PBS’ airing tonight of a documentary biography of Supreme Court Justice Thomas provides me a chance to tell a story I’ve been wanting to publish for 29 years. It’s sort of a “shaggy dog story,” indeed the shaggiest dog with which I’ve ever been involved, and in the end the incidents recounted merely hinted at, but didn’t prove definitively, the conclusion I expected.

But oh, what a wild ride on a shaggy dog it was!