ACCOUNTABILITY AT SCOTUS—NOT!

         On May 2, 2022, Politico published a draft of the Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, alerting the world that SCOTUS was about to overrule Roe v. Wade and declare there was no federal constitutional right to abortion.  Immediately, there were illegal and frightening protests at the homes of Supreme Court justices.  A short time later, there was an assassination attempt on Brett Kavanaugh.

         The official opinion was finally released on June 22, 2022, revealing that the Politico draft had been stolen and leaked from somewhere inside the Court.

         Outrage followed.  All the justices (or most of them, anyway), were stunned that such a thing could happen in such a collegial place where everyone respected the traditions and values of the Court.  There would have to be an investigation!

         And did Chief Justice Roberts turn the matter over to the FBI?  Were all the law clerks and administrative people interrogated?  Were all their recent movements and contacts and phone records examined?  Were they given lie-detector tests?

         Uh…not exactly.

         Roberts turned the investigation over to Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley, whose job it is to supervise security at the court building, make sure the doors are locked and ensure that demonstrators don’t get too unruly.  There is no indication she had ever conducted an investigation before, and certainly not one of this importance.  Nevertheless, the Chief Justice chose Curley.  He would probably have been better off picking Moe or Larry instead. 

         On January 19, 2023, the court issued a statement that “the Marshal’s team determined that no further investigation was warranted” for the 82 employees they had questioned who might have had access to the Dobbs draft.  The Marshal had conducted “formal interviews” with all of them.   They all denied leaking the opinion and they all signed sworn statements attesting they were not the source of the leak. 

         Formal interviews?  Did everyone wear neckties?  Does “formal” mean you weren’t allowed to wear a t-shirt and shorts?  And what about the sworn statements?  Did Curley make them do a pinky-swear or just a regular swear?

         And that was the end of it.  No one was held responsible for breaching the centuries-old tradition of confidentiality at the Supreme Court and nobody ever will be. *

         What is infuriating about this particular dropped ball (one hates to call it a “cover-up” without more evidence), is that everybody who works on legal opinions at the Supreme Court knows who did it.  There are nine justices, each of them have four law clerks, and there are another 35 to 40 people who handle communications with outside lawyers and have some access to information about opinions.  That means this little guild consists of only 80 to 85 people.  They all know each other, they eat lunch with each other, they talk to each other about cases, they play basketball with each other, and they invite each other to their homes for dinner.  Justice Alito said in a 2023 interview with the Wall Street Journal that he “has a pretty good idea” who did it.  Of course he does.  They all do.  But this is Washington and nobody can be held accountable.  It would be rude.  People might talk about the leaker.  He might have trouble getting a multi-million-dollar job in a premier law firm.

         And now, largely because Justice Roberts would not hold anyone‘s feet to the fire for the worst leak in SCOTUS history, it has happened again.   Only now it’s worse.  Since everyone knows that a breach of confidentiality will not be punished, the leakers have multiplied.

         Two days ago, the New York Times published confidential memos the justices had sent to each other in 2016 concerning an Order from SCOTUS summarily halting Barack Obama’s climate change edict near the end of his presidency.  These  memos form the foundation of the arguments about the “Shadow Docket” the Court now uses to quickly reverse extra-legal orders of partisan District Court judges who rule that Trump policies be stopped immediately.  Allowing the orders of these rogue judges to stand would mean many months of delay before the appeal system could operate and a final ruling be issued by SCOTUS.

         It’s a completely partisan matter, of course.  The leftists on the Court knew Obama’s Order would have irrevocably changed US environmental policy before it could be legally overturned as being beyond his authority, and that was fine with them.  They wanted Obama to rule unchecked.  Now, however, they want illegal orders of District Court judges to remain in effect as long as possible and cripple Trump’s power to govern.

         That is why these leaks occurred.  The NYT and the leftists who work at the SCOTUS disapprove of the Shadow Docket and how it is being used to allow a fair hearing for Trump Administration policies, so they have stolen these documents and are trying use them as part of an “exposé” of the Court’s supposed deference to Trump.

         Good luck to them.  The problem of what should be done about illegal edicts by rogue judges or rogue executives will continue to be debated.  My point here is a different one---that the tradition of confidentiality and respect for the legal process has now disappeared because John Roberts didn’t care about it.

         Regarding the confidential memos from 2016, the NYT writes:

         “To better understand what happened next, the Times spoke to 10 people…who were familiar with the deliberations over the pivotal emergency order and who spoke on condition of anonymity because confidentiality was a condition of their employment.” (Emphasis added.)

         Ten people?  They didn’t ask twenty?  It is believed the Dobbs decision was stolen by a single person.  Now apparently, everybody will talk to you, at least if you are the New York Times.  It appears they can call up anybody at the Court and find out what Justice Alito said to Justice Thomas in the men’s room that morning.

         And it’s all because Justice Roberts didn’t bother to investigation the Dobbs leak. 

Copyright2026MichaelKubacki   

         

*I don’t think there is much doubt the leak of the Dobbs opinion was a crime, though that legal question may be arguable.  What is NOT arguable is that lying in the sworn statement denying responsibility IS a crime under 18 U.S.C Section 1001.  (That’s the statute they used to put Martha Stewart away for two years.)

 

MOVING TO VEGAS: Observations About My New Home

 

“In Carthage, nothing that results in profit is regarded as disgraceful.”

                  ---Polybius, 2^nd Century BC

 

“Much the same can be said of Vegas.”

                  ---Me, 2025

 

There are mountains here everywhere, hundreds of mountains.  I cannot go outside and NOT see mountains.  The closest ones are bare and rocky and desert-like.  In the distance they are snow-capped. 

 

         With the mountains all around, you also get a big sky that stretches over the entire basin that is Vegas.  Sometimes it’s blue from one horizon to the other.  More often, there are clouds tinted by shadows and sunlight into variegated streaks and puffs, and the colors change constantly in the afternoon as the sun drops behind the mountains.  It’s quite beautiful and I’m trying to enjoy it because I know it’s going to start to piss me off any day now.       

 

                                                      *

 

         In Uncle Vanya, or maybe it’s The Cherry Orchard, there’s a comic character who delivers a pompous dissertation on how much he misses his home.  “In Moscow, I had a nephew and a cousin; here I have nothing.  In Moscow, there are elephants at the zoo.  Here, I have nothing.”

 

         There are still times I feel like that guy.  In Philadelphia, I had naked mole rats and half-price burger nights at Murphy’s and good Italian rolls and people walking around dressed like Betsy Ross---here I have nothing.  Ah well….

 

         Moving to a new city you know nothing about is fraught with things you don’t know, and you don’t even know you didn’t know them.  Las Vegas, for example, has a highly competitive sushi restaurant scene with all-you-can-eat sushi available 24/7, with an infinite variety of rolls you’ve never seen before and fish species so strange that you are justifiably wary.   I had no idea. 

 

         But try to find a cream donut.

 

         The absence of cream donuts is something I never expected.  The angel cream (NOT Bavarian!), donut covered in powdered sugar is a guilty pleasure I became hooked on at the age of four.  They came from Hesh’s bakery on Castor Avenue in NE Philly, a bakery that disappeared late in the 20^thCentury.  But there were plenty of other bakeries that made cream donuts, including Dunkin and Krispy Kreme, and I’ve been eating them for the last seventy years.

 

As the fashion for “health food” began to spread across the fruited plain, my angel cream donuts became less and less morally acceptable, and I began (without consciously deciding), to sneak them.  Few of my friends have ever seen me eat a cream donut.  Even my wife is not aware of the full extent of this lechery because I would often grab one at Shoprite and inhale it before I got home with the rest of the groceries.  I told myself I was sparing her the spectacle of my consumption.  She doesn’t care to see food on my face and there’s no way to consume a cream donut without plastering your mug with powdered sugar, so I was doing her a favor.  You see that, right?  But it wasn’t true.  I was hiding my cream donut vice from her.  And now, in Vegas, I am unable to indulge at all.  Karma, dude.  It’s a bitch.

 

                                                      *

 

         For someone who has spent years driving the streets of Philadelphia, Las Vegas is a surprise.

 

         We live in a residential area characterized by a grid of 4-lane streets that intersect at 4-way stop signs.  People stop at these signs; they don’t roll through them.  Everybody actually stops.  In fact, if someone gets to their sign a half second before you, they will often sit there and let you go first.  Being from Philly, I at first thought they were idiots.  Then I realized they were being polite and obeying traffic laws.  Imagine that.

 

         I also don’t see cars driving six inches behind my bumper.  And if you have the right of way, nobody cuts in front so you are forced to brake.

 

         I am told people do dangerous things on the road downtown and near the casinos, especially after dark, and I don’t doubt there are crazy drunks in Las Vegas, but I don’t drive around the casinos late at night, so I never see them.

 

         I attribute driving manners at least partly to the fact that Nevada is a “constitutional carry” state where a lot of normal people are packing, versus Philadelphia where most people who are armed are criminals because it’s so difficult for good citizens to carry a weapon legally.  People tend to be more polite in a place like Vegas because there are so many guns on decent people’s hips.  You would rather not piss anyone off.

 

                                                      *

 

         The cultural differences, like driving patterns, are the things you notice first when you move to a different city.  Smoking, for example. There is more indoor smoking here because it is permitted in casinos and everyplace with a bank of slot machines is considered a sort of casino.  Smoking is not as common as it was, of course, so you never encounter a smoke-filled room, even in Vegas, but I do like the smell of cigarette smoke when I encounter it.  I think I still miss smoking from when I stopped twenty years ago.  To me, the smell will always say “party.”

 

                                                      *

 

         There’s also more water-carrying in Las Vegas than I’m accustomed to.  I have generally regarded people who carry a drinking liquid around with them with something less than esteem and respect.  When I visited Joshua Tree, California this summer, where the daytime temperature was 110 degrees, my views on water-carrying changed a bit, and I now carry my own water in an insulated container.  I’m not proud of it, and it’s not 110 degrees here, so I have no excuse.  I often forget to take my water with me so maybe I’m conflicted.  Am I forgetting my water bottle on purpose?  Subconsciously?  I mean---who the hell am I?

 

                                                      *

 

         There’s no recycling here.  I wouldn’t know how to recycle my beer cans if I wanted to, though I assume there is a city program of some kind because they exist everywhere.  People in the West routinely see vast expanses of nothing and conclude, quite reasonably---well, why can’t we just bury our beer cans in the desert?  I suspect nobody west of the Mississippi was ever persuaded by the we’re-running-out-of-landfills scam of that EPA guy in 1990.  They see that the world consists of little towns here and there, and then there are mountains and deserts and billions of acres of nothing, so the idea of recycling to save the planet just seems silly. 

 

                                                      *

 

         Then there’s bicycle culture, and I apologize for injecting politics into this purely observational piece but it’s difficult to avoid when the subject of bicycles must be discussed.  I confess I have strong feelings about members of the Bike Path Left, the maniacal partisans who often bear “SHARE THE ROAD” tattoos on their thighs and buttocks, who almost elected Howard Dean president in 2004, who only care about bikes and bike lanes, and who are only dimly aware of issues such as inflation, immigration, war, LGBT rights, the climate, and drug policy.  I like the Bike Path Left less than I like communists, and I don’t like communists very much.

 

         I’m intimately familiar with them from Philadelphia, of course, where they have dragooned hundreds of miles of city street acreage for lanes that may be traversed by two bikes per hour but collectively render the entire city undriveable by cars.  The streets of downtown Philly were largely laid out in the 18^th Century, so they weren’t very wide to begin with.  Now, laced with bike lanes, they are half the size they once were. 

 

         We have hundreds of miles of bike lanes here in Vegas as well because---well, you know, because of climate change---but most streets in quiet residential neighborhoods are four (or even six), lanes wide, so the bike lanes are not nearly as annoying.  They are even more ridiculous, however, because except for an hour or two per week, they are never used.

 

         Though there is little point in Philly to cutting streets in half for bike lanes that serve no real purpose in moving people around, there are people who use them.  It is possible to commute by bicycle from 10^th and Wolf to your job in City Hall and there are probably three people who do that. Therefore, if you are a member of the Bike Path Left, those three people fully justify the $600 billion Philly has spent on bike lanes.

 

         But nobody does that in Vegas.  For one thing, you probably live on Lone Mountain Drive and your job is at the Red Rock Casino eighteen miles away, and you must wear your uniform to work, and for long stretches throughout the year, the ambient temperature is 106 degrees F.  NOBODY rides a bike to work in Vegas.

 

         So who uses the thousands of miles of bike lanes in Las Vegas?

 

          The only time I see anyone on a bike is on Saturday morning when a crew of ten or twelve will pedal past you, all in their multi-colored Italian spandex.  Then, by noon, they’re home again and the streets offer nothing but cars for another week.

 

         Still, you know…climate change. 

 

                                                      *

 

         A large proportion of residential housing in Las Vegas, including where we live, is found in gated communities with walls around them, making these communities difficult to distinguish from minimum-security prisons.  There are hundreds of them, and they all have names designed to impress you with their all-consuming elegance.  Here’s a few:

         Enclave at Gold Rush

         Legends

         El Capitan Ranch

         Durango Reserve

         The Pueblo

         Stone Canyon

         Mariposa

         Timberline

         Big Horn

         Desert Trace

         Desert Creek

         Copperhead Estates

Painted Desert

         Sandstone Edge

         Stone Canyon

         Mar-a Lago

         Cambria

         Deerbrooke Estates

         Cranston Ranches Estates

         Tucson Trails

         Grandview

         Panorama

 

         They are beige.  The buildings and the walls are beige, and all the houses and condos are surrounded by the same red gravel, which comes from the Red Rock Canyon just outside of town.  Millions of years created an iron-rich sandstone, and the red is from the rusting of the iron in the stone.   Instead of lawns, there are 83 trillion tons of this red gravel on the ground in Las Vegas.  Pretty at first, then monotonous.

 

                                                      *

 

         Cheap in Vegas: limes (but not lemons), avocadoes, booze, peppers, and beer.

 

         Very expensive in Vegas (or impossible to find):  Russian or Eastern European foods, tarragon (and other fresh herbs), and the nutmeg-adjacent spice called mace.  Pork costs at least twice as much as it does in Philly.  And I haven’t found a good loaf of bread.

 

                                                      *   

 

         I got a library card here shortly after I arrived and, after living in Philly, was more than a little surprised by the rules and procedures.  Late returns ARE NOT TOLERATED.  For the evil-doers, there is a frightening array of fines, assessments, loss of privileges, and a “collection agency service fee.”  I think eventually they send you to Guantanamo. 

 

         I always thought it was a mistake when the Free Library of Philadelphia abandoned late fees, and I think I was proven correct a few years later when shoplifting was also de-criminalized.  Now, in Philly, most felonies are simply overlooked, and it is sort-of impolite even to mention them.  It’s a slippery slope IMHO, and it starts with the elimination of overdue book fees.

 

                                                      *

 

         Music you hear frequently on classic rock stations in Las Vegas but never in Philadelphia: Meat Loaf.

 

         Music you hear frequently on classic rock stations in Philadelphia but never in Las Vegas: The Beatles.

 

Copyright2026MichaelKubacki