And in Another Supreme Moment: Associate Justice Clarence Thomas Organizing Prayers for President Bush

This is just weird no matter how you look at it:

"Just how bad are things for President Bush?" asks the New York Daily News in Monday editions. "Pretty bad, I'd say, if even Clarence Thomas is worried about him." Excerpts:

The other night at a Washington book party for the President's sister, Doro Bush Koch, the Supreme Court justice arrived with his wife, Ginny, on the tented roof of the Hay Adams Hotel, overlooking the White House, and made a beeline for the author.

"We have to pray for your brother. He's in real trouble," Thomas told a wide-eyed Koch, whose older brother is, indeed, suffering from near-catastrophic public-opinion ratings.

Koch — whose memoir of the first President Bush is "My Father, My President: A Personal Account of the Life of George H.W. Bush" — politely thanked Thomas and kept a stiff upper lip.

Later I had a nice chat with the conservative justice — who's had little use for journalists since his 1991 confirmation hearings, in which Anita Hill accused him of inappropriate sexual advances and Thomas accused the Senate Judiciary Committee of conducting "a high-tech lynching."