I suppose that this is better than blaming Justice Jackson for doing something nefarious, which is what the story was on Newsmax a few days ago, if you missed it.
Ted Cruz fancies himself quite the logician and apparently also somewhat of an armchair sleuth.
Listen to him parse through a nonsensical stream of thought, which he calls an “argument.”
Ted Cruz recklessly speculates, with zero proof, that he believes it was a clerk with Justice Sotomayor that leaked the SCOTUS brief. pic.twitter.com/h1xCWlAXgC
— Ron Filipkowski ?? (@RonFilipkowski) May 5, 2022
If you missed the Newsmax clip, here it is. Not much difference between the two.
Yesterday they were saying “the new black lady did it”. pic.twitter.com/JfeeWAgSY5
— Grey_Obelisk (@Grey_Obelisk) May 5, 2022
There are a number of theories supporting who leaked the document and why. My favorite is that it was to keep Kavanaugh in line. Intelligencer:
It was a leak from the right to stop Kavanaugh from defecting
According to Politico, a clean majority of four conservative justices voted with Alito, following December’s oral arguments in the Dobbs case. With the three liberal justices working on dissenting opinions, that leaves Roberts’s position unknown — though it is believed he is trying to find something like a compromise that doesn’t totally destroy Roe. To stop Brett Kavanaugh from swinging and joining Roberts in a compromise decision written by Roberts, the leak was meant to pressure him into holding his position and avoid the ire of becoming the Republican-appointed Catholic justice who upheld the right to an abortion.
It’s designed to make the ruling as drastic as possible
Written in February, Alito’s draft opinion does not waver, describing Roe as “egregiously wrong from the start” and stating that “a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.” Some legal scholars and former Court clerks have suggested that releasing the opinion — whether or not it represents a more recent draft held by Alito — could serve as a method to keep conservative justices in line in case Roberts makes a push for a more moderate decision.
I worry that this line is coming from the conservative movement in an attempt to shift the Overton window so that if it only basically overturns Roe, the Court is heaped with praise for its moderation. Headlines say "roe survives" and other BS even as the Court OKs abortion bans
— Liz Sepper (@lsepper) May 3, 2022
This makes far more sense. But of course we’re going to listen to pre-school logic coming from the GOPers and right-wing media because they depend upon the lack of intelligence or critical thought processes on the part of their voters.
What’s next after Roe v. Wade? The abolishment of public education? Very likely. Madison Cawthorn can be appointed Secretary of Homeschooling.
Jackson has had NO access to the decision. She won’t be sworn in until the Court’s current session expires in late June or early July. Hell, she probably hasn’t even hired any clerks yet, and is taking her time collecting resumes, while also fulfilling her current duties. But the important part is that she’s not spending any time in the SCOTUS bldg., much less taking part in conferences and sharing verbal or written thoughts back and forth! Just how fucking stupid are those people who think she had a copy of the draft to leak?
As for the three on our side they’ve known since the initial vote what kind of hell would be breaking loose, and while Breyer in particular is the last person I can think of as being a hard-ass I for one wouldn’t want to cross Sotomayor even if I was decked out in full body armor! I have no doubt that conversations were had with whatever clerks were researching material for the dissents (and my guess is that not every clerk was involved) that even discussing it outside the Justice’s office (again, those who side with reason and the rule of law – IOW the ones who vote the way we expect they would to uphold Roe) much less even leaving a copy of the draft opinion on a desk or table, much less taking it home to work at night on suggestions for a dissent) would trigger horrible consequences. As in a clerk would suffer less than if they were caught by Russian soldiers pissing on a newly dead Russian soldier to the hell the Justice would rain down on them. All that money for a degree from an elite university and law school wasted. And probably a fortune in student loans they’d never be able to pay off because they’d be unemployable in the legal profession or in Democratic politics.
No, I’m increasingly convinced (sorry Bareshark) that this leak came from the conservative side because Roberts had either Kavanaugh or Gorsuch (or both) wavering and ready to “only” uphold the Mississippi law. Basically continue the Roberts approach at incrementally chipping away at reproductive rights although between not enjoining the Texas law and upholding the Mississippi law are pretty big bites out of reproductive freedom.
Yes, that logic makes sense.
The main thing now is to ensure they are labelled ‘the extremist right’ who want to take over your choices and freedoms. Framed precisely the same way they’ve tried to label Democrats.
It was likely through Ginni. Tell your partner in swear-to-silence secrecy, and she does two or three the same way, and somewhere you get someone with a Connection…
(The doc as escaped doesn’t have any origination information, so it could have been sent as a text file and then fed to a word processor.)