George HW Bush's decision that still hurts the country

Ian Milhiser, Think Progress -The late President George H.W. Bush placed Justice Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court.

Justice Thomas may be the most underestimated person in American law. As I wrote last June, “no justice did more to shape a political movement’s sense of what it can achieve through litigation.” Thomas is quiet on the bench and has minimal influence on his colleagues, but he’s had a tremendous influence on the conservative legal movement.

His plans to dismantle the federal administrative state now dominate both the Federalist Society and the Trump administration. His opinions suggesting that much of the New Deal and the Great Society are unconstitutional taught a generation of conservative law students to dream of a world where every law they disagree with is struck down by the Supreme Court. At least six of Trump’s federal appellate nominees are former Thomas clerks.

As I wrote in June, “Thomas lost the war for the present, but he is the future of legal conservatism. And he may soon be America’s future.”