[U] In Which Justice Thomas Launches Yet Another "Irrelevant Political Speech", By Dressing It Up As A Concurring Opinion...

UPDATED @ 3 PM EDT: Now, Josh Gerstein, writing at Politico. . . openly concedes what I suggested below: Clarence Thomas is far more a partisan, and not a jurist here. Yet he uses the Supreme Court's printing press, from his seat on the highest bench -- to pontificate about highly debated, and debatable theories. . . ones literally no one asked him about in the matter to which he appended his official concurring opinion. [Chief Justice Renquist. . . is spinning -- at 400 RPM, in his grave, right now.] End, update.

Once again, Justice Thomas has beclowned himself -- and the otherwise august bench upon which he sits. The Supremes today unanimously dismissed as moot the case challenging Tangerine's blocking of certain US Twitter users, from responding to his official pronouncements as POTUS (which also had the effect of preventing certain US citizens from even seeing T's official statements, made there -- astonishing, in a free society).

True, the issue is no longer live, but the strong suggestion at the Second Circuit was that Baby-T cannot have his cake and eat it too.

I seriously doubt there will be any other future POTUS who will use Twitter in the largely churlish way he did: wildly irresponsibly fanning the flames of intersectional hatred. But even so -- his minion, Clarence Thomas, decided to publish a political speech -- about what he preposterously regards as "censorship" by Twitter and others of "conservative" writers and speakers. In fact, it is hate speech, and racial hate speech, that is most often removed.

But for Thomas, rather than admitting his published concurring opinion has literally nothing, logically, to do with the case in front of him. . . he just goes off on an entirely political tangent. Here's a link -- it is buried at the bottom of a nearly 30 page set of micellaneous orders (on other matters) -- I think the court was embarrassed by it, in truth. Here's the bit:

. . .The Second Circuit feared that then-President Trump cut off speech by using the features that Twitter made available to him. But if the aim is to ensure that speech is not smothered, then the more glaring concern must perforce be the dominant digital platforms themselves. As Twitter made clear, the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital platforms. The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified raise interesting and important questions. This petition, unfortunately, affords us no opportunity to confront them. . . .

Thomas has in recent years increasingly gone from at least pretending to follow Scalia's path, and only decide cases as presented, and only on original language -- to being an activist, openly looking for cases as pure political vehicles, to advance his (and his wife's) agenda, wholly-apart from any actual live legal case or controversy.

It is an illogical non-sequitur that animates his second quoted sentence above, and all that follows after it. It analyzes no case -- and simply repeats a far right talking point, that white supremacists among others are the victims of repression of their "views" by companies like Twitter. That a Supreme Court Justice would engage in such dishonest rhetoric, outside of any case or controversy -- in an official publication of the highest court -- is sad. Unsurprising, perhaps, but sad -- for our system of ordered liberty.

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