Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

I was promised a recession.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

You cannot shame the shameless.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

You are here: Home / Open Threads / What, No Friday Afternoon News Dump?

What, No Friday Afternoon News Dump?

by | 101 Comments

This post is in: 

I just read that the Department of Justice said today that they will ask the Supreme Court for an emergency halt to the Texas law that has restricted access to abortion in the nation’s second largest state to an extent not seen in 50 years.  (Washington Post)

Not the typical Friday afternoon news dump that we had grown accustomed to!

The announcement followed a decision by a federal appeals court Thursday night that allowed the law to remain in effect. lower court judge last week said the law was unconstitutional.

The department’s announcement meant the high court for the second time will be asked to put the law on hold while legal challenges to it continue. In a divisive 5 to 4 decision last month, the court allowed the law to take effect as the case goes forward, even though the majority said it raised constitutional concerns.

I have seen tons of comments here complaining that the DOJ isn’t dong doing enough.  Or we complain that Democrats don’t talk enough about their accomplishments.

So I had an idea.  (uh oh)  Would there be interest in something like “This Week at the DOJ”?  Or “This Week in Good Government”.  I don’t have time to do a bunch of research on what’s going on – I’m certainly no Anne Laurie!  But between my regular reading and you guys sharing things as you came across them, I thought maybe we could give it a try.

But only if there’s interest.

So weigh in on that – and anything else – in the comments.  Open thread.

Reader Interactions

101Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Good. The Republican justices argued that they were flummoxed by Texas’s shenanigans and didn’t really overrule Roe in the dead of night. Now they have a chance to back that up.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    @WaterGirl: Who knows?  We only need one to flip.  Roberts would have granted the stay the last time.

    On topic, it would be good to have a round up of positive developments.  The media, and thus the internet, focuses on hot topics and leading edge issues, which are by their nature difficult to resolve swiftly (especially given the Senate’s double trouble).  People are left unaware of good stuff happening on a day-to-day basis, which may lead them to forget that elections matter.

    If you have time, that is.

  7. 7.

    SpaceUnit

    So we’re going to find out if this SCOTUS has any interest in principle / precedent or if instead it’s become the Scalia court.  Not sure I feel real good about this.

  8. 8.

    Another Scott

    It was an important news day. Bidens SCOTUS commission met to discuss a set of “draft discussion points”. Demand Justice – Some members are screaming Foul!:

    Supreme Court Commission Members Speak Out Against Draft Discussion Materials

    On Friday, several members of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court criticized the draft discussion materials released the night before for not fairly presenting arguments in favor of expanding the Court.

    Commission members said the draft materials on Court expansion do “a disservice to the commission … and to this issue,” that the chapter “distorts not just the chapter but the entire report,” that the materials “shade against Court expansion without sufficient basis for doing so,” that it offered “a false equivalency … [a] distorted view of how we got here,” and that “a report that pours cold water on the one clearly legitimate exercise of congressional power to respond to a major jurisprudential trend … would be a report I would have trouble signing.”

    Abbreviated transcripts of remarks are below. Videos can be viewed here.

    Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund:

    I actually don’t think that the text of the chapter ultimately reads as a balanced presentation of the issue. … This entire discussion is framed in the context of partisan politics. The architecture of the section, and the way in which it is framed, leads to a conclusion that I think is not warranted by the arguments presented in the text. And I actually think that that is a disservice to the exploration of this issue, and to the argument.

    To read a chapter in which all of the calculations are about one political party or another to give the Democrats this to give the Republicans this, as though there are no arguments that go to court balance, that go to the fact that lifetime tenure means that justices are locked in for decades… There are reasons that relate to diversity of background and of profession, of race and gender, of geography, of law school. There are many reasons why one might support the idea of expanding the court that don’t have to do with your being, you know, beholden to a particular partisan agenda or another. And to the extent that this report frames the entire discussion that way, I think it does a disservice and actually silences what are the arguments that I think might be raised by people who are operating in that space of thinking about democracy, respect for the rule of law.

    I think this does a disservice to the commission and does a disservice to this issue. And once you put it in that category, that this is purely an issue about whether the Democrats should get a greater advantage, or whether the Republicans to get a greater advantage, you basically allow people to check out from the arguments that actually relate to the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, not its own legitimacy and its eyes, but its legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

    […]

    It’s good this is getting push-back. I was shocked that the documents that I skimmed yesterday were so slanted toward the status quo as being the best of all possible worlds…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  9. 9.

    Peale

    Sigh. Ever time I go out to my balcony the past two days, I’ve found either a stink bug or a Chinese lady bug trying to get inside. Its that time of year. But it looks like we’re having a bumper crop of ’em this year.

  10. 10.

    Mousebumples

    *cough* I spy a dong typo in the op.

    On topic, I have zero faith in the TFG’s SC, so we’ll see how this goes….

  11. 11.

    Fake Irishman

    @CCL: 

    Same here. Lots of good administrative stuff going on, (e.g. at EPA, education, Interior, DOJ) many good appointments being made to courts. And some states are doing good important things. We’ve focused on the bad stuff coming out of Texas and Florida and AZ. But Illinois passed a really far reaching piece of environmental legislation about a month ago. NC just passed a decent (not perfect, but decent) decarbonization bill after a (no fooling) bipartisan agreement. Oregon passed a good bill for the energy sector too.

  12. 12.

    Betty

    An update on the reloading issue. I tried going back through some of the posts with lots of comments, one with a tweet in it, using my phone instead of the Kindle. It is an older Android – 5.1.1.  No reloading issues.

  13. 13.

    SpaceUnit

    @Peale:

    I get invaded by ladybugs every year around this time.  They’re cute but annoying.

    I just got my windows and doors replaced so maybe they’ll have a harder time getting in this year.

  15. 15.

    eclare

    @Fake Irishman:  I’ve been very impressed by the actions at Interior.  First reversing the cuts at the parks like Bears Ears, now the offshore windmills.  Joe and Deb know how to get things done.

  16. 16.

    Ten Bears

    That rumble you hear off in the distance, the six point five on the Richter Scale rattling your window?

    Your ideologically stacked unelected panel of Catholic Illuminatti vigilantes rolling on the floor laughing their asses off. The ones that don’t have their fingers to their lips going a-wubba-wubba.

  18. 18.

    debbie

    @Peale:

    They migrated through here last week. Since I’m still working from home, protecting the perimeter was pretty easy. I fought off about 10 each day. They’re pretty spry this time of year.

    I don’t kid myself to think that was the only migratory visitation, but I and my spray bottle of watered down Dawn are ready for the rest of them.

  19. 19.

    moops

    Sadly, I’m losing faith in an active and effective DOJ.  Garland has so far not impressed me.  We are 9 months out from an insurrection.

  20. 20.

    Ruckus

    @WaterGirl:

    I think a series on “Good Government” would be a valued add to the discussion here. Our federal elected officials run under some rather bizarre rules of procedure and much of the structure, like the size of the house and it’s election every 2 yrs while senators is every six do not make any actual sense. The concept of 2 senators per state and the senate having more power, of people staying on until after senility has reared not just it’s head but the entire body…. Sure we elect people but that power is often at least attempted to be subverted, sometimes obviously so. We need the discussions and they should include groups that have traditionally been marginalized in this country. I’ve seen over the course of well over a decade I’ve been here that there are many discussions we could have, to increase knowledge, to discuss the future, to discuss bigotry and therefore equality, to help, if nothing else, political participation. This is supposed to be a country of all of us, and it damn well isn’t.

  21. 21.

    Martin

    I try to do my own ‘This week in good government, CA edition’.

    Speaking of which, CA has banned gas powered lawn equipment effective 2024. Wish that was a year earlier, but I’ll take it. This isn’t quite the measure I had expected. I had expected a ban on 2-stroke engines, similar to what CA did for boats, allowing 4 stroke engines to remain  (larger chainsaws, for instance) but this should have a similar impact, missing some things a 2-stroke ban would have caught and catching some things it would have missed.

    2-stroke engines are wildly polluting, even relative to 4-stroke. Oh, and CA is leaning into the offshore wind leases Biden announced. Now that floating turbines of suitable size are a thing, that’s a thing we can do now.

  23. 23.

    Ksmiami

    @moops: he’s just not up to the moment- not tough enough, more institutionalization than a fighter/prosecutor. Biden needs to replace him asap

  27. 27.

    Martin

    @Another Scott: I’m of the view that they should just let Sherrilyn write the recommendation.

    At a minimum the court should have the same number of justices as we have district circuits, as that’s historically the standard.

  29. 29.

    Fake Irishman

    @Martin: great stuff! Maybe we could get a few regulars commenters to volunteer to do one of these updates on a specific good news policy item, one item a week. I’d be game doing one or two.kind of like Dave’s health care updates, but slightly less technical and more.

  31. 31.

    Ruckus

    @moops:

    What did you expect, instantaneous hangings or firing squads?

    Many people appointed by TFG have to be routed out, new people appointed and them get up to speed. Evidence reviewed, people identified, found, arraigned, trials scheduled, trials held, all for an attempted coup. And that has happened for some already. Such a project takes time, likely far more than we would like, but it is progressing.

  32. 32.

    Mike in NC

    Steve Bannon wanted very badly to appear before the January 6 committee, but he couldn’t find three clean shirts to wear.

  36. 36.

    WaterGirl

    @Betty: Nah.  I check back on posts like that for a couple of days.  You might be surprised by how many folks don’t get to threads in real time.  It’s almost like they might have jobs or other things to do!  Wrong, I know.  :-)

  38. 38.

    lurker

    good government roundup seems like a good idea.

    the ratings will be lousy, so john will have to bribe nielsen with some canned goods.

    think there was a song about watching dirty laundry rather than good news, sung by some sort of bird

  39. 39.

    WaterGirl

    @Ben Cisco: I am most definitely not a lawyer, but this move by Garland seems to be a challenge to the higher court that they aren’t going to be able to pull that “bullshit in the dark of night” crap and get away with it.

    It seems to me that he’s basically giving them the opportunity to show their true colors – either to stick with their bullshit ruling or to take the opportunity to walk back what was clearly a miscarriage of justice.

    I will await the attorneys possibly telling me how wrong that is and that isn’t how it’s done.

  40. 40.

    schrodingers_cat

    Memo to the MSM

    I don’t need news with a positive spin for the Ds. I just want news without commentary. I can make up my mind, thank you very much

    Also my trust in those who make $$ by selling doom porn and outlandish theories to the gullible Ds is zero.

    I am looking at you Rick Wilson and Sarah Doomzior.

  41. 41.

    germy

    Speaking of dumps, here’s the Politico policy:

    Politico staffers will be expected to “adhere to Axel Springer-wide guiding principles,” including “support for a united Europe, Israel’s right to exist and a free-market economy, among others.” https://t.co/BZu2P9leg8

    — Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) October 15, 2021

    “People w/ a fundamental problem w/ any of these principles “should not work for Axel Springer”…Döpfner said he expects Politico…will embody his vision of unbiased, nonpartisan reporting, vs activist journalism, which…is enhancing societal polarization” https://t.co/vWGy2Tsuq9 https://t.co/fghOsInLag

    — Aron Goldman (@ArgoJournal) October 15, 2021

  43. 43.

    Scout211

    @Martin:

    We have quite a few new laws signed recently by the Governor here in the People’s Republic of California.  At the top of my favorite list is the law that requires all public schools to provide FREE menstrual period products for students in grades 6 through 12 starting fall of 2022.  This is just awesome. So many of us can remember a time . . . . uh, nope not going there.  But many of you know what I am talking about, yeah?

    And California has made stealthing a crime.  For the olds (like me)  stealthing is removing a condom without the partner’s consent.  California is the first state in the nation to recognize this as a crime.

  44. 44.

    dnfree

    @SpaceUnit: these ladybugs aren’t cute. These are invasive ladybugs that as far as I can tell killed off the real ladybugs of my youth, which did NOT swarm like this.

  45. 45.

    lurker

    @WaterGirl: notably, they released their opinion just before midnight, but the law was already effective in TX as of midnight nearly 24 hours _before_ they released their opinion.

    so they beclowned themselves, and Alito had his facts wrong defending it.

  46. 46.

    Another Scott

    @dnfree: A friend in Ohio had a bunch of ladybugs living in his siding or something.  When they were yellow and hungry they would bite – hard!  Nothing like what I remember from my childhood.

    Don’t know if they’re a different species or something though…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  53. 53.

    Another Scott

    @WaterGirl: Alito said they released the opinion just before midnight when the law was going to go into effect, so it was no big deal.  He beclowned himself because the decision was a day late and if he had any awareness of the reporting would have known that before he made the speech.

    He’s not just a RWNJ, he’s an incompetent RWNJ who apparently can’t even read a calendar.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  55. 55.

    WaterGirl

    it sounds like there might be some interest in a regular This Week in Good Government post – I would appreciate it if any of you who come across good information along those lines would shoot me an email with a link.

  56. 56.

    gene108

    @Ruckus:

    The problem with Congress is the size of the House not being increased in 110 years. Our population as more than tripled from what it was in 1911.

    We’d likely get more representation from urban Democratic leaning areas.

    This would balance out the lack of proportionate representation in the Senate.

  58. 58.

    montanareddog

    @lurker:

     

    and Alito had his facts wrong defending it

    I incline more to the theory that partisan hack Alito blatantly lied trying to justify an indefensible ruling

  60. 60.

    Martin

    @gene108: In fairness we have wiped out roughly one congressional district with Covid, so it’s not like we aren’t trying to balance the equation.

  61. 61.

    Another Scott

    @gene108: There have been lots of proposals to do so.  My rep has one that’s a little different – Fair Representation Act:

    Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) and a group of House Democrats today introduced the Fair Representation Act, an election reform bill to change the way U.S. Representatives are elected. The bill would establish multi-member districts drawn by independent redistricting commissions, with Members elected through ranked choice voting. Taken together, these three measures would incentivize congressional candidates to appeal to a broader range of voters. The bill would also require ranked choice voting for the election of U.S. Senators.

    […]

    I haven’t read it carefully, but it looks like apportionment would still be based on the 1929 rules, but states with 6 or more representatives would have to have some multi-member districts and states with 5 or fewer would have to have at-large districts.

    It tackles the problem of representatives being beholden to narrow interests by making them run for more votes than they would need in a first-past-the-post system (as we have now) and making them run in larger geographic areas. Senators would have to have ranked-choice elections also. And it addresses the “problem” of having 700-1600 representatives – probably an unwieldy number. It sounds like it has a lot of good features (as I would expect from Beyer – he’s a sharp cookie).

    It’s endorsed by FairVote, also too.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  64. 64.

    sab

    @Another Scott: Thanks for the link to the list of commission members. No wonder there’s a problem. With the exception of Ifill herself, almost every other member is a professor at an elite law school, and it is really weighted heavily towards Harvard and Yale.

  67. 67.

    NeenerNeener

    @Peale:  Yeah, my house is covered in box elder bugs again. They look like black and red stink bugs, and I broke my wrist last year falling off a step stool while to clean up the blood red smear that was left after I squashed one above the patio door. This year if any sneak in when I open a door I’m sucking them up in a vacuum cleaner hose attachment.

    And I’d love to see some DOJ “Good News”.

  68. 68.

    Another Scott

    @Geminid: It looks like it’s complicated, at least in Ohio – some natives are yellowish.

    It was a long time ago, but my recollection is that the ones that were biting us were almost a school-bus yellow. Nasty little beasties!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  69. 69.

    Another Scott

    @gene108: I assume so, but I don’t know the process.  Presumably Biden won’t be bound by the recommendations anyway, but will carefully consider them (and other input he gets).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  70. 70.

    mrmoshpotato

    Would there be interest in something like “This Week at the DOJ”? Or “This Week in Good Government”.

    Absolutely.  It would be good for morale with all the state-level fuckery these bastards are trying to pull.

  71. 71.

    Dan B

    @Betty: It’s an El Nino year which means cold and wet in the west and warm and dry in the east.  The Jet Stream has been stuck dipping far south in the west and far north in the east.

     

    There have been other Jet Strem excursions that are troubling for agriculture.  As the poles, especially the north pole, warms the boundary between equatorial weather and polar weather is breaking down.  The changes not be smooth or linear.

  75. 75.

    Bill Arnold

    @Another Scott:

    There are reasons that relate to diversity of background and of profession, of race and gender, of geography, of law school. There are many reasons why one might support the idea of expanding the court that don’t have to do with your being, you know, beholden to a particular partisan agenda or another.

    Sure, true. But what the partisan hacks on the Supreme Court are objecting to is being called partisan hacks. It really really bothers them that their partisan hackery is being called out. So do more of what bothers them. While giving them all the respect that is due to them.

  76. 76.

    debbie

    @dnfree:

    My mother’s condo was on the ladybugs’ migration path. They got in through the bathroom vent. She used to go nuts. Once when I was condo-sitting for her, about an hour before going to the airport to pick her up, I walked into the living room and there were hundreds of them crawling around. I swept them all up with a dust-buster and taped a garbage bag over the vent fan. She was most unamused, but left the bag there until well into winter.

  77. 77.

    Mike in NC

    We had a large infestation of brown insects the size of ladybugs a few years ago. I sprayed them with Raid. I think they’re a species of stink bug.

  79. 79.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Dan B: 

    It’s an El Nino year which means cold and wet in the west

    The TV station I get most weather forecasts from says there is a blob of warmish water stretching west from Alaska/Washington, and that means dry for the west coast.

    http://weatheri.com/

  80. 80.

    Another Scott

    @sab: I’m pleasantly surprised by the diversity – Alabama, Chicago, Penn, NYU, UCSD, Berkeley, etc., along with a lot of Harvard and Yale.  And only one person from AEI/George Mason!  ;-)

    It would have been good to be less-heavily weighted on the academic law school side of things though – I agree.  There are 2 people from the Brennan Center/NYU and that’s a good thing.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  82. 82.

    Mag

    The fact that 9 months into a Biden administration with a Democratic-held Congress that such a “good news” digest is needed speaks volumes. The good is being drowned out by the inaction and bad. We should be swimming in good, but instead we are desperately trying to find it in case we miss one of the few dim slivers of hope and light.

    At this rate, we’re going to have a Republican Congress in 2023 and second Trump administration come 2025 and into the foreseeable future. We’re two elections away from a Russia-styled “democracy”.

  84. 84.

    Baud

    @Mag:

    The fact that 9 months into a Biden administration with a Democratic-held Congress that such a “good news” digest is needed speaks volumes

     
    It does, but it speaks about the problems liberal Democratic culture than anything actually going on in the world.

  86. 86.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @WaterGirl: Yes, that’s exactly what I posted a link to. Sheldon Whitehouse speaks the truth here but it is the antithesis of Ms. Ifill’s point.

    Having the number of Supreme Court justices equal the number of districts is a good idea. Strict Senate rules for replacement so it doesn’t become a political football would be good too.

  89. 89.

    Czar Chasm

    @WaterGirl: Yes, I would support a Weekn in Good Government feature!

    I’m a little biased, as I work for my local government, but still…

  90. 90.

    Dan B

    @Mallard Filmore: Funny that the Seattle Times had the opposite.  I’d be happy with some not too cold weather since we bought a lot of marginally hardy plants for the ponds and containers.  And it has been chilly with highs in the 50’s for a few weeks.

  93. 93.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    @dnfree:  They are Multicolored Asian lady beetles and are the most common ladybird beetles everywhere in the lower 48 states. Very invasive but still considered “beneficial.”

    This voracious predator has improved biological control of soft-bodied pests in various crop, garden, and landscape situations. However, the multicolored Asian lady beetle is also an unwelcome pest when it enters buildings during fall seeking shelter overwinter. When disturbed adults can emit drops of their odorous, orange blood. Adults are attracted to ripening fruit and sometimes contaminate grape and wine juices with their bitter-tasting blood that contains alkaloids it uses as defensive chemicals.

  95. 95.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    @sab: Yep, they are so easy to collect when the congregate in the fall. They’ve now spread them all over and charged gardeners for the privilege.

  96. 96.

    WaterGirl

    @Mag:  Either you misunderstood what I was saying, or I wasn’t clear enough.

    It’s not that the good is being drowned out by inaction and the bad.  Though there is some of that.

    It’s that the good doesn’t get discussed – the bad things are what gets discussed, and it can leave the impression that either nothing good is happening.

    And there are plenty of good things happening.

  97. 97.

    J R in WV

    @Geminid: 
     

    The swarming “ladybugs” you guy have been discussing are invasive bugs from — guess where? — Asia. Dunno if they eat aphids like the natives do. Hope so, tho !!

  98. 98.

    lurker

    @WaterGirl:

    @Another Scott:

    @Sure Lurkalot:

    So I tried posting this once, will see if it works this time, now that I rewrote it.  Had to be away, and people pointed out some of this.

    Opinions are normally released during business hours, sometimes read from the bench, generally provided in a way that would be accessible to everyone during or around the end of the work day on the east coast.  Obvious exceptions are orders or opinions that need to be released in a timely manner to deal with an impending deadline, such as a statute taking effect or an execution warrant becoming valid – both of those types of things typically specify something like midnight or 12:01 AM as when something is effective.  An opinion or order issued shortly beforehand can enjoin enforcement of a statute or stay an execution as an example, even if it is a minute before things actually happen. 

    The TX law took effect essentially at 12:01 AM on September 1.  The Supreme Court issued their written thing around 11:something PM on September 1 – 23+ hours after the law took effect.  At that point, they could have just issued it the next day during business hours.

    Alito is reported to have said in a speech shortly thereafter that the Court had to issue the late night ruling due to the timing of the statute taking effect, suggesting he was wrong about the calendar, which is a potentially devastating problem, or that he was being ridiculous in making his statement.  It is also possible that he was worried about other courts enjoining the law and therefore rushed out the order.  We saw that with the later opinion from the Austin Federal Court.  We also saw a more normal appellate procedure from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which stayed the injunction from the Austin court.

    Also, Supreme Court opinions are typically either announced (printed) as written by a justice, or as per curiam.  Other justices sign on to the opinions based on whatever changes they want in the language of the opinion.  Here, no justice is listed as signing the opinion.  However, it is also not listed as per curiam, which would indicate that no justice was responsible individually for the language, but all agreed to it unless they dissented.  Justices Roberts, Kagan, Sotomayor and Breyer each wrote dissents which they signed and other Justices joined.  So the five majority justices did not want their names on this thing.  That is unusual, and does not seem to simply be a printing error (those tend to get fixed within days).

    Moreover, this fits with the concept of the shadow docket.  Opinions and orders from the Court which come out before full briefing and oral argument are generally used to either preserve the status quo ante (before the thing that is the subject of litigation) or to deal with procedural issues.  Sometimes, these early opinions and orders make a meaningful change in circumstances, and those changes are introduced before the parties provide their arguments to the Court.  Briefing allows for research and careful explanation of issues and arguments.  Oral argument allows for interactive discussion of issues not adequately dealt with in the briefs, such as ideas the justices have.  Supplemental submissions can occur as a result of the process as well.  None of that is possible with early shadow docket rulings.  Even so, shadow docket rulings tend to either be explicitly per curiam (everyone but a dissenter agrees) or signed by the justices.  This thing is stranger still as not per curiam and not signed.

    None of this inspires confidence in a full and fair opportunity to litigate a case before this Court.

  99. 99.

    Mike G

    “This Week at the DOJ” they once again did jack squat about arresting the organizers of an attempted coup against the United States nine months ago.

  100. 100.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @lurker:

    Excellent post. Too bad not many people will see it. Maybe repost it in an appropriate thread during “normal” hours.

  101. 101.

    Another Scott

    @lurker: Thanks for this.

    On the last part of your comment – indeed.

    From the shadow-docket ruling:

    In reaching this con-
    clusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve defini-
    tively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the appli-
    cants’ lawsuit. In particular, this order is not based on any
    conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’s law, and in
    no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the
    Texas law, including in Texas state courts.

    This is obvious sophistry. One does not gut a well-established constitutional right on the one hand and then say, oh, we haven’t really decided the case yet.

    Grr…

    Thanks again.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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