Now we hear from Justice Thomas himself on the rulings. Of course his arguments are brilliant, because he essentially agrees with me. Still it is an interesting discussion. The most interesting point is he noted the history of the Tillman Act, banning direct campaign contributions to candidates by corporations, the law that Barrack Obama himself defended:
“Go back and read why Tillman introduced that legislation,” Justice Thomas said, referring to Senator Benjamin Tillman. “Tillman was from South Carolina, and as I hear the story he was concerned that the corporations, Republican corporations, were favorable toward blacks and he felt that there was a need to regulate them.”
Indeed, Sen. "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman is an unfortunate man to be a father of the campaign-finance reform movement. A proud racist who wanted to keep blacks from voting (at best) and "exterminate" them (at worst), he's also the father of Jim Crow laws in South Carolina.
Other nice bits include (all from the New York Times story):
“I found it fascinating that the people who were editorializing against it were The New York Times Company and The Washington Post Company,” Justice Thomas said. “These are corporations.”
“If 10 of you got together and decided to speak, just as a group, you’d say you have First Amendment rights to speak and the First Amendment right of association,” he said. “If you all then formed a partnership to speak, you’d say we still have that First Amendment right to speak and of association.”
“But what if you put yourself in a corporate form?” Justice Thomas asked, suggesting that the answer must be the same.
And he tells us why he doesn’t attend the State of the Union Address:
“I don’t go because it has become so partisan and it’s very uncomfortable for a judge to sit there,” he said, adding that “there’s a lot that you don’t hear on TV — the catcalls, the whooping and hollering and under-the-breath comments.”
“One of the consequences,” he added in an apparent reference to last week’s address, “is now the court becomes part of the conversation, if you want to call it that, in the speeches. It’s just an example of why I don’t go.”
To sum it up, he doesn’t go because he doesn’t want to happen to him what happened with Alito. Which makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
Interesting stuff.
