Live from Music Row, Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – guest host Aaron Gulbransen welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
Aaron, there are two articles recently that are related. One is called the Left’s War on the Rule of Law and the other one is The Clarence Thomas Stories That PBS Refused to Tell.
And what you’re seeing here is a very systematic attack on the Supreme Court as an institution. And I will tell you this. I have questions about whether or not what I know they’re doing is illegitimate in attacking the Supreme Court. The question is whether or not it’s legal.
In the Constitution, their law is about intimidating the court, and that’s exactly what’s going on now, which is why they only invited one of the Supreme Court justices to testify because we have three co-equal branches of government. Congress does have the right to oversight of the executive branch, but they don’t have oversight over the Supreme Court.
And so they can’t tell the court what to do. They can’t call them in for witnesses. And what you’re seeing now, though, is dishonest. They’re making claims about Clarence Thomas. About how he took vacations and didn’t report them.
It is true that he took vacations and didn’t report them because they didn’t have to be reported, and nobody reported ’em. Ruth Bader Ginsburg took over 100 trips with her friends, paid for by her friends during her time in office as the Supreme Court Justice with no one saying a word.
Steven Breyer did the same thing. I’m sure that there were dozens of Supreme Court justices who took trips with friends for vacation, and that’s exactly what Clarence Thomas did. And so, the attacks on Clarence Thomas are false and dishonest. And the question is whether or not they’re intended to intimidate a justice, in which case they would be criminal. There was an interesting article by John Danforth because Clarence Thomas worked for John Danforth for many years, and I’m going to quote from the article here. And this is from Danforth himself, “A PBS producer emailed me last January about a planned documentary on the life and legacy of Justice Thomas, who used to work for me. The producer wrote that she wanted to, “Speak to those closest to him to present a nuanced portrait,” and she would therefore request an interview.
So he did the interview for an hour and a half, told her many wonderful stories about Clarence Thomas that would give her nuance, and she didn’t report any one of them. Now, here’s what’s interesting about this. When did John Danforth say that she contacted him in January? Now, think about this for a second.
When did the attacks on Clarence Thomas start? They started after January. They started after PBS decided they were going to do this. So was there coordination between the public broadcasting system and the Democrat party? We don’t know the answer to that. But the answer is probably findable.
But here are the interesting stories. The first story I will come as close to quoting this as I can. The first story is from when Missouri Attorney General Clarence Thomas was in his 20s. Another young lawyer in my office, Dick Wheeler, was a quadriplegic. Dick could operate a motorized wheelchair and used a stick between his teeth to turn the pages of law books and use a phone.
He relied on friends to care for his basic needs. Clarence helped care for Dick and remained his friend until Dick’s death in 2011, well after Clarence Thomas joined the Supreme Court. So here’s a man who has a big heart. A great heart. The second story is from 2003 at the behest of my wife Sally, and then on the board of the Mary Institute and St Louis Country Day School.
Justice Thomas spent a day at the school meeting with students that evening. The school held a public forum for Justice Thomas in the gymnasium, inviting students, teachers, parents, and friends. A large crowd showed up. After making remarks and fielding questions, Justice Thomas greeted a line of guests who wanted to speak with him.
One of the characteristics of Clarence Thomas is that when you talk to him, he has your undivided attention. It’s as if you’re the only person in the world. The third one was finally in 2017 when Justice Thomas was the featured speaker at the Law Day Luncheon, sponsored by the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, which was held in a hotel ballroom.
After the speech, the association had arranged a reception for the luncheon sponsors to be held in a separate room that was reached by traversing the hotel’s basement in something of a procession. Hustling through the large kitchen area on the way to the next event, Justice Thomas spotted a middle-aged woman with a mop and a pale washing the floor.
The whole procession came to a halt, and he engaged a woman in a conversation for what seemed like five minutes, after which the woman dropped the mop and threw her arms around Justice Clarence Thomas, a justice of the Supreme Court. Now, can you imagine some of these leftist senators acting like this toward any average person?
The answer is no. The Democrats don’t act like that. They will throw their arms around somebody that gives them $10 million to a Super PAC but then tries to destroy the country and take away our rights. They’ll do that. But to the average person, no, you won’t see that from the Democrats.
And so the question for me is, was there a coordinated effort between PBS and the Democrats to tarnish the wonderful reputation of Clarence Thomas, and in doing so, trying to ruin the reputation of the Supreme Court itself?
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this Crommentary:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
