More Alito retirement hijinks

Here’s the apology that Nina Totenberg read on the air after NPR mistakenly posted her story about Sam Alito’s retirement:

“Dear Justice Alito, there are no words to adequately apologize for today’s error in reporting your retirement. It was entirely my fault. I rushed out of the courtroom after the opinion announcements, and when I realized that the usual rush of folks after a few minutes had not happened, I asked somebody was going on inside, to which the answer was, ‘retirement announcements.’ I didn’t hear the ‘s’ on ‘announcements,’ and I assumed something no reporter should ever do, that you were retiring.”

This is such obvious bullshit, and insult to the intelligence of anyone following this story, that I assume issuing it is the price she’s paying to maintain the embargoed story she published and then retracted. The story featured lots of quotes from people who were clearly giving her comments on the basis of an assurance that Alito’s retirement was about to be announced.

I mean seriously, have we reached such a level of collective stupidity that Totenberg expects us to believe that she heard there was some sort of retirement announcement being made, and then she simply assumed it was about Alito? We’ll eventually find out what happened here, but my guess is that Alito told Totenberg the SCOTUS would be issuing the official announcement of his retirement at a precise time that morning, then he changed his mind about the exact timing, and hung her out to dry because he’s a sadistic bastard who enjoys humiliating, in ascending order of sick enjoyment, people, liberals, the media, and women.

I fully expect the “real” retirement announcement will be forthcoming fairly shortly.