As if politics couldn’t get any worse, court-watchers say that Clarence Thomas is considering retirement after the next election:
Justice Clarence Thomas, a reliable conservative vote on the Supreme Court, is mulling retirement after the presidential election, according to court watchers.
Thomas, appointed by former President George H.W. Bush and approved by the Senate after a bitter confirmation, has been considering retirement for a while and never planned to stay until he died, they said. He likes to spend summers in his RV with his wife.
His retirement would have a substantial impact on control of the court. The next president is expected to immediately replace the seat opened by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, providing a one-vote edge in the court that is currently divided 4-4.
Should Thomas leave, that slight majority would continue if Donald Trump becomes president. If it’s Hillary Clinton, then she would get the chance to flip two Republican seats, giving the liberals a 6-3 majority.
What a perfect time to make our nominee a liberal jackass with a bad rug and a worse spray-tan.
Also, cue the conspiracy idiots who will say he’s doing it to avoid the Jade Helm death squad that clearly took Justice Scalia out.
Somewhere in a much more awesome alternate universe, Republican nominee Ted is cruising towards election and picking out the most hard-core originalists as his SCOTUS picks…
UPDATE!!!
It looks like we’ve been HAD!! The honorable Justice Thomas’ wife got on her Facebook to swat the rumors away:
For all those who are contacting me about the possibility of my husband retiring, I say — unsubscribe from those false news sources and carry on with your busy lives.
IT. IS. BOGUS! Paul Bedard needs to find a phone in his life and unnamed sources are worth as much as their transparency is.
A funny close friend wrote me: “Next we’ll hear that you and he have bought a small private island near Nevis, with a large satellite dish so that all the Nebraska college sports games won’t be missed, and a large Green Egg that can slow cook the indigenous wild boar. Let us know when you are shipping off so we can all chip in to buy a suitable retirement present for your husband — perhaps matching lounge chairs and umbrellas.”
Uhm… I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean to unsubscribe from the Right Scoop – she meant those OTHER news sources that are false. Yeah. Totally.