"Centrists Should Mourn the Demise of the Filibuster: Only the extremists win—and in the end, mostly the Republicans."

A Slate headline, quoted in its entirety at Instapundit, as if he's not seeing the snark.

To see the snark, examine the logic

1. After the filibuster, only the extremists will win.

2. Most of the winners will be Republicans.

3. [Unstated.] Most of the extremists are Republicans. 

What counts as "extremism"? In this context, it has to do with how we think about judges. (And executive nominees, but I'll leave them to the side for simplicity's sake.) The "extreme" should be understood as the more ideologically slanted or threateningly powerful individuals that the President would otherwise have refrained from nominating. But even with the minority party disabled by the inability to filibuster, there are political constraints.

Obama can't just nominate, say, Bill Ayers.
He won't want the criticism, and there will be pressures on members of his own party to say no. The old game of letting the minority party do the dirty work has changed. The other party will still do what it can to trash the reputation of the nominee, but the President's own party will have to vote that nominee down or take the political heat for voting for this awful character.

I suspect that the political check will be more of a constraint on Democrats, because it seems that American voters perceive conservative judicial ideology as more conventional, proper, and neutral than liberal judicial ideology. And this is essentially the insight in the Slate article (which is written by Eric Posner). And by essentially, I mean subtract the subterfuge in the part I've boldfaced:

Next time Republicans control the presidency and the Senate, they will appoint ideologically extreme judges. True, Democrats could cancel out this effect by appointing extremely liberal judges when they are in power, but recent history suggests that Democrats do not care as much as the Republicans about appointing ideologically extreme judges. Unless this changes, picture a federal appellate bench composed of numerous Antonin Scalias and Clarence Thomases, not fully offset by Elena Kagans and Stephen Breyers.

Let me restate the boldfaced part to say what I think is true:  Democrats know that the vigorous left-liberals they'd like to see on the bench would be viewed by the American people as ideologically extreme and unsuited for judicial work.

The reason the Republicans seem to get away with leaning further toward conservatism than Democrats can lean toward liberalism is that conservatism better comports with the people's idea of the role of the judiciary.

Removal of the filibuster helps conservatives not because they are more "extremist" than Republicans, but because the political check on nominating strong judges operates more forcibly on liberals. 

The much-admired November 14th interview with Clarence Thomas — now on YouTube.

Discussed previously here, linking to an Above the Law item that is now titled "Justice Clarence Thomas Speaks!" but was previously titled "Justice Clarence Thomas Speaks — And Oh What A Speech!"

I'm going to guess that the "And Oh What A Speech!" part got dropped not because ATL wanted to back away from expressing enthusiasm but because it's not a speech. It's an interview. And part of what's good about it is that the interviewer 7th Circuit Judge Diane S. Sykes is excellent. The gushing over Thomas deprived Sykes of her share of the gushing.

Now, I don't like what's left of the title — "Justice Clarence Thomas Speaks!" — because it redirects our attention to a favorite liberal media meme about Thomas: He doesn't speak at oral argument. But you can easily look up his reason for that. It's been observed and discussed many times. And Clarence Thomas frequently speaks outside of the oral argument setting, so I don't like the hey-who-knew-the-guy-could-speak snark — which is what we're left with once the "And Oh What A Speech!" is lopped off.

Anyway, the fact is, this is an excellent 50 minutes of conversation, and thanks to The Federalist Society for putting it up.

"There are a lot of briefs, and people doing a lot of talking. I mean, it’s law."

Clarence Thomas said about the work of the Supreme Court.

He also said:

Even the most boring cases are fascinating to me…. I love the cloistered life — I was in the seminary. I love my law clerks. I have this wonderful work to do.

And, as summarized by David Lat:

Justice Thomas is patient enough to wait for history to catch up with him, comparing some of his jurisprudence to “a fine wine — it just needs aging.” He noted that it took the first Justice Harlan, author of the great dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, sixty years to be vindicated.

"The worst forms of racial discrimination in this Nation have always been accompanied by straight-faced representations that discrimination helped minorities."

Justice Thomas, in today's opinion in Fisher v. University of Texas, likening affirmative action to slavery and segregation. ("Slaveholders argued that slavery was a 'positive good' that civilized blacks and elevated them in every dimension of life.... A century later, segregationists similarly asserted that segregation was not only benign, but good for black students.... Following in these inauspicious footsteps, the University would have us believe that its discrimination is likewise benign. I think the lesson of history is clear enough: Racial discrimination is never benign....")

"Right Wing News emailed more than 204 right-of-center bloggers and asked them to rate 75 prominent people on the Right."

"51 of them responded."

I responded to this poll, even though I didn't like that the middle category — between "admire"/"greatly admire" and "dislike"/"greatly dislike" — was "no opinion." I was forced to check "no opinion" for a lot of people that I had an opinion about. My opinion was I'm in the middle. (But then, am I "right-of-center"?)

By the way, the most admired person was Clarence Thomas, followed by (tie) Thomas Sowell and Mark Steyn. The least admired is Megan McCain.

"Net Numbers (Positive - Negative) For 2016 Presidential Contenders":

12) Chris Christie (-11)
11) Jeb Bush (4)
10) Marco Rubio (21)
9) Jan Brewer (25)
8) Condi Rice (31)
7) Rick Perry (33)
6) Paul Ryan (37)
5) Sarah Palin (39)
3) Rand Paul (40)
3) Scott Walker (40)
2) Bobby Jindal (43)
1) Ted Cruz (45)

"As you can imagine, I have had occasion to feel the blues."

Clarence Thomas wrote on Supreme Court letterhead to George Jones in 1993. (Jones had sent letters and cassettes to Thomas.)

I have listened to your music for over a decade. The lyrics so often captured just how I felt....

You may be interested to know that I used one of your songs to allay the concerns of my bride's mother. Prior to our wedding, she expressed some concern about this being my second marriage. At that time, I had been listening repeatedly to one of your albums which unfortunately is packed away. I believe it was entitled Wine Colored Roses. I apologize in advance if that is wrong. One of the songs contained the lyrics: 'I put a golden band on the right left hand this time; and the right left hand put a golden band on mine.' As I said before, your music has captured so much of my own feelings.

Clarence Thomas was not surprised that a black man was elected President...

... but "he always thought a black president would have to be 'approved by the elites' in the media and in society." And: "If I was going to have hard feelings, it’d be mostly on race issues."

Did WaPo's Dana Milbank just call Clarence Thomas an oreo?

No.

He called him a tagalong.

"I loved the D.C. Circuit... and I could've stayed there. But I think I got maneuvered into this job. And then I had a really bad interview."

Said Clarence Thomas in this wonderful hour-long conversation with Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow. The Harvard law students give him a standing ovation as he arrives in the room, and he jokes "I should quit while I'm ahead."

In fact, he goes on to be warm, interesting, deep, smart, and there's just way too much good stuff in here for me to quote everything that jumps out, because, really, everything jumps out. If you skip over the long introduction and get to the first question, he talks about growing up among illiterate but good and loving people and then discovering reading at a segregated library in Savannah. The librarians introduced him to Dr. Seuss.



Minow and Thomas talk about their mutual love for a book about introversion called "Quiet," and Thomas characterizes himself as very introverted. He talks about working in all 3 branches of government and greatly preferring the judiciary because in the EEOC and in the legislature, though he loved the people, it was too political. "I don't understand politics.... It made my head hurt.... It was like new math."

ADDED: He says Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan are delightful. When Kagan arrived, he said to her: "You know, it's going to be a joy disagreeing with you for years to come."

AND: At oral arguments, Justice Breyer doodles stick figures. The 2 of them sit together at oral argument and share jokes and laugh. "You know, he's very smart, but he's sort of a moving around smart," he says, making a gesture as if he were moving Breyer's little stick figures around. "And I tend to be someone, I lock into something, I want to think it through for a long time, and he likes to move around, and I sort of rein him in. Every so often, what I'll is I'll say, 'What about this, Steve?' and he'll pop up and ask and a question." So that's how Clarence Thomas asks questions at oral argument. Thomas laughs because it's "just something I'm throwing out," and Breyer makes it into a question.

"Who of a certain age could forget when a bookish black woman named Anita Hill addressed a Senate committee of 14 white men..."

"... and candidly spoke of graphic sexual harassment by then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas? The explosive, race-tinged hearings in 1991 had all of America, especially black America, captivated. Sexual politics became part of the lexicon, and Hill became a divisive figure. We know what became of Thomas — now we get a rare glimpse into Hill's private life with friends and family, who stood by her through it all."

From "14 Films That Matter at Sundance" at The Root.

After 7 years of not speaking during oral argument, Clarence Thomas spoke...

... and whatever he said was drowned out by the laughter of those in the room. 

Apparently, it was some kind of joke about what a Yale law degree connotes. We know how he feels about his law degree. Here's what I wrote back in 2007 when he gave an interview to "60 Minutes":

"I was never a liberal. I was radical," he says, talking about how difficult it was for him to go to work for a Republican after he graduated from Yale Law School. His Yale Law degree was worth almost nothing, he says. Though he graduated in the middle of his class, he couldn't get a job, and he was enraged to see that the degree meant one thing for whites and another for blacks. Everyone assumed he got into Yale because he was black, and not because he had grown up in severe hardship, and yet had always done well in every environment -- from all black to all white.

ADDED: According to the NYT, Thomas leaned over to the microphone and uttered a remark that the stenographer captured as "Well – he did not —." Laughter is noted. The topic at the time was the definition of constitutionally adequate counsel, and Justice Scalia had just noted that one lawyer had gone to Yale Law School and another to Harvard. Supposedly, according to some people who were in the courtroom, Thomas said something that meant that a law degree from Yale could be proof of incompetence.

[Thomas has] complained about the difficulty of getting a word in edgewise on an exceptionally voluble bench. The garbled transcript offers some support for that final rationale.

Indeed. On the other hand, the intense interest we're all showing now might encourage him. Say anything at all and it will be big news.