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Garbo talks! (And writes.) (And talks a lot more, with Rush Limbaugh.)

Clarence Thomas has been biting his tongue for 16 years. And now, as the Supreme Court opens with a docket of politically-charged cases – from Guantanamo rights to lethal injection – he has decided to end his Salinger-esque silent streak.

His new book “My Grandfather’s Son” comes out tomorrow – though in true 2007 form, the Washington Post found a sloppy bookseller who had it in the window a few days early. (You’d think a Supreme Court justice could get a little more love than Harry Potter, wouldn’t you?) In advance of the book, Thomas also sat down for an interesting interview with Steve Kroft on last night’s “60 Minutes.”

But on the off-chance you were looking for clarity or understanding or closure, forget it. The reviews are all over the place – unsurprising for such a polarizing figure.

Let’s kick off the reviews with the Los Angeles Times:

In his 15 years on the high court, the 59-year-old justice has long since established his once-doubted legal and intellectual bona fides. Yet with an eye on posterity, he seems to crave validation as having deserved his appointment and, more broadly, as a noble man fighting to do the right thing in an often bigoted, deceitful world. As Thomas puts it in his preface, he is rescuing his own history from the "careless hands" and "malicious hearts" of unnamed others.

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Happy Monday morning, everyone. In case you missed it, I wanted to recommend Steve Kroft and Ira Rosen's "60 Minutes" piece from last night called "Under The Influence." The focus of the story – the Medicare prescription drug bill and the lobbying and politics associated with it – is not a new one. But the piece offers a definitive recounting of one of the most contentious votes in modern Congressional history, and the story of how lawmakers instrumental in the passage of the bill went on to high-paying lobbying jobs with the pharmaceutical industry is compelling stuff. So if you've got a few minutes, click on the video box and watch the story in full.

Happy Monday morning, everybody. I don't normally do this, but I really liked Steve Kroft and Andy Court's piece on U.S. Comptroller General David Walker last night on "60 Minutes," and I wanted to give it a plug.

The piece takes a complex but enormously important issue – America's impending economic troubles – and explains it in a compelling and clear way.

"The fact is, is that we don't face an immediate crisis," says Walker in the story. "And, so people say, 'What's the problem?' The answer is, we suffer from a fiscal cancer. It is growing within us. And if we do not treat it, it could have catastrophic consequences for our country." Click on the video box to watch.

It's Thursday, and that means it's time for the latest installment of the Public Eye Chat. This week's participant is "60 Minutes" Correspondent Steve Kroft. In our conversation, Kroft talks about everything from press coverage of Barack Obama to how "60 Minutes" has changed since Ed Bradley died to why Bill Clinton was looking to slug him.

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Click here to listen to the interview.

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Brian Montopoli: A lot of media commentators have suggested that Barack Obama has gotten, as Jon Friedman put it, "a supersonic push to enable him…to capture the public's imagination" from the press. What do you think of the media's treatment of Obama so far, having just profiled him?

Steve Kroft: As I said in the story, I think that the press likes to cover interesting races. And I think they believe he is an interesting candidate. So I think that they have pushed his candidacy, and they have created a certain amount of pressure on him, to feel like his candidacy was viable, and that he should run.

So I think it's been favorable, and I think at some point – and I think that point was last weekend – that it's going to become much, much tougher. He's not been on the national stage like a Hillary Clinton or a John Edwards or a Rudy Giuliani, so I think that to a certain extent the press is still trying to define him. Or help him to define himself, or give him the opportunity to define himself. And we're still two years away from the presidential election, a year away from the primary, so I think there will be plenty of time for tougher questions.

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