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RUSH: There’s a great piece in the New Yorker by Jeffrey Toobin. You know what’s about? It is the most amazing story, a story I never thought I would see, although I know why it’s been written. It is a story about how Clarence Thomas is the driving intellectual force of the United States Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni, are the two people working the hardest to stop Obamacare. It is Clarence Thomas that provides the guidance for Antonin Scalia, not the other way around, according to this story by Jeffrey Toobin.

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RUSH: Walter Russell Mead has reviewed the Jeffrey Toobin piece in the New Yorker about Clarence Thomas, and Walter Russell Mead’s thesis — and, folks, I gotta tell you, you’re gonna be as stunned as I was when you hear this. Walter Russell Mead’s thesis of Toobin’s article is that Clarence Thomas, while being completely smeared and underestimated by the left, may well have already laid much of the intellectual groundwork necessary to bring down the New Deal era scaffolding around the Constitution, may have already laid the groundwork for repealing Obamacare.

Here’s a quote from the Toobin story: “In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court. … When it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government; in each of these areas, the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more. Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication.” I know you’re asking, “Wait a minute. They impugn this guy, he’s an idiot, he doesn’t say anything in oral arguments, he does nothing but copycat Scalia. What is this?”

I’ll tell you what it is. It’s the truth. And the reason that they are getting to the truth now is because what Toobin’s doing with this piece, he’s alerting the left to start targeting ethics complaints against Clarence Thomas to try to knock him out of the Obamacare decision. They are gonna try to force Clarence Thomas to recuse himself or to force himself out of the decision making precisely because what they’ve written about Thomas is true. He is an intellectual giant; he has laid the groundwork, and he could lead the court to repealing Obamacare, and that’s why they’re doing the story now, to try to alert the left to ratchet up their attacks on Justice Thomas anew.

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RUSH: This Clarence Thomas story. I’m telling you, when I said before the break at the top of the hour, this story that Jeffrey Toobin has written is important because it’s true. What has been done to Clarence Thomas from the moment he was nominated by George H. W. Bush, is as close to libel, slander, criminal as you can get.

The reason that Clarence Thomas has been targeted the way he has is two reasons: black conservative. The civil rights coalition in this country, meaning the Jesse Jacksons, People for the American Way, all these civil rights groups, they sit at the table of power in the Democrat Party and they have to earn their seat. The way Jesse Jackson earns it is voter turnout, shakedowns of various corporations. Same thing with Al Sharpton. They all have their responsibilities. Clarence Thomas was criminally assaulted during his confirmation hearings because the left knew that he would become the most powerful black man in America if he’s confirmed, plus he was taking the seat that was forever to be Thurgood Marshall’s, who was a huge liberal.

So he gets confirmed. The effort to discredit and destroy continues to portray him as an idiot, basically a step-and-fetch-it. He’s nothing more than a clone of Scalia, doesn’t have a brain, doesn’t say anything in oral arguments, he’s an absolute idiot, nothing more than affirmative action, I mean every criticism that they could mount to dehumanize Clarence Thomas was made, and, folks, for the same reason that they do it to Sarah Palin. They were scared to death of him. They will always tell us who they fear. So here we are, Thomas confirmation hearings early nineties, here we are 2011, so what are we, 19, 18, 15, whatever, I forget the exact year, whatever the number of years, 15 years later, all of a sudden and out of nowhere comes a story in the New Yorker by Jeffrey Toobin — well, let me just read you the quote again.

“In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court. … When it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government; in each of these areas, the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more. Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication.”


Now, this has been true for 15 years. What they have told you and written about Clarence Thomas for 15 years has been the lie. What has been true is he’s always been an
intellectual giant, he’s always been an intellectual leader, he’s always been an independent thinker, he’s always been eminently qualified, he has always been a giant on the court. Now all of a sudden they write the truth. Let me give you a quote from Walter Russell Mead reviewing the Toobin piece in the New Yorker.

“What we didn’t know, and what the world at large didn’t know until very recently, was that the New Deal constitution was not as permanent or unalterable as it looked. Intellectually its foundations were shaky, and after two decades of a Clarence Thomas-led assault, the constitutional doctrines that permitted the rise of the powerful federal government could be close to collapse.”

For the number of years that Clarence Thomas has been rendering opinions, he has been undoing the New Deal constitution doorjamb by doorjamb, taking the mansion apart if you would, to borrow a phrase from Justice Scalia, if I might. Now the story that Toobin has is essentially how Clarence Thomas and his intellectual leadership could, along with his wife and the work that she has been doing, be the intellectual force behind the repeal of Obamacare when the case gets to the Supreme Court.

And that answers the question, “Why now?” and, “Why the truth?” This Toobin piece is a giant red flag being waved to everybody on the left, and the message is, “Stop with the caricatures. We have to get Thomas somehow recused or disqualified because of the work his wife has been doing.” It’s gonna get vicious, as vicious as it was during his confirmation hearings. Only this time it’s not going to be because he’s supposedly not qualified; it’s gonna be because he is an intellectual giant who could accomplish what the left fears most. The Walter Russell Mead review is fascinating because it basically says there are two amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, that if you went to the right Ivy League schools were taught may as well not have even been there.

Number two and number ten.

Number two is basically right to bear arms. Before Clarence Thomas, the Second Amendment, everybody agreed. All it meant was that the states can have a militia. It didn’t mean individuals were empowered the right to own guns. Now after 15, 20 years of Clarence Thomas, the left has given up the gun control fight. They don’t even want to go there. Now the Tenth Amendment is next. Now, the Tenth Amendment, paraphrasing, basically says any power not specifically enumerated in the Constitution for the federal government goes to the states. Now, this is important, ladies and gentlemen, because the Commerce Clause in the Fourth Amendment has been the vehicle for the New Dealization of the US Constitution.

The Commerce Clause — and the Commerce Clause, as you know, is the route to Obamacare, forcing people to buy health insurance. The Commerce Clause is where the federal government has grown. The Commerce Clause of the Constitution is where the federal government’s grown. Now, the Clarence Thomas-and-others-led effort to take power away from the federal government and give it back to the states is amendment ten. Now, in all these Ivy League law schools and other colleges years ago, the Second Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, they were like an appendix. They were there, but they were not used. They were not necessary. Now the Tenth Amendment is being used and focused on as a way to dismantle much of federal power.

All of a sudden people who now realize what happened to ’em on the left in the Second Amendment say, “Uh-oh, now Justice Thomas is aiming at number ten?” And it’s not just Justice Thomas alone. I don’t want to mischaracterize this, but on the court it is Justice Thomas who is leading people — and it is at the court, as you know, where changes will be made. Another factor of Clarence Thomas, by the way, that really bugs people is he’s not afraid to get rid of precedent. Now, to the left, precedent is holy. To Clarence Thomas, precedent, if it’s bad law, doesn’t matter. He’s an originalist, and he’s dead set on finding out exactly what the Founders meant when they wrote this Constitution, by going back and defining words as they were defined in that era, not as they are defined today.


That is what he has done. So this piece — and we will link to it at RushLimbaugh.com, and we’re gonna also link to the Walter Russell Mead review because they’re both really
fascinating. I have mixed emotions. I almost cry when I read this great compliments now of Clarence Thomas. At the same time I just get livid over the lies that have been told about the man for the same number of years. But the reason now is, “Okay, now it’s time for the truth.” Now it’s time for the left to tell their idiot troops, “Hey, you know, this guy is not the lightweight we’ve been telling you. (sigh) This guy is not who we’ve been telling you. This guy is the guy we gotta be afraid of. Clarence Thomas is the person we need to be afraid of. This is the guy that can do us in,” and that’s the message Toobin has, and it’s all oriented toward making sure that he’s not there legally when Obamacare is decided at the US Supreme Court.

That’s the battle line now.

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RUSH: There’s another quote from Walter Russell Mead on the Jeffrey Toobin piece. Jeffrey Toobin is announcing “to the liberal world that Clarence Thomas has morphed from a comic figure of fun to a determined super-villain who might reverse seventy years of liberal dominance of the federal bench and turn the clock back to 1930 if not 1789.” Super-villain is the operative term in that quote. It’s an amazing vindication. It is an amazing reversal. The thing is it’s always been true. Clarence Thomas has always been as they write about him today. What’s been lies is what they’ve said about him from the day his nomination was announced until this article came out. Or his appointment was announced.

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RUSH: I gotta go to the phones. Spokane, Washington. Al, I’m glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Maximum dittos from Spokane.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I want to go ahead and touch a little bit on Governor Perry and him being called dumb, which kind of follows on your Clarence Thomas segment. You know, if you want to call Air Force pilots, Army pilots, Marine pilots dumb, then that’s fine. But what they’re really attacking, the liberal media, is all of us who have served our country honorably that are not dumb, stupid idiots. We believe in America, and this goes even back to his Boy Scout days. This man really epitomizes what America is about from his very beginnings.

RUSH: You know Politico has never (I saw this on Fox) referred to any presidential candidate as “dumb” before they did refer to Rick Perry that way, and they’re doing it simply on the basis of the way he speaks. Nothing else.

CALLER: Well, you know, that doesn’t always make the man.

RUSH: Well, of course not.

CALLER: And as we look at our current president, his verbiage isn’t always, I would say, the best and what I learned in school. But as they attack really the basis of America, it shows what they feel about America and I think that’s important to bring out in this — and the same thing with Clarence Thomas.

RUSH: Well, and I tell you, Al: There’s something that goes along with that, and that’s called a backlash. You know, you don’t run around and you call Rick Perry dumb. In the old monopoly days they could get away with that. They could convince people 20 years ago that Rick Perry was dumb. Today they do that, and they create a backlash against themselves.

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RUSH: Now, let me read to you a portion of a Clarence Thomas opinion on the Commerce Clause. And this will tell you why the Toobin piece has been written and this will tell you why the left is peeing in their pants, basically, over Clarence Thomas and Obamacare. This is from United States Petitioner vs. Alfonso Lopez Jr. 1995, the Commerce Clause. Clarence Thomas: “If we wish to be true to a Constitution that does not cede a police power to the Federal Government, our Commerce Clause’s boundaries simply cannot be ‘defined’ as being commensurate with the national needs or self consciously intended to let the Federal Government defend itself against economic forces that Congress decrees inimical or destructive of the national economy.”

In other words, Clarence Thomas is saying we cannot let the federal government use the Commerce Clause as an excuse to do anything, otherwise we’re going to lose the country. Federal power will know no bounds. Now, the Commerce Clause, as you know, is a key fight in one element of Obamacare. In fact, it’s not just a key element, the Commerce Clause portion of Obamacare is requiring all of us to buy health insurance. That, by the way, is where the funding comes from to get the CBO score. If ultimately the Supreme Court says the federal government cannot require us to buy health insurance, the whole law crumbles because there will be no money for it.

That’s why all of a sudden Clarence Thomas has become a genius who must be disqualified from sitting in judgment of the final case. Literally fascinating. Commerce Clause simply can’t be used to say you have to buy insurance. That’s policing. Clarence Thomas’s led intellectually the assault on this. This is not to slight any of the other justices, by the way. Don’t misunderstand.

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