Correcting the record

Earlier this year, when Hamdan v. Rumsfeld was handed down, the Washington Post reported that, "[f]or the first time in his 15-year tenure on the court, Thomas took the unusual step of reading part of his dissenting opinion from the bench." I criticized them ("far be it for me to suggest that the WaPo bore its audience with tedious accuracy"), pointing out that this statement was plainly wrong: Thomas read his dissent in Stenberg v. Carhart from the bench (Ann picked up on that in an update to her post, noting a contemporaneous WaPo report, but I was going from the assuredly unassailable evidence of the Supreme Court's own audio recording of the Stenberg announcement). The WaPo evidently took note, because they later cleaned up their original report.

In any event, matters have been rendered clear by the Oyez project, who have posted audio for all oral arguments and opinion announcements from last term, including Hamdan. And, in announcing his dissent from the bench, Justice Thomas himself is revealed as the source of the WaPo's error: he says (wrongly, as a quick listen to the Stenberg announcement, linked above, will demonstrate) that it is the first time in fifteen terms on the court that he has read a dissent from the bench. So it looks as though all the WaPo is guilty of is taking Thomas at his word.

This isn't a mea culpa -- I was still right and they were still wrong -- but it is, at least, a correction.