Our Man from Opus Dei, Ross Douthat on The Supreme Court 'leak': the pose of the 'Impartial Spectator' evaporates in the heat of a severe scolding for 'The Left/Liberals'.
Queer Atheist offer a reading.
The first paragraph’s of Mr. Douthat’s essay is given to speculation:
The leak of a draft Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade is not a surprise, but it is something of a mystery.
What’s unsurprising is that the accelerating politicization of the judiciary that began with Roe itself would overwhelm attempts to sustain an apolitical charisma around the operations of the court. Every development and controversy and scandal along the way — the Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas hearings, the multistage death of the filibuster, the pocket veto of Merrick Garland, the Brett Kavanaugh affair, the liberal enthusiasm for court-packing — cut away some element of the apolitical illusion. The leak of a draft decision, a violation of the secrecy around deliberations, is another escalation, but it’s part of the same pattern, the same trend that’s defined judicial politics for two generations now.
But the mystery lies in the strategy behind the leak.
…
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/opinion/supreme-court-roe-abortion.html
I offer just part of his essay, as The Reader can explore the remainder for herself. What Mr. Douthat offers is a selective quotation of sources, that also offer speculation of their own- the circularity of speculation is determinative of the commentary on this ‘leak’!
Quotes from ‘The Wall Street Journal’, ‘the left-leaning part of the elite legal world’ , ‘The Federalist Society types’, ‘you would bet on it coming from the left’, ‘prominent voices on liberal-legal Twitter’, ‘Third, you can imagine various possible rationales for a liberal leak.’ , ‘Then, too, to the extent that liberals hope abortion could be a galvanizing issue’ , ‘to the extent that a leak like this has some delegitimizing effect no matter what,’…
The Reader can reach the end of this Douthat screed, without my further interpolations. Though, let me offer this:
The Supreme Court is delegitimizing itself, with the rise of the Federalist Society, The Klan in ultra-respectable Lawyerly Drag, and appointments of the Neo-Confederate/Originalist/Textualist Coterie, that expresses a toxic American Political Romanticism, for an irretrievable political/moral past!
Queer Atheist