC:

Mark Matthews of our affiliate KGO learned about this and reached out to Virginia Thomas.

Thomas e-mailed him, saying: "I did place a call to Ms. Hill at her office extending an olive branch to her after all these years, in hopes that we could ultimately get past what happened so long ago. That offer still stands, I would be very happy to meet and talk with her if she would be willing to do the same. Certainly no offense was ever intended."

No offense was intended, huh? What in the world is Virginia Thomas thinking? She makes a call essentially demanding an apology and then calls it an "olive branch" in a follow-up conversation via e-mail. I imagine Anita Hill is doing a better job of getting past the issue than is Ginny Thomas, who seems to still be quite troubled.

Virginia Thomas should have exorcised her own demons before stepping to Anita Hill. Her voicemail sounds/reads like the message of a person with major issues to confront.

Another Attempt To Come To The Rescue Of Justice Clarence Thomas While Attacking Black People

I have always tried to read opposing viewpoints to find out what people who might disagree with me are saying. Booker Rising is a fine Web site and I do check it quite frequently (even if I rarely agree with many of the opinions that are posted there from writers who are highlighted). But, as I was once a black conservative, I do have a bit of a soft spot for black people who learn right or dive blindly to the right going all in.

This all brings me to an entry I read at Booker Rising recently about a person who was upset at some negative feedback that Virginia Thomas (wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is getting for some affiliation she has with a Tea Party group. Personally, I could not care less what she is doing in our out of a Tea Party.

But, I did stumble across an article cited on Booker Rising with a few passages I found particularly interesting:

This new 'post-racial' world is GREAT!!! In effect, for some people their 'infinite universe' has doubled back on itself. They are now stuck - chasing after their own tails. The gross hypocrisy and fraud has been exposed. We now see that while indeed they love 'community organizers' who work to get people engaged in the political process. They merely don't like 'citizens activists' of the 'Tea Party' type. Despite the fact that no Black person has been lynched or beaten as a direct result of 'Tea Party' actions - those who are under the 'Bitter Black Coffee Movement' fear that the 'Tea Party Movement' is the biggest threat to Black voting rights and civil rights. They need no proof.

So, we should be grateful they are not (physically) lynching us?

Oh, speaking of lynching...

Anyone remember these words from Thomas (who at the time was a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court)?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egTyaIAaqz8]

Can you imagine if a so-called liberal/progressive black used those words? The far right would accuse him or her of playing the mythical race card.

I supported Justice Thomas even though I could not possibly disagree more with his policies or much of a lot of what he stands for and is in support of.

Here is another passage:

In truth the Lampblack Yellow Journalists and their Snarling Fox White Liberal syndication sources (HuffPo and Rachel Maddow) merely operate to 'self-chum' the bigoted Black Quasi-Socialist Progressive-Fundamentalist Racism Chaser. They are more interested in the masturbatory impact of striking out at Brother Justice Clarence Thomas than they are in spotlighting the gross corruption that the Democratic Machines in Detroit, Chicago, Memphis and Newark and other places where Black folks live in our highest concentrations. Again - they are members of the BLACK ESTABLISHMENT and thus their goal is to protect the establishment, not expose it. By exposing it to the open air they fear that their ideological enemies might sneak back into power. The fact that their ideological enemies have departed [for the suburbs], having no interests at all to return and continue the struggle over the resources within these cities is not enough for them to turn the spotlight upon these festering piles of compost where the methane gas streaming from them produce steam.

Based on the video above ... who was the racism chaser when Thomas was a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court?

The highlighted part is ridiculous. Far less people care about Virginia Thomas than cared about (from a Michigan standpoint) Monica Conyers and Kwame Kilpatrick (as examples). Those two were vilified for their alleged acts of corruption and have been, will be forced or will continue to be forced to pay for their sins. Those of us who live in or near Detroit know all too well that Monica Conyers and Kwame Kilpatrick have certainly gotten their fair share of highly negative and mostly deserved media (from people of all races) attention.

But, what really makes me shake my head is this: Stereotyping black people from big cities like Chicago Detroit, Memphis, Newark and elsewhere is a useless self-hating waste of time (one that perpetuates a myth of a sort of black-on-black crime).

Corruption is far from exclusive to any one race (no matter how much one blogger might try to imply).

Rick Santorum’s Comments Are Misguided And One Dimensional

Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, was on Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News show doing what conservatives do: defending Sarah Palin and whining about the mainstream media. Santorum scoffed at the idea that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was roughed up the way so many conservatives feel that Palin has been roughed up. Rick, this is big-time Washington politics. If she can’t fight through it as governor of Alaska then how is she going to fight through it as president of the United States? Clinton fought through all of the attacks against her and her family and, arguably, endured much worse than Palin has had to deal with and she is still a pillar of strength to this day.

Santorum claimed that people rough up women and blacks who are conservatives and cited U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas as an example. The objection to Thomas is less about being a black conservative and more about his policies which many consider to be anti-black (policies that some people feel he benefited from and now wants to pull the ladder up with him since he has made it to the top). That is why some considered (and still consider) Clarence Thomas an “Uncle Tom.” As one counter example, many blacks still appreciated Gen. Colin Powell even as he voted for Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush (something many Republicans don’t talk about when they try to ridiculously portray him as a closet liberal who only supported Barack Obama for the presidency because he was black).

There are many women conservatives who have not been beat up as conservatives claim Sarah Palin is being beaten up.

Here is a list from the National Federation of Republican Women.

I see only two women who get negative media attention (as Santorum and other conservatives might see it): Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann. Palin and Bachmann have provided (all well documented … especially Bachmann, who is the gift that keeps giving) their opponents with all kinds of ammunition. Hey, as off the wall as Bachmann can be, she somehow managed to get herself reelected in Minnesota. In other words, their criticism is self-created criticism.

Clarence Thomas Reminds Us Of The Pain Of Losing Thurgood Marshall

The more I think about it, it’s sad to think that someone who has done so little for civil rights (Clarence Thomas) replaced someone so great (Thurgood Marshall) who did so much for civil rights. It’s almost unforgivable that George H.W. Bush, in 1991, nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court to replace one of the important figures in black history, Thurgood Marshall.

Here is a lengthy excerpt from Wikipedia:

Marshall won his very first U.S. Supreme Court case, Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940), at the age of 32. That same year, he was appointed Chief Counsel for the NAACP. He argued many other cases before the Supreme Court, most of them successfully, including Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948); Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950). His most famous case as a lawyer was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the case in which the Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal” public education was unconstitutional because it could never be truly equal. In total, Marshall won 29 out of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court.

During the 1950s, Thurgood Marshall developed a friendly relationship with J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1956, for example, he privately praised Hoover’s campaign to discredit T.R.M. Howard, a maverick civil rights leader from Mississippi. During a national speaking tour, Howard had criticized the FBI’s failure to seriously investigate cases such as the 1955 killers of George W. Lee and Emmett Till. An FBI informant reported that Marshall had “no use for Howard and nothing would please him more than to see Howard completely crushed.” Ironically, two years earlier Howard had arranged for Marshall to deliver a well-received speech at a rally of his Regional Council of Negro Leadership in Mound Bayou, Mississippi only days before the Brown decision. ^[4]

President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961. A group of Democratic Party Senators led by Mississippi’s James Eastland held up his confirmation, so he served for the first several months under a recess appointment. Marshall remained on that court until 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him Solicitor General.

On June 13, 1967, President Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court following the retirement of Justice Tom C. Clark, saying that this was “the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place.” Marshall was confirmed as an Associate Justice by a Senate vote of 69-11 on August 31, 1967.^[5] He was the 96th person to hold the position, and the first African-American.

Meanwhile, Thomas fought against civil rights and continues to fight against civil rights.

From The Daily Voice:

In an 8-1 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Justice Clarence Thomas cast the lone vote against a key provision of the Voting Rights Act on Monday (June 22).

The Court, in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder (PDF link) declined to overturn the 1965 Voting Rights Act that has often been challenged by conservative critics as unnecessary. Instead it avoided the “difficult” question about the constitutionality of the law. But the Court did allow a tiny Texas municipality to be exempted from a requirement to provide advance notice before making changes to its election procedures.

In his dissent, Thomas seemed to argue that the Voting Rights Act is no longer necessary because the explicit racial segregation of the Jim Crow era is gone.

”The violence, intimidation and subterfuge that led Congress to pass Section 5 and this court to uphold it no longer remains,” Thomas wrote. He admitted that in 1965, “Congress had every reason to conclude that States with a history of disenfranchising voters based on race would continue to do all they could to evade the constitutional ban on voting discrimination.” But, Thomas added, “The extensive pattern of discrimination that led the Court to previously uphold Section 5 . . . no longer exists…And the days of ‘grandfather clauses, property qualifications, ‘good character’ tests, and the requirement that registrants ‘understand’ or ‘interpret’ certain matter,’ are gone.”

Some things change, but other things remain the same.

It hurts to think this man replaced the great Thurgood Marshall.

Field Negro Takes On Clarence Thomas

I would encourage readers to check out one of my favorite blogs on the Web, Field Negro. In one blog I just took an opportunity to read, Field takes on Clarence Thomas for yet another inexplicable slap in the face to black people.

Here is an excerpt:

Some sister must have really done Clarence wrong back in the day, because that Negro seriously hates his people. I bet he vowed to get the entire Negro race back for those black folks who dissed him in his early life.

Honestly, how could Uncle Clarence be the only one of the Supremes to vote against not scrapping a certain provision of the Voting Rights Act? (He even went against his closet lover, Antonin Scalia, on this one) A provision which pretty much insured that certain states would not be messing with the civil rights of minority voters? Has this Negro taken leave of his senses? Does he just do this kind of shit to get attention? Folks, believe me, in spite of what some folks in certain states would have you believe, that provision is still needed today. Those pesky little literacy tests could come back faster than you can say Jig Clarence, Jig.

Field Negro:
http://field-negro.blogspot.com/2009/06/most-dangerous-negro-in-merry-ca.html

Diary Of A Mad Rejected Judge … Starring Robert Bork

Robert Bork is still bitter after all of these years and he was at his player-hater best (or worst) in an interview with Newsweek (where he trashed U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor with the same tired Republican talking points). The article is interesting as Bork takes some of her comments out of context and spins them in the worst way possible to demonize her. It’s kind of sad that Bork still seems to be carrying all that anger inside of him after all of these years.

Here is an excerpt from the Bork interview that struck me (even though it does not have much to do with Sotomayor):

My general impression of them is quite good. The justice up there who I most admire is Clarence Thomas. I notice that when he and Scalia differ—it’s not that often, but when they do—I tend to agree with Thomas.

There goes Judge Bork’s credibility. Time to flush the toilet.

Newsweek:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/202874

Sonia Sotomayor Can Expect To Be Attacked By Far-Right Extremists

It appears that President Barack Obama is going to nominate federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace the retiring David Souter. The reports have been circulating around all of the major media news outlets this morning. If confirmed, the 54-year-old Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic and only the third woman (currently, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg serves) ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Sotomayor’s reported nomination is hardly a big surprise as she has been on what many have speculated to be President Obama’s short list for quite some time.

Now, however, comes the hard part. Sotomayor’stoughness will be tested as the far-right nuts will begin attacking any high-court nominee that does not fit their ideological vision of what a U.S. Supreme Court Justice is supposed to be. That should not matter. Nothing I have read about Sonia Sotomayor puts her outside reasonable mainstream beliefs. What should matter, about Sonia Sotomayor, are her qualifications. As much as I was not (and am not) a fan of Clarence Thomas, I supported President George H.W. Bush’s right to nominate him to the high court.

Besides, Sotomayor’s selection will do nothing to tilt the liberal-conservative balance of the U.S. Supreme Court since she is replacing Souter.

Still, I doubt that will matter to many people as the attacks on Sonia Sotomayor begin. Check that, the attacks have already begun (they started when she was first rumored to be on President Obama’s list).