Does it disturb anyone else that Clarence Thomas -- described by Dahlia Lithwick thusly, "Of all the Summum aphorisms, my favorite is probably 'everything vibrates.' Whoever wrote that had yet to meet Justice Clarence Thomas, who spends this morning, as he does every morning of oral argument, in perfect, motionless repose" -- broke his customary inertness for a fringe Internet rumor?
In a highly unusual move, U.S. Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has asked his colleagues on the court to consider the request of an East Brunswick, N.J., attorney who has filed a lawsuit challenging President-elect Barack Obama's status as a United States citizen.
A Columbia University law professor speculated that Thomas accepted the petitiion "so it would go before the conference [of Supreme Court justices] where it will likely be denied." If he hadn't accepted it, the New Jersey conspiracy theorist could bring the petition to other justices.
Which, frankly, sounds like rationalizing to me, because I can't imagine any other justice even considering the petition. I guess some folks need to find method in the madness. The alternative is accepting that there's a SCOTUS justice who finds more merit in paranoid conspiracies than the Constitution.
