The Plumbers

does Steve Daines ... does he remember how many House seats Republicans lost in 2018, shortly after the debacle that was the Kavanaugh confirmation process? pic.twitter.com/xU0pS6MEIz

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 3, 2022

The search for the crime continues. https://t.co/TUi99Pxdp7

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) May 3, 2022

pic.twitter.com/erRnL4jF9M

— Bad Legal Takes (@BadLegalTakes) May 3, 2022

And if it's not the leak, it's the Dead Hand Of History:

The obvious problem with this retort is that the 19th c women's rights advocates -- writing at the time the 14th amendment was ratified (1868) & when legislatures were enhancing CL protections in light of contemporary advances in embryology -- were all opposed to abortion. /1 https://t.co/qVvoyUXJFv

— Erika Bachiochi (@erikabachiochi) May 3, 2022

There's a good (for Twitter) discussion here:

Some thoughts from a historian of motherhood on the SCOTUS draft opinion's gross mischaracterization that "an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973." A 🧵:

— Cassandra Berman, PhD (@BermanCassandra) May 3, 2022

But except for the conclusion:

What we DO have an unbroken tradition of is this: women seeking greater control over their bodies, and women facing the most dangerous of circumstances to control reproduction.

— Cassandra Berman, PhD (@BermanCassandra) May 3, 2022

I still think of it as just the Dead Hand Of History. Never thought I'd use this outside of reference to the ekklesia, but the reasoning here seems sound even if the language is very specifically religious:

Grant that thy Church may be delivered from traditions which have lost their life, from usage which has lost its spirit, from institutions which no longer give life and power to their generation; that the Church may ever shine as a light in the world and be as a city set on a hill.

HEAR OUR PRAYER, O LORD.

I understand the need to ground legal opinion in what has come before (the whole basis of stare decisis as a method of providing stability in the law, even as facts and even expectations change), but this cult of originalism has reached it's nadir.  If the law (read: Constitution) is not alive but instead dead and a corpse we must carry, why do we burden ourselves with it?

I'd like Alito to explain why a right exercised for 50 years is insufficiently "rooted."

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) May 3, 2022

Not old enough to be "original," obviously.  Although if Alito likes it, then it's okay.  It's all about what pleases five people. And that’s the real problem.