Supreme Court Leaks

The Wall Street Journal excerpted an article by Joan Biskupic for CNN regarding Supreme Court discussions among the Justices [emphasis added].

Chief Justice John Roberts privately lobbied fellow conservatives to save the constitutional right to abortion down to the bitter end, but May’s unprecedented leak of a draft opinion reversing Roe v Wade made the effort all but impossible, multiple sources familiar with negotiations told CNN.

Wow. Not only was a Supreme Court draft opinion leaked to the press, the Court’s private discussions about that opinion are leaked to the public.

Two things: one is that the Court has a serious problem with confidentiality, and the only way to fix it may be a complete removal and replacement of all of the Justices’ current clerks and of all of the Court’s current administrative personal. Even though the clerks are replaced annually as a matter of course, it’s clear that this crop needs to go now.

The other thing is that it’s instructive about press integrity that the press makes nearly as big a deal about the leak of the draft as it did about the draft, but it accepts this leak with utter equanimity.

Hostage Taking

Recall that the President Joe Biden (D) administration, some months ago, said it would

withhold food assistance funding from schools unless they comply with the administration’s guidance on a range of LGBT issues.

After these months of trying to get the administration to retract that threat—after all, in Dole v South Dakota, the Supreme Court said the Federal government could use funding to influence, but not to coerce, State compliance—22 Republican AGs have filed suit to try to force the administration to retract its threat. Notice, too, that no Progressive-Democratic Party AGs are party to the suit.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has the right of it:

[T]hey’ve [the Biden administration] reached a new level of shamelessness with this ploy of holding up food assistance for low-income kids unless schools do the Left’s bidding.

It truly is disgusting that this Progressive-Democrat Biden administration would use children as hostages in its attempt to coerce K-12 schools into accepting Party’s extremist position.