Word: homering
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Will the Fortas court be as active and adventuresome as the Warren court? The answer lies, ironically, not so much with Fortas as with Homer Thornberry, whose direction on the Supreme Court, despite a general record of moderate liberalism, is unpredictable. If he proves to be as liberal as Warren, whom he really replaces, the court will probably continue on much the same path. If he tends toward conservatism, it might move toward the right ? though probably not enough to satisfy the congressional critics. More vacancies might come even before Johnson leaves office. Black is 82; Douglas, 69, recently...
...HOMER?!" A distinguished Democrat could hardly believe the news that Lyndon Johnson had nominated his friend of two decades, William Homer Thornberry, 59, to the Supreme Court. Equally incredulous was a clutch of conservative Republicans, who saw the nomination as a political payoff to an old crony whose judicial credentials fall somewhat short of the standards demanded by the nation's highest court...
Born in Austin to deaf-mute parents, Thornberry used sign language until he was three, when he first learned to talk. When he was an infant, William and Mary Thornberry slept in shifts so that one could always keep a vigil beside his cradle, since neither could hear Homer's cries. The family was so poor that when William, a carpenter built a home, the windows were boarded with wood for two years until he could scrape together money for windowpanes...
Attracted to politics at 14, when he served as a page in the Texas legislature Homer worked his way through the University of Texas Law School as a deputy sheriff. He was elected to the state legislature in 1936, later became Travis County district attorney. After a 3½-year wartime stint in Naval intelligence, during which he rose to lieutenant commander, Thornberry opened his own law practice, served on the Austin city council and as mayor pro tem. The nonpaying city post wound up costing him money, for Homer's law clients expected him to fix such things...
After Lyndon Johnson won his famed 87-vote "landslide" election to the US Senate in 1948, Thornberry succeeded him in the House, thus became "my Congressman' to L.B.J. When Johnson was recuperating from his massive 1955 heart attack, Homer often stopped by to play dominoes; and the President recalled, ten years later: "He let me win every game, and now he is on the Circuit Court." He was with Johnson in Los Angeles during the 1960 fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, and when L.B.J. was offered the vice-presidency by John F. Kennedy, Thornberry...