Clarence Thomas Doesn't Like The State Of The Union

If you thought President Obama's Supreme Court criticism as this year's State of the Union was a bit uncomfortable, Justice Clarence Thomas appears to have seen it coming.

Thomas skipped the State of the Union, so he missed the episode of President Obama criticizing the Court's campaign finance ruling--and Justice Samuel Alito's partially verbal rebuke of the rebuke. Why? Because the event is too partisan.


"I didn't go because it has become so partisan," Thomas said in a question and answer session at Stetson University College of Law in Florida, The Weekly Standard's Philip Terzian reports. "And it's very uncomfortable for a judge to sit there. There's a lot that you don't hear on TV: the catcalls, the whooping and hollering and under-the-breath comments. One of the consequences is now the court becomes part of the conversation, if you want to call it that, in the speeches. It's just an example of why I don't go."

His stance on State of the Union attendance turned out to be prescient, as this year was a particularly uncomfortable one for justices of the Supreme Court.