He’s made cracks about bad dictionaries, deadpanned about deporting babies to China, and quipped that a justice’s job could at times violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

By making the audience and other justices of the Supreme Court laugh during oral arguments more than five dozen times, Justice Antonin G. Scalia sailed to an easy victory as this term’s Funniest Justice. Since DC Dicta began keeping count, Scalia is undefeated.

So the real race was for second place. And though Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. made a real contest of it, it was Justice Stephen G. Breyer who walked away with the silver this term, with Roberts coming in third.

According to the laugh count, as noted in the Court’s official transcripts, every justice earned at least one laugh this term except Justice Clarence Thomas, who hasn’t made a comment during oral arguments – humorous or otherwise – since Feb. 22, 2006. Let’s just hope that when he does speak, we’ll get a chuckle out of it.

Here is the final tally:

Justice Antonin Scalia: 63

Justice Stephen Breyer: 47

Chief Justice John G. Roberts: 26

Justice Anthony Kennedy: 11

Justice Elena Kagan: 7

Justice Samuel Alito: 5

Justice Sonia Sotomayor: 2

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 1

Justice Clarence Thomas: 0

The ideology of the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court has always been a topic of discussion and debate, and with hot-button issues before the Court like the health care law mandate, immigration and affirmative action, the chatter is louder than ever. But just where do the justices sit on the ideological scale?

According to a news study, the justices are not a band of judicial activists, as some accuse. Their diverse views largely mirror those of Americans, according to researchers.

“Despite its intentional isolation from popular pressure, the Court’s decisions are not out of line with public preferences,” write Stephen Jessee of the University of Texas and Neil Malhotra of Stanford University in the unpublished paper “Ideological Proximity and Support for the Supreme Court,” according to the Washington Post. “This contrasts with popular images of judges as rogue activists.”

According to the study, the Court’s most conservative justice is Justice Clarence Thomas, whose views lie to the right of 97 percent of Americans surveyed. Justice Antonin Scalia was second, with views that are more conservative than about 89 percent of Americans.

On the other end of the scale, retired Justice John Paul Stevens was seen as the most left-leaning jurist, with views that are more liberal than 85 percent of surveyed Americans. He just beat out Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is to the left of 83 percent of those surveyed.

With no clear frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary race, some are saying the contest could go all the way to the convention. And if no clear winner is chosen by the delegates on their first vote, support could be thrown behind an entirely new candidate, such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush or – Justice Clarence Thomas?

That is a possible scenario, according to the Daily Beast’s  Adam Winker.

“Far-fetched?  Maybe,” Winkler writes. “But a Thomas candidacy would energize Republicans in a way that few other Republicans can and would steal tremendous media attention from President Barack Obama.”

Thomas’ strong Tea Party connection – his wife, Ginni, is a Tea Party supporter aligned with groups that advocate for the repeal of the health care law – could make the justice an attractive choice, Winkler suggests. So would his stance on environmental regulation, free markets and his own “up-by-his-bootstraps story of rising from incredible poverty,” he said.

Winkler noted that the idea of the Thomas presidency was first floated two years ago by legal bloggers David Lat and Kashmir Hill.

Today marked a milestone for one of the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Today’s Court session concluded without Justice Clarence Thomas asking a question or making a comment during oral arguments, making it a full six years since he has done so. The last comment from the justice during oral arguments came on Feb. 22, 2006.

The only time visitors to the court room hear Thomas’ fairly booming baritone is when the Court announces an opinion that the justice has authored – like yesterday, when he summarized the Court’s ruling in Kawashima v. Holder.

When the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide the constitutionality of the federal health care law’s individual mandate, as well as several other jurisdictional and substantive issues, there was a notable omission: no mention was made about recusal of any justice from the decision.

Despite calls from advocates on both sides of the political spectrum for Justices Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan to remove themselves from any consideration of the health care case, all indications suggest both will be present during the 5 ½ hours of oral arguments slated for the spring. Normally a justice who recuses from a particular case will indicate it in the cert order. But no such indication was made yesterday by Thomas or Kagan.

Critics of Thomas cite the work of the justice’s wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, founded a Tea Party-affiliated group that has called the health care law unconstitutional and worked for the Heritage Foundation, which also opposes the health care law.

Meanwhile some Republican lawmakers have called for an investigation into the role Kagan played in preparing the legal defense to challenges to the health care law during her tenure as solicitor general.

Justices decide for themselves whether to sit out any given cases due to some potential conflict.

“Presumably, they made whatever judgments they were going to make,” said Greg Katsas, a Jones Day partner representing one of the petitioners in the case, told The Hill.

The Supreme Court is too powerful, and could benefit from justices from places other than the East and West Coasts, Justice Clarence Thomas said last week.

Some of the issues that the nine Justices settle would be better hashed out by lawmakers and other elected officials, Thomas told students and faculty members at the University of Nebraska College of Law Thursday.

“The really hard calls ought to be made by citizens and their political leaders,” Thomas said, according to the Lincoln Journal Star. “Other branches ought to make (those) decisions. That’s more democratic.”

“Our role is too great,” Thomas said of the Court. “I don’t know any more about these big moral questions” than other people do.

As for the justices, Thomas, who is from Georgia,  said he wishes there were more justices from different parts of the country.

“There’s nobody from the Heartland,” Thomas said, adding that the Court would benefit from geographic diversity that “reflects the fact this is a big country, not just the Northeast.”

Six of the nine justices were born in either New York or New Jersey: Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.  Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer hail from California.

The only heartland connection on the Court comes from Roberts, who moved to Indiana with his family while still in grade school.

Justice Clarence Thomas is approaching his 20-year anniversary as a Supreme Court justice. And if you were racking your brain to figure out how to commemorate the milestone, the folks at The Green Bag have a solution for you: The Clarence Thomas bobblehead.

Thomas is the latest justice to be featured as a bobblehead by the quarterly legal publication. And the figure features much more than the justice’s likeness and a wiggly noggin. As with other Green Bag justice bobbleheads, there is plenty of symbolism in the figure.

For example, Thomas is standing on pizza boxes, a reference to his opinion in the 2005 case National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services, in which Thomas noted: “One can pick up a pizza rather than having it delivered, and one can own a dog without buying a leash. By contrast, the Commission reasonably concluded, a consumer cannot purchase Internet service without also purchasing a connection to the Internet and the transmission always occurs in connection with information processing.”

Thomas’ foot also sits atop a figure of a tractor trailer. That is a reference to one of Thomas’ many objections to the concept of implied preemption. In the case Freightliner Corp. V. Myrick, Thomas wrote that “a finding of liability against petitioners would undermine no federal objectives or purposes with respect to such devices, since none exist.”

And like Thomas on the bench during oral arguments, the bobblehead is silent.

If you are dying to get your hands on one, you may have some trouble – the figurines are not sold. They are given away by the publication to certain recipients, such as some subscribers and even the justices themselves. So we have no doubt the justice will have it on his desk before the next term begins.

While Justice Clarence Thomas has come under fire for his wife’s Tea Party activities, his colleague came to his defense this week

During an appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Wednesday, Justice Stephen Breyer was asked a hypothetical about a judge whose wife is involved in issues that may go before the judge’s court. Breyer, according to the Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove, gave an emphatic defense of Thomas’ situation.

“This is a false issue,” Breyer said. “As far as what your wife does or your husband does, I myself try to stick to a certain principle, and feel very strongly about it, that a wife or a husband is an independent person and they make up their own minds what their career is going to be.”

Some lawmakers and activists have called on Thomas to recuse himself from hearing the constitutional challenge to the health care law, which will land before the Court as soon as next Term. His wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, has been involved with Tea Party-related groups that have openly called the law unconstitutional.

Breyer said spouses don’t influence justices on the bench. “My wife happens to be a clinical psychologist at Dana Farber [Medical Center in Boston], and when I get cases involving psychology, I sit in those cases, OK?” Breyer said.

Breyer also hinted that he believes proposed legislation that would bind Supreme Court justices to the same ethical code as other federal judges is a bad idea.

“The Supreme Court is different in one respect. In every other court,” Breyer said. “If [I’m a circuit judge and]I decided in a close matter to recuse myself, that’s the easy decision. That’s one fewer case I have to decide, and besides, they’ll bring in somebody else to decide it. If I recuse myself on the Supreme Court, there is no one else and that could switch the result.”

The Supreme Court is scheduled to deliver opinions this morning. But perhaps the justices will gather first for a little birthday cake with their coffee.

Today Justice Clarence Thomas turns 63.

The exit from Congress of one of Justice Clarence Thomas’s most vocal critics has not stopped ethical questions from being raised about the Supreme Court justice’s associations.

In January, liberal lobbying group Common Cause asked the Justice Department to investigate Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia for possible conflicts of interest based on the justices’ association with conservative financiers Charles and David Koch.

Now, a New York Times piece examines the relationship between Thomas and hefty conservative donor and Dallas real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

Crow, among other things: has donated money – at Thomas’ behest – for a land preservation project and museum in the justice’s home town of Pin Point, Ga.; financed a Savannah library project in the justice’s honor; gave Thomas a bible once belonging to Frederick Douglass; and even gave Thomas’ wife, Virginia, the seed money to start her Tea Party-affiliated group Liberty Central.

Under the ethical code which binds federal judges except for those on the Supreme Court bench, judges “should not personally participate” in raising money for charitable activities, nor should they know the donors to projects honoring them. The rule is meant to prevent the appearance that the donations are designed to sway the judge’s vote in any matter pertaining to the donor.

Ethicists are split on whether Thomas’ association with Crow raises serious ethical problems, with some saying his participation in the fundraising activities should have been prohibited. Others say Thomas did not violate any ethical rules, but one added: “It’s just a very peculiar situation.”