The story of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency was an utterly strange one from the beginning.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1406975
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1406975
This case is – and I cannot stress this enough – deeply stupid. Do not be too surprised if the Court spits out an order saying that the cert. petition was “improvidently granted.”
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would that be the best case scenario that we could expect, in your opinion?
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Hard to say what a best case scenario is for a case that’s obviously moot. I.G. would be the simplest way to end the farce though.
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But that was obvious when they took the case! What changed?
Cert was granted at the end of October.
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But a “Conservative” Court cannot, by conservative definition, be “activist.” Only liberal judges/justices are “activist.” Conservative judges/justices are the only ones with reasonable interpretations. 
PS: It never ceases to annoy me that for all those years when the court was closely divided, Thomas never even bothered to ask a question during arguments but since locking in the ideological shift of the Court he can’t keep his danged mouth shut, constantly showing his ideological colors as well as never seeing a case from which he needs to recuse himself. 
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From the sounds of it, what changed was Rapey McBeerface and Justice Handmaid’s Tale’s impression that this was a viable vehicle for kneecapping the EPA.
They’re not especially bright people.
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Thomas famously thought that oral argument was unnecessary, so he wouldn’t participate. But when they set the format for remote arguments after Covid hit, they allotted each justice a set amount of time to question the lawyers. He couldn’t really stay silent for his time, and he appears to have discovered that he likes the sound of his own voice.
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so what exactly has to happen to add fiive more justices to the supreme court to rebalance the scales?
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Congress has to appropriate $100 million to bribe them into retirement.
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Smacks of getting what they paid for before the whole thing blows up.
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They don’t have to be, apparently, and so here we are.
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Not much. Just need the house (plausible) and 50 democratic senators (um…) to agree to it. @txlawyer s retirement plan has the same caveat.
If we can get a real working majority in 2022, might do it. TFG’s three turds are going to be stinking up SCOTUS for a long time.
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Bribing them into retirement only takes 50 votes. Expanding the Court takes 60.
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It’s my understanding that the filibuster is a rule the senate has imposed on itself. If a working democratic senate majority wanted to get shit done, they could change it. But we don’t have a working senate majority right now.
Expanding the SCOTUS and reforming the filibuster are roughly equivalent on the the both-sides “traditions of the senate” scale. If we have the votes to do one, we’ve got the votes to do the other.
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But a lucrative retirement package just needs to pass the appropriations committee. Insert it into the next must-pass continuing resolution. Boom, problem solved.
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What worries court watchers is that at least four of the justices — the number needed to take up a case — were willing to entertain that notion.
A perfectly reasonable fear considering that six of them may as well be considered as a surrogate board of directors of the fossil fuel fuckers.
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Thomas is as happy as a pig in shit. He and the other “conservatives” on the Court are really very ignorant people outside of legal matters. They appear to be scientifically illiterate and incapable of critical thinking – much like typical Fox groupie . And Thomas? That hog he calls his wife has him by the balls, feeds him with the worst of RW insanity.
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I’d guess that Thomas and Alito might take a package … maybe Roberts. But I think the other three think they’ve got god’s mission to carry out.
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He could not try a chicken thief.