When you can afford to be made to look ridiculous
By 
I know this is a minor thing in itself, but in its own way it perfectly encapsulates what law office “originalism” is in practice:
This is from Justice Barrett’s new book. I’ll just observe that it‘s a very strange metaphor to use to describe the decision to move to Washington D.C. to become a Supreme Court Justice. www.cbsnews.com/news/book-ex…
[image or embed]— Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof (@evanbernick.bsky.social) Sep 7, 2025 at 2:18 PM
If you’re wondering how he ended up with Bruen, a Supreme Court justice — in a book in which she was paid a $2 million advance, not off-the-cuff remarks — confusing Alexander the Great with Cortés is an illustration. But the idea about someone who has spent her professional life on the Federalist Society greasy pole was agonizing over whether to take the legal job with the highest ratio of power to effort in the world is an ever better exemplification of the nature of Republican “jurisprudence.” You know she’s lying, she knows you’re lying, she wants you to know she’s lying, because she has this power for life and wants to rub your nose in it. Balls, strikes, things of that nature.
Cf. also starting your promo tour like this:
Perhaps the most telling stop on Barrett’s tour is also the first: tonight’s Lincoln Center appearance with Bari Weiss of The Free Press, the preferred source of political commentary for investment bankers who decided to become Republicans because they can’t use the r-word at work anymore. The Free Press also got the honor of publishing the first official excerpt of Listening to the Law, and praised Barrett for understanding that the Court’s role is not to “promote justice,” as some would foolishly assume, but only to “judge what the law requires.” (The Free Press’s event page further describes the Court as “critical to the American project, as it remains largely as our Founding Fathers designed it: the final arbiter of what’s constitutional and what’s not”—an assertion which indicates that for all of Bari Weiss’s deficiencies as a thinker and writer, she might be an even worse amateur legal historian.)
This is some kind of bad faith supernova.