{"id":6761,"date":"2006-03-03T13:08:28","date_gmt":"2006-03-03T18:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6761"},"modified":"2006-03-03T13:08:28","modified_gmt":"2006-03-03T18:08:28","slug":"the-strange-company-clarence-thomas-keeps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-strange-company-clarence-thomas-keeps\/","title":{"rendered":"The strange company Clarence Thomas keeps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legal Times’ Tony Mauro wrote an interesting profile<\/a> this week on Alabama State Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, whose far<\/i>-right ideology makes him similar to the infamous theocrat Roy Moore. It was Parker’s connection to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, however, that stood out.<\/p>\n

To describe Parker as on the fringe of conservative legal thought is to put it mildly. He’s accused the Supreme Court of “tyranny”; he encourages state officials to “actively resist” rulings he disagrees with; he does not feel bound to honor Supreme Court precedent; and he admits that he does not believe the Bill of Rights apply to the states.<\/p>\n

And then there’s Justice Parker’s interesting choice of campaign audiences.<\/p>\n

During the campaign, as documented by the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center, Parker handed out Confederate flags, made appearances with pro-Confederate groups, and attended a birthday party for the late Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the original Ku Klux Klan.<\/p>\n

“These appearances put Tom Parker way outside the mainstream in Alabama,” says the center’s Mark Potok.<\/p>\n

Parker shrugs off the criticism and says with a laugh that the controversy over his appearances “helped me reach voters I never could have reached” without the publicity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shortly after the controversial appearances, Parker was elected to the state Supreme Court with 56% support. When it came time to take the oath of office, guess who he turned to?<\/p>\n

Through mutual friends, Parker asked whether [Justice Clarence] Thomas would give him the oath of office in January 2005. Thomas agreed, and Parker traveled to Washington for the private ceremony. A day later, [Roy] Moore gave him another oath back in Alabama, and Parker said, “I have been doubly blessed to have been sworn into office by two heroes of the judiciary.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know Justice Thomas is not for answering questions, but I’d sure love to hear why he agreed to do this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Legal Times’ Tony Mauro wrote an interesting profile this week on Alabama State Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, whose far-right ideology makes him similar to the infamous theocrat Roy Moore. It was Parker’s connection to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, however, that stood out. To describe Parker as on the fringe of conservative legal thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}