Clarence Thomas: From Rube To Evil Genius

For all those many years, the left has caricatured Justice Clarence Thomas as an ignorant house negro who only got as far as his did through affirmative action. Suddenly, he's a leading legal scholar who drives the Supreme Court.

The bulk of the article is worthy of attention because Toobin, despite his obvious distaste for Thomas' views, takes him seriously as a judicial thinker and pathfinder.

"In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court," Toobin writes. "Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication."

Toobin is on particularly strong ground when he discusses the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms. For years it was considered a dead letter in sophisticated legal circles, protecting only the right to bear arms as a member of the National Guard.