A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield, making a fascinating attempt to Frankenstein two sources of manufactured conservative outrage into one, on Wednesday accused future Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is not on the Supreme Court yet, of leaking Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion on dismantling Roe v. Wade. In fact, Jackson is Stinchfield’s “first suspect”!
New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns on Wednesday released more recorded audio of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) frantic private calls to fellow House GOP leaders explicitly acknowledging that Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Keep it coming boys, a little at a time is fine by me.
Next week is the end of the semester for us. I have students in various states of distress to comfort/reassure/tell “Them’s the breaks,” and seeing today’s Morning Memo makes me feel grateful that I have things to distract me from the news.
Stinchfield suggested that Jackson – did I mention she is not on the Supreme Court yet? – had her law clerks steal a copy of the draft so she could leak it because she’s a “radical left-wing activist.”
And their viewers are that stupid that Newsmax is believed - is it any wonder that a satellite provider has dropped Newsmax from its available channels?
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has ditched plans to attend the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ judicial conference that begins today after a copy of his draft opinion striking down Roe v. Wade got leaked to Politico earlier this week.
One would think he’d be all in on taking his victory lap - have to wonder why he’s bailing on what would be a standing ovation from his audience for what he’s done.
Don Jr. Testifies Before Jan. 6 Panel
And without cameras in the hearing room, what’s to say he gave any worthwhile information. I’m not holding my breath on this one.
Not really subtle about the fact that the GOP governor feels emboldened to “resurrect” anything now that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has been shown to be perfectly willing to throw precedents like Roe v. Wade into the wood chipper.
It hasn’t exactly happened yet, the wood chipper part, but should the official announced decision be to throw out Roe, the onslaught of other cases to come through the court will commence (things like this one) immediately. Shadow docket be damned.
Secretary Of State Blinken Tests Positive For COVID
Sadly, this is the new normal. Get your booster shots, folks.
My question is why would TPM even add this to the mix?
Yes, most people here know better, but it’s still repeating lies to everyone that will sink into some people’s brains.
It is why I come to TPM. These are the people run the GOP, or at a minimum strongly influence them, and I want to know what they are thinking.
I do not want to watch or read their nonsense on a daily basis. But I like to keep up, because I get hit with this from relatives, it is in my environment.
The main reason why this is important to know is that it’s of value to know what’s circulating out there, the better to be prepared to respond to it when we hear it rather than be blind-sided by it.
In order to know Good, one must also know Good’s opposite.
My one hope is that going forward, the calculus around the placement of SCOTUS judges changes.
You’re 76 years old, you are diagnosed with cancer in a second, distinct organ (first colon then pancreas), and your party controls the senate and the White House? Step down.
I know it sounds cold - it probably is - and I know RBG is some sort of Liberal Saint - but right now all I can think is that her desire to stay on the court into her late 80s, despite serious health issues, instead of ensuring her seat went to a 50 year old who would vote for the type of decision she championed, is part of what got us here. And by here, I don’t mean just Roe. I mean all the other decisions that Roberts might have helped with like he did with the ACA.
Lesson learned. Never again.
8 out of 100 units in my apartment complex have Covid-19.
I said when this Pandemic started that we would be playing whack-a-mole for a decade. The problem was making a global problem into a national problem. That won’t work for a Pandemic or AGW.
What is the alternative to World Unity?
You’re seeing it in real time and it sucks.
I am tired of the liberal press falling for the leak story. It is a side show. The real story is women are being denied their full personhood by a bunch of radicals. This is only the first step. I think the next step in this mess will be denying women access to contraception.
In addition I wouldn’t be surprised if they roll back marital rape, which is a recent development in the law. When I was young a man couldn’t be charged with raping his wife. That was the long standing tradition in America. In the last 40 years that has changed. Most of us think that is a good thing, but I am sure many religious men want to see that change rolled back. I am sure that the radicals on the Supreme Court are eager to accommodate their wishes.
Seems to me that “conservative justices, hmm?’” plan to be the “lightning rod” for outrage during 1/6 hearings just got disrupted by early disclosure of the opinion and its flimsy rationale.
For that reason, I don’t think it was a “conservative.” I do realize that I am “pyramiding” inferences.
So the Leak came from the rigidly anti-abortion right. Then the right used it to scream the Leak is the left’s perfidy. Cute. Distract us from the vile content of Alito’s draft. But the progressives must not so much as mention the Leak because it plays into the right’s game here? Yeah, how’s that working out?
When the Leak story is history in a week or two, women and even some men will still be very much focused on this abortion ban.
