Jack & Jill Politics

Note: the Afro has made a few corrections to this story as one of the source’s comments were misconstrued. The corrections can be found at the top of their article, fyi. Thanks to the JJP commenters for giving us the headsup.

The Afro-American has the story: I mean the unmitigated gall of it. If Thomas wasn’t already a near-pariah among right-thinking black folk, this has launched him into a new stratosphere of race traitor:

In a highly unusual move, U.S. Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has asked his colleagues on the court to consider the request of an East Brunswick, N.J. attorney who has filed a lawsuit challenging President-elect Barack Obama’s status as a United States citizen.

Thomas’s action took place after Justice David Souter had rejected a petition known as an application for a stay of writ of certiorari that asked the court to prevent the meeting of the Electoral College on Dec. 15, which will certify Obama as the 44th president of the United States and its first African-American president.

The court has scheduled a Dec. 5 conference on the writ — just 10 days before the Electoral College meets.

Not to worry: it’s fine since Obama is in no danger — in the U.S. it doesn’t matter where your parents are from: as long as you’re born on U.S. soil, you are a U.S. citizen. In fact, this constitutional privilege has become a major contention in the struggles over immigration as you may recall as immigrants particularly from Central and South America sometimes travel to the U.S. for the express purpose of ensuring that their child is born a U.S. citizen.

Obama is documented as being born in Hawaii. This is a grasping at straws among those who are terrified of a black man as president. So perhaps a hearing will put the matter to rest among the wingnuts. Still I’m outraged — clearly Thomas is breaking protocol in order to make some sort of “statement” on his beliefs. Whatever those are. His instinct is always to punish the race whose mark he shares to please those who flatter him to his face and scorn him with ridicule behind his back. He’s a sad case of self-hatred indeed.