Harry Reid has put his other foot in his mouth, and perhaps demonstrated that he is unfit to lead the Senate Democrats.
Writing in OpinionJournal, James Taranto today reported remarks made by Reid, the incoming Senate Minority Leader, during an interview for the CNN television program, “Inside Politics.” An excerpt of the interview follows:
“Henry: When you were asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether or not you could support Justice Thomas to be chief justice you said quote, "I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written." Could you name one of those opinions that you think is poorly written?
Reid: Oh sure, that's easy to do. You take the Hillside Dairy case. In that case you had a dissent written by Scalia and a dissent written by Thomas. There--it's like looking at an eighth-grade dissertation compared to somebody who just graduated from Harvard.
Scalia's is well reasoned. He doesn't want to turn stare decisis precedent on its head. That's what Thomas wants to do. So yes, I think he has written a very poor opinion there and he's written other opinions that are not very good.”
Taranto noted that the Hillside Dairy case is “…a 2003 case about California milk regulation,” and provided his readers with the complete text of the Thomas opinion:
“I join Parts I and III of the Court's opinion and respectfully dissent from Part II, which holds that §144 of the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996, 7 U.S.C. §7254, "does not clearly express an intent to insulate California's pricing and pooling laws from a Commerce Clause challenge.” Ante, at 6-7. Although I agree that the Court of Appeals erred in its statutory analysis, I nevertheless would affirm its judgment on this claim because "[t]he negative Commerce Clause has no basis in the text of the Constitution, makes little sense, and has proved virtually unworkable in application," Camps Newfound/Owatonna, Inc. v. Town of Harrison, 520 U.S. 564, 610 (1997) (Thomas, J., dissenting), and, consequently, cannot serve as a basis for striking down a state statute.”
Noting that the opinion is hardly written at the eighth-grade level, Taranto went on to make the even more important observation, “… there was no Scalia dissent. Scalia joined the court's majority opinion, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, as did every other justice except Thomas, and he dissented only from Part II.
Will Reid apologize to Thomas and Scalia, and more importantly, will he explain the basis for his unfounded loathing of Thomas in terms that are not racist and that do conform to reality and the rules of logic?
Posted by publius at January 3, 2005 06:58 PM