Roberts Refused To Name Whistleblower, Rand Paul Did It Anyway | SCOTUS Now Serves Pizza…And It Ain’t Great

January 30, 2020

“Wednesday marked a new phase of the impeachment inquiry, one more likely to reveal what Roberts believes it means for the chief justice of the United States to ‘preside’ over an impeachment trial of the president. He displayed no inclination to play a more active role.” Robert Barnes with The Washington Post reports on the chief justice’s current role in the impeachment trial in which he’s reading questions from senators directed to the House impeachment managers and members of Trump’s defense team. Barnes notes that these questions have largely been read without emotion — even when the subject of those questions turned to the Supreme Court and the chief justice himself.

During questioning, CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS refused to read aloud a question as submitted by SENATOR RAND PAUL who was attempting to ask about the origins of the impeachment inquiry in a way that would identify the C.I.A. whistleblower responsible for bringing the Ukraine affair to light. Roberts had signaled as early as Tuesday that we wouldn’t allow the whistleblower’s name to be mentioned. But Rand Paul didn’t seem to mind the chief justice’s direction, because he just held a news conference in which he read aloud his question and named the person widely believed to be the whistleblower.

As the most junior member of the Supreme Court, JUSTICE BRETT KAVANAUGH is on cafeteria duty. Tim Carman with The Washington Post suggests, “The duty is something akin to frat-house hazing for folks dressed in Darth Vader robes.” Unfortunately, it sounds like Kavanaugh has demonstrated in his new role that his taste for fine cuisine leaves something to be desired. Under his stewardship of the menu, the cafeteria now serves pizza that Carman describes as being, well, very bad. He ordered two of the za’s and says, “My two pies were to wood-fired pizza what a Pinto is to a Porsche.”

“Every Supreme Court case tells a story. Both sides vie to persuade the justices — and, in big cases, the public as well — to see the issues through one particular narrative lens. Heading into last week’s argument on whether Montana was obliged by the federal Constitution to keep subsidizing religious-school tuition under a scholarship program that violated the state Constitution, it was easy to see which story line was winning. ‘School Choice Battle May Boost Religious Freedom’ was the headline on USA Today’s preview of the argument.” That’s Linda Greenhouse with The New York Times kicking off her latest column which focuses on the dispute out of Montana that’s being framed as a case about religious freedom.