It seems like both the right and the left are suggesting that his recent comments about African American Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas were racist.

The New Republic writes,

So, if I’m understanding Reid correctly, Scalia would be okay because, even though he’s really conservative, he’s also really smart. Thomas is objectionable because he’s both really conservative and really dumb. Since Reid doesn’t provide any evidence for his low opinion of Thomas, it sounds to me like he’s thoughtlessly embracing the increasingly untenable view that Thomas is an affirmative action case utterly incapable of the kind of deep (or independent) thoughts Supreme Court justices are supposed to think, which has more than a slight whiff of racism. But, again, maybe I’m being unfair to Reid, since he didn’t have much of a chance to elaborate even if he’d wanted to.