Busy, but here's a quick quote...

Pajamas Media: My Dinner With Clarence Thomas:

....Five or six years after he arrived on the court, Thomas had lunch with C. Boyden Gray, Bush’s judge-picker, at the University Club. (Back in the 1990s, I would sometimes see him in the club’s well-appointed locker room, watching football or laughing at one of Judge David Sentelle’s hilarious animal-rights jokes.)

Thomas asked him if he (Thomas) was really the most qualified person for the opening at the Supreme Court. The idea that he might have been nominated because of his race gnawed at him. (Pause for a moment and listen to the pain in his question.)

“Yes,” said Gray.

“Why?”

“Well,” Gray explained. “No one asked what the criteria was.” The president wanted someone who would not bend in office to suit the sirens at the New York Times. Thomas had endured more than 30 hostile hearings when he was chairman of the EEOC and he never backed down. He did what he thought was right and let the chips fall where they may....