Comments on: Thomas Strips Sense From Search

[dovestar]

Clarence Thomas has been called just about every name in the book over this case. And nearly everyone posting here has wanted to cuss him out. But there is a greater danger here. In a growing number of documents relating to children, the government is using the phrase, "the state's children". This is wrong. The Bible points out that children are a heritage unto the LORD and are not wards of the state. It is getting so bad that if you don't raise your children the way the state wants you to, the state will sieze them and find someone else who will.
In many of the comments here, nobody talks about the disciplinary issues facing schools on a daily basis. These kids know the limits and how to play the game. Unfortunately, it's the few that louse it up for everyone. While schools need to have strict policies in place, they need to balance those policies with the fact that the students' rights don't get parked at the schoolhouse door.
Have any of you thought or considered what would be the result if a parent strip-searched one of his or her own children because they had what they thought was valid reason to do so? Would this bring the child abuse police? Remember the legal doctrine of "in loco parentis", meaning, "in the place, or stead, of the parents". This is the authority that schools operate under and every parent knows this when their students enroll. Having said this, parents should be the ultimate authority of how their children are disciplined and how these issues should be treated. School officials are not the actual parents of these kids and as such need to be reined in on these matters. I have been one parent who did not trust their judgement with a blank check. No parent worth his or her salt ever should.

[mick7744]

It is at times like this that we must ask ourselves...WHAT WOULD RUSH LIMBAUGH DO?

As his lying blowhard bufooness has stated many times...ALL DRUGGIES AND IBPROFIN PUSHERS (or in the case of no evidence being found) SUSPECTED IBPROFIN PUSHERS...SHOULD BE SENT UP THE RIVER. NO EXCEPTIONS...EXCEPT HIMSELF!

No hypocrisy there!

It would seem that Clarence Thomas, faithful psychotic Republican toady that he is, has gone so far in his far-right zeal that he now consults the grotesquely obese oracle on legal matters before the Supreme Court.

That is the only plausible explanation I can come up with for his bizarre dissent in this case.

Granted, Justice Thomas clearly needs somebody to do his thinking for him...BUT RUSH LIMBAUGH & THE LUNATIC FRINGE?

Or to hear them tell it...the LUNATIC MAJORITY!

The law is supposed to be about right and wrong...about justice.

We don?t need Clarence Thomas delivering weird interpretations of the Constitution and seeking ways to rationalize and render the criminal acts of his Republican masters not quite technically illegal... WE ALREADY HAVE ANTONIN SCALIA FOR THAT!

[kansas1946]

Well, when the school checks your twelve-year-old's vagina for tylenol, call us and let us know how you feel about it. If there isn't dope in the underwear, then there is no dope in the school, huh. I guess you forgot about colons and vaginas.

[kansas1946]

I guess you forgot the part about unreasonabl searches and seizures. Unless you are a constitutional scholar, then we don't care if you are a lawyer.

[kansas1946]

Yeah, I am really concerned about that "dangerous" ibuprophen. Although I am not fond of several of the justices, I think Clarence Thomas is a fringe lunatic and weirder than hell. He should have never made it onto the Supreme Court. To have our constitution in the hands of weirdo's is really scary.

[timothyjo]

this is a evil man .. he was acused of having child porn when confurmed said it was in his office because he was studing it evidence in a case at the time thought maybe true but have learned judges do not take evidence in there chambers . he should be impeached

[janedoe2231]

If the school administrators believed something illegal had taken place and nothing was found in the child's backpack, then why didn't they call the parents and police if they were so determined to pursue it further? School workers cannot take it upon themselves to operate as Gestapo law enforcement. Even our police have limits on what they can do.

An officer cannot stop you on the street and strip search you. What if your employer said they suspected you of theft or hiding something and wanted to strip search your underwear? Would adults put up with that? That the school thought it was okay to search a child's privates is an outrageous abuse of power over children. How do you expect a child to feel after such trauma?

We're lucky Thomas alone believed this is a good thing. What would it say about our society if we allowed something like that?

[o2b40]

Justice Thomas should be impeached!!! He has no place on the court and should not have been confirmed in the first place - remember those confirmation hearings??? He is a disgrace to the bench and to his race. Enough of this farce, impeach him so we can appoint a real judge.

[nofoolling]

Thomas declared that the odious search was legal because administrators could have found what they were looking for.

"Preservation of order, discipline, and safety in public schools is simply not the domain of the Constitution," Thomas wrote. "And, common sense is not a judicial monopoly or a Constitutional imperative."

The first statement is an actual declaration by a sitting Supreme Court Judge that he considers the 4th admendment to the Constitution too limiting and therefore can be ignored by any and all authority for whatever witchhunt they may wish to conduct in the future. Not surprising for a Bush/Cheney crime syndicate era appointee, but an utter disgrace and embarassment to all of America and Americans.

Using his reasoning, they could have all the children in every school in America up against the wall on a daily basis, frisked, and strip searched because they might find something. And what then would stop the police and other authorities from using that reasoning. They could conduct searches of everyone, at almost any time, for almost any reason. Because they might find something.

Welcome to Fascism.

With the second statement, the good judge seems to think that the Constitution was not meant to encompass every facet of American life, that there are exclusions and exceptions to how the Constitution was meant to be applied, and that schools somehow don't fall under the umbrella of Constitutional perview.

Huh? What the hell have you been smoking sir?

If this is indeed how he thinks, he is not fit to serve on the Supreme Court.

Can we impeach a Supreme Court Judge?

[snowball77]

schizophrenia likely with Thomas--Too bad he can't be removed. I still have recording of Anita Hill testimony to replay. I agree that his race gave him cover for his incompetence. I recall Biden was also at the Hill testimony. Least we forget his inability to have any backbone toward Thomas.