This week, Clarence Thomas delivered a shocker in the high court’s decision against draining the lifeblood pumping through the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

He actually outdid his arch-conservative overseer, Antonin Scalia, in giving black folks the middle finger.

By an 8 to 1 vote, the high court decided that the time wasn’t quite right to discard a provision of the act that requires most Deep South states and more than 12,000 municipalities to seek permission from the Justice Department before changing polling places or times or reshaping electoral districts or any number of other things that could make it tough for blacks or other minorities to cast votes.

Of course, the court narrowed the act a bit by lifting the pre-clearance provision for the Texas water district that brought the lawsuit and by allowing municipalities that have a clean record to ask for a bailout.