The Supremes

jimmyjazz · July 17, 2022

17 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

You need a Marketing VP with a Master’s degree and 25 years of experience in healthcare?

I would think you would be extraordinarily hire-able. Do you think you're not?

Neonmoon · July 17, 2022

I can’t believe anyone would leave Texas because of politics? That is the one of the most entitled and stupid fucking statements I’ve ever read.

Texas ranks 39 in education

https://www.kxan.com/news/education/texas-is-one-of-the-most-uneducated-states-in-the-u-s-study-says/

Texas ranks 42 in healthcare

https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-fastest-growing-u-s-states-have-the-worst-health-care#:~:text=Texas ranked 42nd overall in,the health care they need.

Texans ranks 50 in mental health care access.

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/04/1103075887/texas-ranks-last-in-mental-health-care-among-u-s-states

Texas ranks 1st in banned books

https://www.businessinsider.com/book-bans-texas-lgbtq-race-gender-sexuality-republicans-2022-4

Texas ranks 50th in voting rights

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/19/texas-voting-elections/

Bama Chick · July 17, 2022

It’s not that I don’t think I’m hire-able.

Not to get too real lifey but it’s the housing situation that would be an impediment.

My credit is shit for a multitude of reasons - primarily being that I was married for 25 years to a man who made five times as much as I did and due to many other factors - some my fault, some not - I don’t think I could afford to live somewhere like Chicago or NYC and continue rebuilding and establishing my own credit history.

Plus, I claim my daughter as a dependent for tax purposes - it benefits me more financially and I need to stay in state until she finishes college (and probably grad school and law school) for in state tuition.

And, let’s face it, a lot of companies aren’t keen to hire a woman in her 50s (probably closer to 60 by the time my daughter finishes grad school and law school) from halfway across the country when they can hire a local in their 30s for half the salary.

I just don’t think a lot of places in bigger cities would give me a chance to even get to an interview.

jimmyjazz · July 17, 2022

8 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

Plus, I claim my daughter as a dependent for tax purposes - it benefits me more financially and I need to stay in state until she finishes college (and probably grad school and law school) for in state tuition.

Our 4 kids go to school in Texas, so I'll admit I haven't thought this out -- she couldn't qualify for in-state tuition in Alabama even if she's lived there continuously but you moved out of state?

That seems wrong.

Anastasis · July 17, 2022

10 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Our 4 kids go to school in Texas, so I'll admit I haven't thought this out -- she couldn't qualify for in-state tuition in Alabama even if she's lived there continuously but you moved out of state?

That seems wrong.

12 month residency requirement. I assume the situation is more complex, i.e. she lives at home or something.

Anastasis · July 17, 2022

2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

What if you were driving around Austin in February 2021 in the freezing dark because of the electric grid designed exactly according to the GOP wet-dream called SB-7? I mean, I guess you caught a break, being that the freeze also gave your kids an unscheduled break from attending an underfunded AISD that sends a huge chunk of its funding to the state because the state govt has steadfastly refused to attend to education for decades. Or maybe you pondered getting back some of your tuition from UT - which skyrocketed as the state slashed higher ed support - since they cancelled classes too. Or maybe it was just a regular day, and you wondered if our state leadership’s unrelenting demonization of brown people was going to lead to another El Paso Walmart-type shooting, except this time, at the heavily Hispanic HEB on north Lamar that you like to shop at.
The state is a GOP wet-dream shitshow, and that includes Austin. The fact that Austin leadership regularly adds a schmear of additional bad leadership on top doesn’t change that.

That place sound fucking horrible and the people that keep moving there must be extremely brain damaged.

Anastasis · July 17, 2022

49 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

I can’t believe anyone would leave Texas because of politics? That is the one of the most entitled and stupid fucking statements I’ve ever read.

Texas ranks 39 in education

https://www.kxan.com/news/education/texas-is-one-of-the-most-uneducated-states-in-the-u-s-study-says/

Texas ranks 42 in healthcare

https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-fastest-growing-u-s-states-have-the-worst-health-care#:~:text=Texas ranked 42nd overall in,the health care they need.

Texans ranks 50 in mental health care access.

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/04/1103075887/texas-ranks-last-in-mental-health-care-among-u-s-states

Texas ranks 1st in banned books

https://www.businessinsider.com/book-bans-texas-lgbtq-race-gender-sexuality-republicans-2022-4

Texas ranks 50th in voting rights

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/19/texas-voting-elections/

omg, this one is even worse.

Biff Tannen · July 17, 2022

1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

That place sound fucking horrible and the people that keep moving there must be extremely brain damaged.

Anastasis · July 17, 2022

21 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Given some of the real estate transactions I see going down, I think that's right.

Pancho · July 17, 2022

Rebated to their previous decision:

Brisketexan · July 17, 2022

53 minutes ago, Pancho said:

Rebated to their previous decision:

Some young men of conscience need to bring a recording device with them to the post-game "prayer huddle," to the locker room, etc. Record this shit, which any human being with a lick of sense knows is EXACTLY the case. Then release it. All of it. Name names. And file your fucking lawsuit. Make the SCOTUS do what they want to do, what they will inevitably do: declare that we have a "deep national tradition of Christianity, and it is therefore not a violation of the Constitution for a government institution to require adherence to that religion in order to participate in public activities." Let's get this shit over with so we can get to the climax of a full-on religious-motivated civil war. It's what they want. Nothing will get any better until this crisis reaches its climax, so let's get it the fuck over with.

WhatTheBuck · July 18, 2022

57 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Some young men of conscience need to bring a recording device with them to the post-game "prayer huddle," to the locker room, etc. Record this shit, which any human being with a lick of sense knows is EXACTLY the case. Then release it. All of it. Name names. And file your fucking lawsuit. Make the SCOTUS do what they want to do, what they will inevitably do: declare that we have a "deep national tradition of Christianity, and it is therefore not a violation of the Constitution for a government institution to require adherence to that religion in order to participate in public activities." Let's get this shit over with so we can get to the climax of a full-on religious-motivated civil war. It's what they want. Nothing will get any better until this crisis reaches its climax, so let's get it the fuck over with.

And notify the Freedom From Religion Foundation. They can help with legal counsel and expenses.

https://ffrf.org/

pyrohornIII · July 18, 2022

4 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

I can’t believe anyone would leave Texas because of politics? That is the one of the most entitled and stupid fucking statements I’ve ever read.

Texas ranks 39 in education

https://www.kxan.com/news/education/texas-is-one-of-the-most-uneducated-states-in-the-u-s-study-says/

Texas ranks 42 in healthcare

https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-fastest-growing-u-s-states-have-the-worst-health-care#:~:text=Texas ranked 42nd overall in,the health care they need.

Texans ranks 50 in mental health care access.

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/04/1103075887/texas-ranks-last-in-mental-health-care-among-u-s-states

Texas ranks 1st in banned books

https://www.businessinsider.com/book-bans-texas-lgbtq-race-gender-sexuality-republicans-2022-4

Texas ranks 50th in voting rights

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/19/texas-voting-elections/

All that while being the 2nd largest economy in the US and the 9th or 10th in the entire world. Such a return on investment, right?

Brisketexan · July 18, 2022

All that while being the 2nd largest economy in the US and the 9th or 10th in the entire world. Such a return on investment, right?

Great return. That’s the way it goes when you raid your seedstock. Texas is making people incredible money today, at the expense of tomorrow. Think those folks will stick around to invest in and rehabilitate our depleted husk when they’ve extracted all the profit out of it?

pyrohornIII · July 18, 2022

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

Great return. That’s the way it goes when you raid your seedstock. Texas is making people incredible money today, at the expense of tomorrow. Think those folks will stick around to invest in and rehabilitate our depleted husk when they’ve extracted all the profit out of it?

Frog in the pot of boiling water.

HenryJames · July 18, 2022

7 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

You need a Marketing VP with a Master’s degree and 25 years of experience in healthcare?

Pics?

Lurch · July 18, 2022

In front of a tree

Nivek · July 18, 2022

Great return. That’s the way it goes when you raid your seedstock. Texas is making people incredible money today, at the expense of tomorrow. Think those folks will stick around to invest in and rehabilitate our depleted husk when they’ve extracted all the profit out of it?

Gee we are so awesome in Texas we keep having to import educated workers for our tech industry instead of educating our own.

South Austin · July 18, 2022

14 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Some young men of conscience need to bring a recording device with them to the post-game "prayer huddle," to the locker room, etc. Record this shit, which any human being with a lick of sense knows is EXACTLY the case. Then release it. All of it. Name names. And file your fucking lawsuit. Make the SCOTUS do what they want to do, what they will inevitably do: declare that we have a "deep national tradition of Christianity, and it is therefore not a violation of the Constitution for a government institution to require adherence to that religion in order to participate in public activities." Let's get this shit over with so we can get to the climax of a full-on religious-motivated civil war. It's what they want. Nothing will get any better until this crisis reaches its climax, so let's get it the fuck over with.

I think we all need to take a moment and offer a non-coerced prayer for Brisket's salvation.

Brisketexan · July 18, 2022

46 minutes ago, South Austin said:

I think we all need to take a moment and offer a non-coerced prayer for Brisket's salvation.

Already got one picked out:

O God:
Ease our suffering in this, our moment of great despair
Yea, admit this good and decent woman into thine arms in the flock in thine heavenly area up there
And Moab, he laidest down in the land of the Canaanites
And yea, though the Hindus speak of Karma, I implore you
Give her a break.
Baruch Ata, Hallelujah!

The Hot Dog Buffet · July 18, 2022

20 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

Fuck off with this line of thinking.

Y’all realize Texas would be first on the list of “GTFO states” for blue states, yes?

And despite the ruby red status of places like Alabama and Mississippi, there’s still 40% of us who hate our overall voting patterns.

Not to mention that the percentage of Black residents is higher in these states than almost any blue state.

And a lot of us in that 40% don’t have the means or privilege to just pick up and move.

I get the sentiment but as a blue dot in a red state it gets real tiring to listen to our supposed allies writing us off to be sacrificed.

At least Alabama elected Doug Jones in the last few years.

When’s the last time a Texas Democrat won a statewide election?

I don't think anyone is saying they would like to kick Alabama out of the union. Just that if Alabamans decide they want to leave, it's not worth fighting a war to keep them because we'd all be better off without them.

washparkhorn · July 18, 2022

When Repugs capture Congress and the Presidency, they will enlarge the Supreme Court and kill the filibuster.

The Constitution is silent on the issue. Moreover, the United States has a long held tradition of changing the size of the Supreme Court (seven times in the history of the Nation)

Expanding the Court to match the number of Federal Circuits is rational. It would enhance judicial efficiency and fairness to have one Supreme Court Justice for each Circuit. Create a commission and get it done, before the Repug theocracy takes over complete control.

C-Man · July 18, 2022

31 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

When Repugs capture Congress and the Presidency, they will enlarge the Supreme Court and kill the filibuster.

The Constitution is silent on the issue. Moreover, the United States has a long held tradition of changing the size of the Supreme Court (seven times in the history of the Nation)

Expanding the Court to match the number of Federal Circuits is rational. It would enhance judicial efficiency and fairness to have one Supreme Court Justice for each Circuit. Create a commission and get it done, before the Repug theocracy takes over complete control.

And really, really work hard to put term limits on SCOTUS justices. They really should NOT be lifetime appointments.

'stache · July 18, 2022

23 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

Fuck off with this line of thinking.

Y’all realize Texas would be first on the list of “GTFO states” for blue states, yes?

And despite the ruby red status of places like Alabama and Mississippi, there’s still 40% of us who hate our overall voting patterns.

Not to mention that the percentage of Black residents is higher in these states than almost any blue state.

And a lot of us in that 40% don’t have the means or privilege to just pick up and move.

I get the sentiment but as a blue dot in a red state it gets real tiring to listen to our supposed allies writing us off to be sacrificed.

At least Alabama elected Doug Jones in the last few years.

When’s the last time a Texas Democrat won a statewide election?

I'm with you in principle, but the rules of the game have changed drastically. Those of us in deep red states for decades have had federal law to at least protect the most basic rights. It's how schools got desegregated, arrests of gays for being gay eliminated, interracial and gay marriage bans deemed invalid, and all sorts of bare minimum protections recognized. The new SCOTUS is clearly going to start leaving literally everything to the states (except anything that might be liberal like climate regulations). The senate will continue to have small red state dominance installing theocracy against the majority of the country's wants or needs. The South might still be segregated today if this court had been in power back them. It's not a sustainable environment for a country. My hope is that certain states would find ways to help pay for moves as might be needed to avoid the hellscape that red states are about to become for not just liberals but anyone with any sense of personal freedom. That's just a reality that we are about to start facing within the next few years. I'm plotting a potential move because I just don't think there are any positives left in my environment.

Mdhorn · July 18, 2022

13 minutes ago, 'stache said:

I'm with you in principle, but the rules of the game have changed drastically. Those of us in deep red states for decades have had federal law to at least protect the most basic rights. It's how schools got desegregated, arrests of gays for being gay eliminated, interracial and gay marriage bans deemed invalid, and all sorts of bare minimum protections recognized. The new SCOTUS is clearly going to start leaving literally everything to the states (except anything that might be liberal like climate regulations). The senate will continue to have small red state dominance installing theocracy against the majority of the country's wants or needs. The South might still be segregated today if this court had been in power back them. It's not a sustainable environment for a country. My hope is that certain states would find ways to help pay for moves as might be needed to avoid the hellscape that red states are about to become for not just liberals but anyone with any sense of personal freedom. That's just a reality that we are about to start facing within the next few years. I'm plotting a potential move because I just don't think there are any positives left in my environment.

I can't wait to see even more Blue State tax dollars go towards Red State governance stupidity. I'm for sending them jack squat based on their views of socialism, much less robbing Peter to pay Paul.

'stache · July 18, 2022

9 minutes ago, Mdhorn said:

I can't wait to see even more Blue State tax dollars go towards Red State governance stupidity. I'm for sending them jack squat based on their views of socialism, much less robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I'll never understand why this is not a more dominant talking point. Our electorate, the ones we're fighting in particular, are literally too stupid to understand or care. Remember when the turtle created the "blue state bailout" meme? Their voters still believe this despite all facts. I wish I believed in hell so I could at least feel comfortable that turtle and his ilk might ever face punishment for their assholery.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-05-15/some-states-like-new-york-send-billions-more-to-federal-government-than-they-get-back

Edited July 18, 2022 by 'stache

elfenix · July 18, 2022

19 minutes ago, 'stache said:

Remember when the turtle created the "blue state bailout" meme?

KY is the second biggest recipient of federal largesse thanks to turtle.

Edited July 18, 2022 by elfenix
fuck you autocorrect that word has two Es.

Nivek · July 18, 2022

And really, really work hard to put term limits on SCOTUS justices. They really should NOT be lifetime appointments.

Caps on appointments would help.

C-Man · July 18, 2022

12 minutes ago, Nivek said:

Caps on appointments would help.

If I follow what you mean, it should cut down on the legislative fuckery that goes on with each and every nomination. If every duly-elected POTUS knew they would get one or two appointments per 4-year term as judges cycle on-and-off SCOTUS, I would think the confirmation basis would be less of a fucking mess.

elfenix · July 22, 2022

the judiciary has taken over immigration policy

Pancho · July 22, 2022

This bitch…

tx 3 putt · July 22, 2022

7 minutes ago, Pancho said:

This bitch…

interesting read ….

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/03/dan-bongino-and-the-big-business-of-returning-trump-to-power/amp

Js1 · July 22, 2022

2 hours ago, elfenix said:

the judiciary has taken over immigration policy

We no longer have 3 equal branches of government.

SKJ · July 22, 2022

Well, when you have one stagnant branch, one inept branch, and one fascist branch, I'm guessing that there would be some problems...

Where are the right wing bitch-asses who complain about activist judges?

Accusation/admission.gif

Js1 · July 22, 2022

35 minutes ago, SKJ said:

Well, when you have one stagnant branch, one inept branch, and one fascist branch, I'm guessing that there would be some problems...

Where are the right wing bitch-asses who complain about activist judges?

Accusation/admission.gif

One branch ceded a ton of its power to another branch because they couldn't/wouldn't do their job, and then two branches worked together for 4 years to stack the third branch to make sure one of the branches, if under Dem control, can't do anything without it being overturned.

Francisco 2.0 · July 28, 2022

Not political.

TIL that the hardest part of getting a case in front of the Supremes isn't the legal issue, or the monetary cost. It's the paper and printing requirements. 9 year old article, but the same rules apply in 2022. Jeez:

http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20130217/petitioning-rube-goldbergs-supreme-court/

Quote

The filing fee (or "docketing fee," as the Court calls it) of $300 is not particularly high. Filing in the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit actually costs more, at $450, strangely enough. Like most appellate courts, the First Circuit did have some rules about typesetting, printing and binding that were different than the district courts'—it demanded Times 14 instead of Times 12—but for $60 I was able to spiral-bind twenty or so copies of my brief and put them in the mail to Boston. For the Supreme Court, I expected a similar level of antiquated regulation and annoying inconvenience.

Was I ever wrong.

Quote

Simply put, the Supreme Court uses its desktop publishing and printing guidelines as a weapon against the American public. The mechanics of this weapon are detailed in an obscure rule that virtually no one has ever heard of, Supreme Court Rule 33.1. Rule 33.1 is quite long, and among attorneys who are members of the Supreme Court Bar, feared. It can make or break a case, and it has.

Before I got too deep into the minutiae of the rule, I decided to check into the option that every single lawyer I spoke with advised me to take, namely, outsourcing the project to a professional Supreme Court brief printing company, and so I called the most well-known Supreme Court brief printing company there is to ask for a quote. (Yes, there really are such companies.) They asked how long the First Circuit and district court opinions were and based on the page length I provided them, quoted me a range of $1,800 to $1,900 to print my brief if I supplied them with all of the text ready to go. If I just handed them a stack of paper, it would be more.

Quote

To be clear—that $1,800 to $1,900 figure represented printing costs alone, not legal fees; I did not have a lawyer in this case. Filing with the Supreme Court is only $300, so something seemed wrong about the printing fees running potentially more than six times as much as the official fees. Yet checking with other sources confirmed that the quoted price range was not out of the ordinary.

That's because what the Supreme Court wants from petitioners, and more than wants, requires of them, is something akin to a seventeen-leaf clover. Or a fire-breathing dragon with a single beefy arm, that's also half giraffe. Its major components certainly do not exist in nature—nor in any common retail store in the country, for that matter. It seems hard to believe, but if you are not in prison and you are not completely unable to pay the $300 docketing fee, you have no choice but to either shell out that $1,800 to $1,900 (though prices do vary), or undertake an epic quest to create this strange sacrificial offering so that the justices might notice the suffering you have come to the courts to resolve.

Spoiler

Each booklet, called a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari (but just as plausibly called Wishes for Space Signals from Judges on Alpha Centauri), must contain a precisely formatted essay with specific sections addressing specific questions that the petitioner desires the Court to address. That is, all things considered, the easy part—though it is by no means easy. Highly sought-after lawyers charge tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, to clients who need to formulate these documents. The hard part is the booklet itself.

The first thing to know is that the finished booklet must be 6 and 1/8th inches wide and 9 and 1/4 inches high.

9 and 1/4 inches is a strange number when it comes to page length. Most of us know paper (so long as we're not in Europe or Asia) as being 8 and 1/2 inches wide by 11 inches high, commonly referred to as "Letter" size paper. If you take a standard sheet of Letter paper and fold it over, you get a booklet that is 5 and 1/2 inches by 8 and 1/2 inches. For the Supreme Court's purposes, that for whatever reason doesn't work. (Interestingly, the dimensions of the printed text block easily fit on a Letter sheet of paper, so Rule 33.1 could be said to be designed to mandate slightly bigger margins, and nothing more.)

Well—you might think (as I did)—maybe they sell 12 and 1/4 inch by 9 and 1/4 inch paper in stores (so that when you fold it over lengthwise you get a booklet that matches the Court's required dimensions).

They most certainly do not sell 12 and 1/4 inch by 9 and 1/4 inch paper in stores. It's one of the only things, in fact, that I've ever typed into Google and not found a single relevant result for. However we farm trees to make paper, we do not farm them to make paper of this size. It does not exist in the marketplace.

That's puzzle number one. Puzzle number two is that the magical breed of paper must be yea thick. How thick? "Not less than 60 pounds in weight," and "unglazed," states Rule 33.1. Upon first glance, I had no idea what this meant. I weigh about 140 pounds—so what would that mean about my paper?

According to the boring Letter-size OfficeMax copy paper in my filing cabinet drawer, normal paper appeared to be 20 pounds in weight. This was confusing, because it seemed that the Supreme Court was asking for paper three times as thick as normal copy paper for the inside of its special booklet. This also made very little sense—until Google actually did turn up something relevant.

In the world of fancy paper, there is apparently more than one way to skin a cat. You can describe paper weight and thickness according to a global standard called GSM (Grams per Square Meter), or you can use archaic terms with no agreed-upon meaning, such as "pounds," and hope that said terms are accompanied by even more capitalized terms that explain context, such as "text," "cover," or "bond." For example, 60 lb. TEXT paper is the same thing as to 24 lb. BOND paper. And 65 lb. COVER paper is much more than 8.33% thicker than 60 lb. TEXT paper, which is not three times thicker than 20 lb. OfficeMax paper in your filing cabinet. In short, it's math from another planet (and thereby lending more credence to the hypothesis that actual justice might be more swiftly arrived at by hoping for signals from Alpha Centauri).

So it's a good thing that Rule 33.1 doesn't specify any of this. All the Supreme Court can tell you is that it wants "60 pound" paper on the inside and "65 pound" paper for the cover. All calling the clerk of the Supreme Court will tell you is the added information that the Court wants cardstock on the outside but probably not on the inside—and that they're not really sure about the precise thickness. So that suggests 60 lb. TEXT paper or heavier—but not cardstock heavy—for the inside and 65 lb. COVER paper or heavier for the cover. All in a page size that doesn't exist.

Then there is puzzle number three, which is the fact that even if you could find this amazingly rare and magical breed of paper, you'd still have the problem of really making it all into a booklet, which requires binding. Rule 33.1 notes that the Supreme Court considers "saddle stitch or perfect binding preferred." So, as the petitioner who is completely at the mercy of the Court, you could do something the court "prefer[s]," or some other thing. Suffice it to say that the other thing is out of the question, instead leaving one to wonder, "What does 'saddle stitch' mean? And what does 'perfect binding' mean?"

YouTube, fortunately, has all the answers. Saddle stitch means that you staple (or if you are Benjamin Franklin or someone his age, string, with needle and thread) the booklet together at two or three locations along the spine. Perfect binding involves the use of glue and lots of mini-booklets to make a big booklet, which is how many of our mainstream books are published with giant hulking machines that are made in China. Saddle stitching is clearly the cheaper and easier option, but it has a limit: if your booklet is too thick, the staples (or even your needle and thread) might not be able to get through, and so it won't work.

Even with all of this information, it was hard to know where to begin, let alone to resist the urge to throw something in the Supreme Court's general direction (for me, east). It was at least becoming clear to me why printing fifty or so booklets for the Supreme Court might cost as much as a lousy used car.

Making the decision to saddle stitch the booklets, come hell or high water, at least cemented some of the many variables in place. Since the Court also requires all booklets to be printed on both sides (like any real book), I would need to fold over the sheets of paper to reach the required size, as opposed to cutting one thousand double-sided 6 and 1/8 inch by 9 and 1/4 inch pages from Letter sized sheets of paper, which would be relatively easy. The next step up from Letter is Legal, which at 8 and 1/2 inches by 14 inches would still not be large enough to make the booklet signatures (the big pages on which two small pages would be printed on each side). One more step up, Tabloid (also called Ledger), measures 11 inches by 17 inches, and finally is.

Talking to a friendly person named Arren at Stanford Law School's copy room in the basement (who interestingly enough had never tried to print a Supreme Court brief before) taught me a valuable lesson: even if I managed to somehow get this all to work with Tabloid-size paper, the images of the small pages on each signature would either have to be consistently in the center of each big page, necessitating four cuts (instead of two if printed in the corner) to get the paper down to the desired size; or precisely alternated so that the images did not print in opposite corners on the front and back when running through the printer. A third option was to pre-cut the paper to 12 1/4 inches by 9 1/4 inches ahead of time, and then run that through—but the Law School's giant Xerox machines of course had no such Bizarro size paper tray and might not handle the custom size reliably. Also, the printing fees would come to something around $120 at least, and would probably not be ready by my deadline since the Law School copy room is not open on weekends.

This led me to another key decision: I would not be able to use the Law School's giant Xerox printers. I would have to buy my own.

Though the Supreme Court does mandate specific paper colors in Rule 33.1 for different kinds of briefs, it fortunately (and mercifully) only desires black ink. And although I already had two laser printers of my own quite capable of printing in black, and one of those even has a duplexer, neither could print on Tabloid-size paper. I would have to buy a Tabloid printer and a 17-inch-or-larger paper cutter to get the job done.

Looking for new equipment of this type on the Staples web site indicated that I should be prepared to spend many thousands of dollars, which would defeat the purpose of avoiding the printing company. So I turned to Craigslist. In short order I found what looked to be an industrial-strength guillotine paper cutter available in a nearby city for $40, and an HP LaserJet 5000N, capable of printing on Tabloid paper at a claimed speed of eight pages per minute. Even though the printer's owner upped the price from $145 to $170 at the last minute ("I'm giving you a model with toner!" he reasoned before I got him back down to $160), I bought them both and was glad to find that they both fit in my car (at least separately). So, for $200 and about $10 of gas, my equipment needs were met.

The paper cutter did its job fairly well, slicing through twenty to thirty sheets of paper at a time easily. The only problem was that the paper would inevitably curl ever so slightly due to the shearing action caused by the blade, in turn causing the cut to curve a little. Clamping down on the paper with the two vices attached to the machine resulted in less shear, but also caused the bottom pages to be marked with a diagonal ridge texture where the main clamp hit them.

While I was trying to get the hang of the paper cutter and upgrading the used printer's JetDirect firmware (skipping ten years of revisions), I was also writing the actual legal brief for the Court to read. Compared to other briefs in the case before lower courts it was fairly short, with a maximum length of 9,000 words. The main issue was that the Supreme Court required me to include all of the previous orders from the lower courts—typeset in the same font as the main document, on the same paper size, without making photocopies or reducing the original page images. This required some effort.

Anyone who has encountered the Supreme Court's many rules before, or even read a slip opinion, will recognize New Century Schoolbook as the Court's favorite font. Consequently, everything had to be set in New Century Schoolbook. Though I had a PDF of the district court order (originally typed in Microsoft Word), it was typeset in an ugly bitmapped Type 3 PostScript font, and the formatting (especially for citations and footnotes) of course did not transfer over by copying and pasting. I therefore spent several hours re-creating the exact same document I already had, just in a different font on a different page size. To make matters worse, all of the page numbers had to be re-assigned on a section by section basis (Roman numerals, then standard Arabic numerals) for the main brief and the "appendix," which contained all of the prior orders.

When all of the typesetting was done in Microsoft Word, I started highlighting the cited cases to automatically build the Table of Contents and Table of Authorities—a painful ritual that most litigators (or more likely, their paralegals) know well. It was only then that I realized that I would not be able to use Word to do the actual printing. I've been using Microsoft Word 97 for years without any desire to upgrade, and I was pretty sure that at least my version did not support booklet printing. (Even if it somehow did, the PostScript driver on Windows also has a bug that causes random letters to disappear on the page, and New Century Schoolbook is a PostScript font.)

So began the great Adobe InDesign transition. I imported the Word document onto my custom InDesign page size document without too much trouble, re-assigned all of the page numbers again, created all of the sections, and realized that the font spacing differed substantially enough between the two programs that all of the page numbers were off. InDesign does not natively support legal features such as building a Table of Authorities (but it is magically exempt from the disappearing letters PostScript bug), so I manually edited all of the citations to make sure they still corresponded to the correct pages. When I was all done, I finally could print in booklet format directly to my printer, or to a PDF.

Once printing began on the LaserJet 5000N, I quickly regretted not springing for a printer with a duplexer. When you need to print about 1,000 pages, 8 pages per minute seems unbearably slow. To avoid the mind-numbing boredom associated with the task, I cut about 50 pages down to their proper size at a time, and then stood in front of the printer to run them through the manual paper tray, and then cut some more. After a full afternoon of printing, this yielded a stack of 1,000 oddly-large pages with two columns of text, single-sided. The next day, I repeated the process on the other side.

At this point I realized I'd made a mistake. I knew that page order mattered, so I had reversed the output when printing side one of each page. This meant that the stacks of paper could be put through the printer again in normal order when I printed on their backs. Unfortunately, when complete, this meant that my booklets started at the end, not the beginning. So I had to manually reverse the page order for all of them. I should have reversed the order only when printing the backs.

I also came to hate my printer—despite producing beautifully clear and crisp output—because of its tendency to grab two or three pages at a time. (In contrast, my much newer HP LaserJet P2050dn printer with the duplexer has a problem where it won't grab any pages at all. Life is full of cruel ironies.) Whenever a dual or triple page grab occurred, which was frequently, the sequence of pages printed on the back side would be off, I'd have to cancel the print job, and then backtrack to figure out where things had started to go wrong. Occasionally, I realized that when printing the front side, the printer had grabbed two pages at a time. Even though I knew about this early on and manually went through each booklet's stack to weed out the blank pages, I missed a few, and it still caused the sequence to go out of order. A duplexer would have therefore made my operation much more than twice as fast.

Finally, I had forty-nine stacks of twenty double-sized sheets of custom-size, custom-thickness paper. I was ready to print the Supreme Court's special covers from a separate PDF file. I opened the package of white 65 lb. COVER paper that I had special ordered, and realized two things: first, that it was textured, which I hadn't expected, and second, that it wasn't the same color white. It might be cream. Then again, maybe it was white. Or cream. But in a certain light, definitely white. Kind of creamy-white. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court color chart specified that CREAM covers were reserved for amicus briefs. I decided to plow ahead anyway, since it had taken a week and $42.77 for this paper to get to my doorstep, and I didn't have another week to wait. (By comparison, the paper for the inside of the booklets had been easy to find. I ordered four reams, or 2,000 pages, from Costco for $52.10, and only used half.)

Despite the higher thickness, the test cover went through the printer just fine, much to my relief. Then I noticed the ink looked a little smudged. Running my finger over it made it very smudged. Just brushing another sheet over it smudged it even more. Apparently, laser printer toner would not stick to this special kind of special paper. The fuser couldn't heat it enough in the valleys of the paper texture, even when I changed the printer settings to account for cardstock.

I knew my only option was to call in a favor. My roommate had purchased a massive Canon ink-jet printer designed for printing color photographs months before, and hadn't used it in a while. When I asked him if he'd mind printing forty-nine Supreme Court booklet covers on it, he graciously dug it out of his closet and hooked it up. Fortunately, the paper absorbed the ink perfectly, and I didn't have to go on a hunt for a giant ink-jet of my own after all. Unfortunately, printing on the highest quality meant that the printer went painfully slow. After about an hour, it finished printing the last page.

I still had to print the certificates of compliance and service for the Court and the other parties, and write a $300 check for the docketing fee. Fortunately, these could be printed on normal paper on a normal printer and signed with a normal pen. Life suddenly seemed so easy!

When the last page had been printed, it was Sunday at about 3:00 P.M., much later than I'd hoped to finish the first part of the project. The second part involved very carefully taking the foot-tall stack of paper out of my house and to my car so that it could be transported to the nearby FedEx Office (formerly Kinko's), which had assured me over the phone that it could saddle stitch the booklet together for twenty-five cents per booklet—a bargain! At FedEx, a friendly worker named Adrian looked at the booklet and confirmed that it would work, although the finished ones would be slightly bulky. That was fine with me. He asked if I wanted the edges trimmed, so that the middle pages wouldn't stick out so much past the edges—a natural effect of folding over so many sheets of paper. It cost another twenty five cents per booklet, he said. I thought about what the most professional thing to do would be, and agreed. He assured me that the booklets would be ready by 4:00 P.M. the following day—just enough time to go to the Post Office and mail them to Washington.

At 3:00 P.M. on Monday I drove back to FedEx to see if the booklets were ready. They were, and they looked great. I counted them to make sure they were all there, and then hurried to the Post Office, where I began the last part of the process: taping staples.

Supreme Court justices hate staples (apparently), so the Court recommends that petitioners place Scotch tape over them when saddle stitch binding is used with staples. At this point I realized I didn't know if the Court wanted me to tape the staples on the outside of the binding, or in the middle pages on the inside, where they are exposed. So I figured I'd do both. I'd brought along a roll of tape (since the Post Office is too bankrupt to supply it) and my own scissors, and stood in a sunny window for an hour cutting half-inch long pieces of tape to cover the two staples in each of the forty-nine booklets. It got warm very quickly, and was arguably the worst part of the whole process because I knew it was so close to being over.

As I was in the midst of this completely useless and arbitrary operation, a group of Chinese-speaking girls and one older male approached me and asked where they could find a stationer. Unsure if I had heard correctly, I asked them to repeat their request, and they held out a smart phone that had the English word "stationer" on it next to Chinese characters. I told them I didn't know what they meant. Finally I heard the words "pen" and "paper," and asked, "Oh, are you looking for office supplies?" They nodded vigorously. "Oh, you need to go to Staples!" I exclaimed. They thanked me, refused my offer to show them on a map, and I returned to putting tiny pieces of tape on a couple hundred more of my own staples for reasons I did not fully understand.

I had pre-printed postage on-line for a medium-size Flat Rate Priority Mail box, having calculated that the booklets should fit. In reality, they mostly fit. The box was about a half inch too short to get all forty destined for the Court in, but I did manage to get thirty-five stuffed into the box without ruining them. For the remaining five I had to pay just as much for a second Priority Mail envelope. (Lucky for me, I chose the Monday that the Post Office was again raising rates to finish the project.) I made sure I'd included all of the proper certificates and the check, and then sent everything on its way.

When I got home, irritated, nervous and exhausted, I decided to actually measure the damn booklet that I'd saved for myself. It certainly looked professional—but it was not professional enough. It was, in fact, five-sixteenths of an inch too narrow. I measured it again. It was definitely too narrow. Then I realized what had happened.

When Adrian at FedEx had offered to trim the pages at the bargain price of a quarter per booklet, he had neglected to mention the preferred method: chopping off the entire margin. So despite my having told him about the Court's required custom page size, he or some other FedEx worker took all of my booklets, put them under a giant paper cutter, and hacked off what seemed to them enough paper to get a nice clean edge.

I was extremely nervous now. It was very clear that the clerk of the Court was quite particular about the requirements. The next day during business hours I called, but no one answered. Eventually, that Friday, I got a call back from a "Mr. Harris," who said that the booklets had just arrived and they would be examined the following week. So I stressed some more.

Facing the prospect of having to re-do everything, and generally furious that I'd had to do any of it to start with (besides writing my legal brief), I decided not to leave everything to the last minute. I went back onto Craigslist and tried to find out if the more sophisticated printer I'd thought about purchasing—capable of printing fifty pages per minute double sided—was still available in Richmond, California, an hour and a half away. It was. So I got in my car and drove to Richmond in rush hour traffic.

This proved to be a mistake for two reasons. The first, of course, was that rush hour traffic near Berkeley (which Bay Area natives will recognize as the intersection of interstates 80, 580, 880, and 980) is horrible. The second was that when I finally got to see the printer, sitting in the back of a combined Mexican-Portuguese-restaurant-slash-copy-store in an impoverished part of a very clearly poor town, I instantly knew it would not fit in my car. It was enormous and weighed 160 lbs.

Luckily, the seller had a van, and generously offered to drive it down to Palo Alto the following day. I gave him an extra wad of cash for the trouble. If the Supreme Court was going to object to five-sixteenths of an inch, I'd be ready. If it didn't, I could easily start a business printing Supreme Court briefs now that I was wise to their game.

Finally, on Wednesday, Mr. Harris called again from a blocked number. My booklets had been accepted.

In the end, I spent $200 on equipment, around $20 on gas, probably another $20 on electricity (since laser printing is very energy intensive), $300 on the official fee, $95 on fancy paper, $26 on binding, and $24 on postage. Then I sold the LaserJet 5000N for $175 and bought a LaserJet 9050dn (worth nearly $4,000) for $280. My total costs therefore came to about $790, of which $490 was spent preparing the booklets. (I won't include the expense of Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign, or the years spent acquiring desktop publishing skills because I already had all of those things, unlike the other ingredients in this crazy soup.) So I basically saved myself up to $1,410, or 75% of the quoted expense.

I also couldn't help but to use the brief itself to make a point to the Court about their Rule. Despite the strong suggestion that one ask the Court to answer no more than three questions, I added a fourth to my Petition: "WHETHER, this Court's Rules regarding document submission (e.g. Rule 33.1) and the various conflicting rules of lower courts serve the interests of justice in an age of instantaneous and costless information transmission over the internet." It's extremely doubtful that the Court will actually answer it.

Clearly, the Rule begs many questions. How can the Supreme Court reasonably expect people to file if they are not incredibly wealthy or already professional printers? Why are the dimensions required so unusual? Who cut their hand on a staple? How much does it cost the Court to process documents in this manner, and how much would using an electronic process save? And most fundamentally, if this abject nonsense is typical of the justice system at the highest levels, why do we place our trust in it at all?

It is now a few weeks later. I have some leftover giant paper, a paper cutter big enough to chop off tree limbs, and an unreasonably large, fast printer. It is unlikely the system will change anytime soon. So I have one final question. Does anyone need some Supreme Court booklets printed?

NWBuck · July 28, 2022

43 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

That's because what the Supreme Court wants from petitioners, and more than wants, requires of them, is something akin to a seventeen-leaf clover. Or a fire-breathing dragon with a single beefy arm, that's also half giraffe.

Reveal hidden contents

Each booklet, called a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari (but just as plausibly called Wishes for Space Signals from Judges on Alpha Centauri), must contain a precisely formatted essay with specific sections addressing specific questions that the petitioner desires the Court to address. That is, all things considered, the easy part—though it is by no means easy. Highly sought-after lawyers charge tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, to clients who need to formulate these documents. The hard part is the booklet itself.

The first thing to know is that the finished booklet must be 6 and 1/8th inches wide and 9 and 1/4 inches high.

9 and 1/4 inches is a strange number when it comes to page length. Most of us know paper (so long as we're not in Europe or Asia) as being 8 and 1/2 inches wide by 11 inches high, commonly referred to as "Letter" size paper. If you take a standard sheet of Letter paper and fold it over, you get a booklet that is 5 and 1/2 inches by 8 and 1/2 inches. For the Supreme Court's purposes, that for whatever reason doesn't work. (Interestingly, the dimensions of the printed text block easily fit on a Letter sheet of paper, so Rule 33.1 could be said to be designed to mandate slightly bigger margins, and nothing more.)

Well—you might think (as I did)—maybe they sell 12 and 1/4 inch by 9 and 1/4 inch paper in stores (so that when you fold it over lengthwise you get a booklet that matches the Court's required dimensions).

They most certainly do not sell 12 and 1/4 inch by 9 and 1/4 inch paper in stores. It's one of the only things, in fact, that I've ever typed into Google and not found a single relevant result for. However we farm trees to make paper, we do not farm them to make paper of this size. It does not exist in the marketplace.

That's puzzle number one. Puzzle number two is that the magical breed of paper must be yea thick. How thick? "Not less than 60 pounds in weight," and "unglazed," states Rule 33.1. Upon first glance, I had no idea what this meant. I weigh about 140 pounds—so what would that mean about my paper?

According to the boring Letter-size OfficeMax copy paper in my filing cabinet drawer, normal paper appeared to be 20 pounds in weight. This was confusing, because it seemed that the Supreme Court was asking for paper three times as thick as normal copy paper for the inside of its special booklet. This also made very little sense—until Google actually did turn up something relevant.

In the world of fancy paper, there is apparently more than one way to skin a cat. You can describe paper weight and thickness according to a global standard called GSM (Grams per Square Meter), or you can use archaic terms with no agreed-upon meaning, such as "pounds," and hope that said terms are accompanied by even more capitalized terms that explain context, such as "text," "cover," or "bond." For example, 60 lb. TEXT paper is the same thing as to 24 lb. BOND paper. And 65 lb. COVER paper is much more than 8.33% thicker than 60 lb. TEXT paper, which is not three times thicker than 20 lb. OfficeMax paper in your filing cabinet. In short, it's math from another planet (and thereby lending more credence to the hypothesis that actual justice might be more swiftly arrived at by hoping for signals from Alpha Centauri).

So it's a good thing that Rule 33.1 doesn't specify any of this. All the Supreme Court can tell you is that it wants "60 pound" paper on the inside and "65 pound" paper for the cover. All calling the clerk of the Supreme Court will tell you is the added information that the Court wants cardstock on the outside but probably not on the inside—and that they're not really sure about the precise thickness. So that suggests 60 lb. TEXT paper or heavier—but not cardstock heavy—for the inside and 65 lb. COVER paper or heavier for the cover. All in a page size that doesn't exist.

Then there is puzzle number three, which is the fact that even if you could find this amazingly rare and magical breed of paper, you'd still have the problem of really making it all into a booklet, which requires binding. Rule 33.1 notes that the Supreme Court considers "saddle stitch or perfect binding preferred." So, as the petitioner who is completely at the mercy of the Court, you could do something the court "prefer[s]," or some other thing. Suffice it to say that the other thing is out of the question, instead leaving one to wonder, "What does 'saddle stitch' mean? And what does 'perfect binding' mean?"

YouTube, fortunately, has all the answers. Saddle stitch means that you staple (or if you are Benjamin Franklin or someone his age, string, with needle and thread) the booklet together at two or three locations along the spine. Perfect binding involves the use of glue and lots of mini-booklets to make a big booklet, which is how many of our mainstream books are published with giant hulking machines that are made in China. Saddle stitching is clearly the cheaper and easier option, but it has a limit: if your booklet is too thick, the staples (or even your needle and thread) might not be able to get through, and so it won't work.

Even with all of this information, it was hard to know where to begin, let alone to resist the urge to throw something in the Supreme Court's general direction (for me, east). It was at least becoming clear to me why printing fifty or so booklets for the Supreme Court might cost as much as a lousy used car.

Making the decision to saddle stitch the booklets, come hell or high water, at least cemented some of the many variables in place. Since the Court also requires all booklets to be printed on both sides (like any real book), I would need to fold over the sheets of paper to reach the required size, as opposed to cutting one thousand double-sided 6 and 1/8 inch by 9 and 1/4 inch pages from Letter sized sheets of paper, which would be relatively easy. The next step up from Letter is Legal, which at 8 and 1/2 inches by 14 inches would still not be large enough to make the booklet signatures (the big pages on which two small pages would be printed on each side). One more step up, Tabloid (also called Ledger), measures 11 inches by 17 inches, and finally is.

Talking to a friendly person named Arren at Stanford Law School's copy room in the basement (who interestingly enough had never tried to print a Supreme Court brief before) taught me a valuable lesson: even if I managed to somehow get this all to work with Tabloid-size paper, the images of the small pages on each signature would either have to be consistently in the center of each big page, necessitating four cuts (instead of two if printed in the corner) to get the paper down to the desired size; or precisely alternated so that the images did not print in opposite corners on the front and back when running through the printer. A third option was to pre-cut the paper to 12 1/4 inches by 9 1/4 inches ahead of time, and then run that through—but the Law School's giant Xerox machines of course had no such Bizarro size paper tray and might not handle the custom size reliably. Also, the printing fees would come to something around $120 at least, and would probably not be ready by my deadline since the Law School copy room is not open on weekends.

This led me to another key decision: I would not be able to use the Law School's giant Xerox printers. I would have to buy my own.

Though the Supreme Court does mandate specific paper colors in Rule 33.1 for different kinds of briefs, it fortunately (and mercifully) only desires black ink. And although I already had two laser printers of my own quite capable of printing in black, and one of those even has a duplexer, neither could print on Tabloid-size paper. I would have to buy a Tabloid printer and a 17-inch-or-larger paper cutter to get the job done.

Looking for new equipment of this type on the Staples web site indicated that I should be prepared to spend many thousands of dollars, which would defeat the purpose of avoiding the printing company. So I turned to Craigslist. In short order I found what looked to be an industrial-strength guillotine paper cutter available in a nearby city for $40, and an HP LaserJet 5000N, capable of printing on Tabloid paper at a claimed speed of eight pages per minute. Even though the printer's owner upped the price from $145 to $170 at the last minute ("I'm giving you a model with toner!" he reasoned before I got him back down to $160), I bought them both and was glad to find that they both fit in my car (at least separately). So, for $200 and about $10 of gas, my equipment needs were met.

The paper cutter did its job fairly well, slicing through twenty to thirty sheets of paper at a time easily. The only problem was that the paper would inevitably curl ever so slightly due to the shearing action caused by the blade, in turn causing the cut to curve a little. Clamping down on the paper with the two vices attached to the machine resulted in less shear, but also caused the bottom pages to be marked with a diagonal ridge texture where the main clamp hit them.

While I was trying to get the hang of the paper cutter and upgrading the used printer's JetDirect firmware (skipping ten years of revisions), I was also writing the actual legal brief for the Court to read. Compared to other briefs in the case before lower courts it was fairly short, with a maximum length of 9,000 words. The main issue was that the Supreme Court required me to include all of the previous orders from the lower courts—typeset in the same font as the main document, on the same paper size, without making photocopies or reducing the original page images. This required some effort.

Anyone who has encountered the Supreme Court's many rules before, or even read a slip opinion, will recognize New Century Schoolbook as the Court's favorite font. Consequently, everything had to be set in New Century Schoolbook. Though I had a PDF of the district court order (originally typed in Microsoft Word), it was typeset in an ugly bitmapped Type 3 PostScript font, and the formatting (especially for citations and footnotes) of course did not transfer over by copying and pasting. I therefore spent several hours re-creating the exact same document I already had, just in a different font on a different page size. To make matters worse, all of the page numbers had to be re-assigned on a section by section basis (Roman numerals, then standard Arabic numerals) for the main brief and the "appendix," which contained all of the prior orders.

When all of the typesetting was done in Microsoft Word, I started highlighting the cited cases to automatically build the Table of Contents and Table of Authorities—a painful ritual that most litigators (or more likely, their paralegals) know well. It was only then that I realized that I would not be able to use Word to do the actual printing. I've been using Microsoft Word 97 for years without any desire to upgrade, and I was pretty sure that at least my version did not support booklet printing. (Even if it somehow did, the PostScript driver on Windows also has a bug that causes random letters to disappear on the page, and New Century Schoolbook is a PostScript font.)

So began the great Adobe InDesign transition. I imported the Word document onto my custom InDesign page size document without too much trouble, re-assigned all of the page numbers again, created all of the sections, and realized that the font spacing differed substantially enough between the two programs that all of the page numbers were off. InDesign does not natively support legal features such as building a Table of Authorities (but it is magically exempt from the disappearing letters PostScript bug), so I manually edited all of the citations to make sure they still corresponded to the correct pages. When I was all done, I finally could print in booklet format directly to my printer, or to a PDF.

Once printing began on the LaserJet 5000N, I quickly regretted not springing for a printer with a duplexer. When you need to print about 1,000 pages, 8 pages per minute seems unbearably slow. To avoid the mind-numbing boredom associated with the task, I cut about 50 pages down to their proper size at a time, and then stood in front of the printer to run them through the manual paper tray, and then cut some more. After a full afternoon of printing, this yielded a stack of 1,000 oddly-large pages with two columns of text, single-sided. The next day, I repeated the process on the other side.

At this point I realized I'd made a mistake. I knew that page order mattered, so I had reversed the output when printing side one of each page. This meant that the stacks of paper could be put through the printer again in normal order when I printed on their backs. Unfortunately, when complete, this meant that my booklets started at the end, not the beginning. So I had to manually reverse the page order for all of them. I should have reversed the order only when printing the backs.

I also came to hate my printer—despite producing beautifully clear and crisp output—because of its tendency to grab two or three pages at a time. (In contrast, my much newer HP LaserJet P2050dn printer with the duplexer has a problem where it won't grab any pages at all. Life is full of cruel ironies.) Whenever a dual or triple page grab occurred, which was frequently, the sequence of pages printed on the back side would be off, I'd have to cancel the print job, and then backtrack to figure out where things had started to go wrong. Occasionally, I realized that when printing the front side, the printer had grabbed two pages at a time. Even though I knew about this early on and manually went through each booklet's stack to weed out the blank pages, I missed a few, and it still caused the sequence to go out of order. A duplexer would have therefore made my operation much more than twice as fast.

Finally, I had forty-nine stacks of twenty double-sized sheets of custom-size, custom-thickness paper. I was ready to print the Supreme Court's special covers from a separate PDF file. I opened the package of white 65 lb. COVER paper that I had special ordered, and realized two things: first, that it was textured, which I hadn't expected, and second, that it wasn't the same color white. It might be cream. Then again, maybe it was white. Or cream. But in a certain light, definitely white. Kind of creamy-white. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court color chart specified that CREAM covers were reserved for amicus briefs. I decided to plow ahead anyway, since it had taken a week and $42.77 for this paper to get to my doorstep, and I didn't have another week to wait. (By comparison, the paper for the inside of the booklets had been easy to find. I ordered four reams, or 2,000 pages, from Costco for $52.10, and only used half.)

Despite the higher thickness, the test cover went through the printer just fine, much to my relief. Then I noticed the ink looked a little smudged. Running my finger over it made it very smudged. Just brushing another sheet over it smudged it even more. Apparently, laser printer toner would not stick to this special kind of special paper. The fuser couldn't heat it enough in the valleys of the paper texture, even when I changed the printer settings to account for cardstock.

I knew my only option was to call in a favor. My roommate had purchased a massive Canon ink-jet printer designed for printing color photographs months before, and hadn't used it in a while. When I asked him if he'd mind printing forty-nine Supreme Court booklet covers on it, he graciously dug it out of his closet and hooked it up. Fortunately, the paper absorbed the ink perfectly, and I didn't have to go on a hunt for a giant ink-jet of my own after all. Unfortunately, printing on the highest quality meant that the printer went painfully slow. After about an hour, it finished printing the last page.

I still had to print the certificates of compliance and service for the Court and the other parties, and write a $300 check for the docketing fee. Fortunately, these could be printed on normal paper on a normal printer and signed with a normal pen. Life suddenly seemed so easy!

When the last page had been printed, it was Sunday at about 3:00 P.M., much later than I'd hoped to finish the first part of the project. The second part involved very carefully taking the foot-tall stack of paper out of my house and to my car so that it could be transported to the nearby FedEx Office (formerly Kinko's), which had assured me over the phone that it could saddle stitch the booklet together for twenty-five cents per booklet—a bargain! At FedEx, a friendly worker named Adrian looked at the booklet and confirmed that it would work, although the finished ones would be slightly bulky. That was fine with me. He asked if I wanted the edges trimmed, so that the middle pages wouldn't stick out so much past the edges—a natural effect of folding over so many sheets of paper. It cost another twenty five cents per booklet, he said. I thought about what the most professional thing to do would be, and agreed. He assured me that the booklets would be ready by 4:00 P.M. the following day—just enough time to go to the Post Office and mail them to Washington.

At 3:00 P.M. on Monday I drove back to FedEx to see if the booklets were ready. They were, and they looked great. I counted them to make sure they were all there, and then hurried to the Post Office, where I began the last part of the process: taping staples.

Supreme Court justices hate staples (apparently), so the Court recommends that petitioners place Scotch tape over them when saddle stitch binding is used with staples. At this point I realized I didn't know if the Court wanted me to tape the staples on the outside of the binding, or in the middle pages on the inside, where they are exposed. So I figured I'd do both. I'd brought along a roll of tape (since the Post Office is too bankrupt to supply it) and my own scissors, and stood in a sunny window for an hour cutting half-inch long pieces of tape to cover the two staples in each of the forty-nine booklets. It got warm very quickly, and was arguably the worst part of the whole process because I knew it was so close to being over.

As I was in the midst of this completely useless and arbitrary operation, a group of Chinese-speaking girls and one older male approached me and asked where they could find a stationer. Unsure if I had heard correctly, I asked them to repeat their request, and they held out a smart phone that had the English word "stationer" on it next to Chinese characters. I told them I didn't know what they meant. Finally I heard the words "pen" and "paper," and asked, "Oh, are you looking for office supplies?" They nodded vigorously. "Oh, you need to go to Staples!" I exclaimed. They thanked me, refused my offer to show them on a map, and I returned to putting tiny pieces of tape on a couple hundred more of my own staples for reasons I did not fully understand.

I had pre-printed postage on-line for a medium-size Flat Rate Priority Mail box, having calculated that the booklets should fit. In reality, they mostly fit. The box was about a half inch too short to get all forty destined for the Court in, but I did manage to get thirty-five stuffed into the box without ruining them. For the remaining five I had to pay just as much for a second Priority Mail envelope. (Lucky for me, I chose the Monday that the Post Office was again raising rates to finish the project.) I made sure I'd included all of the proper certificates and the check, and then sent everything on its way.

When I got home, irritated, nervous and exhausted, I decided to actually measure the damn booklet that I'd saved for myself. It certainly looked professional—but it was not professional enough. It was, in fact, five-sixteenths of an inch too narrow. I measured it again. It was definitely too narrow. Then I realized what had happened.

When Adrian at FedEx had offered to trim the pages at the bargain price of a quarter per booklet, he had neglected to mention the preferred method: chopping off the entire margin. So despite my having told him about the Court's required custom page size, he or some other FedEx worker took all of my booklets, put them under a giant paper cutter, and hacked off what seemed to them enough paper to get a nice clean edge.

I was extremely nervous now. It was very clear that the clerk of the Court was quite particular about the requirements. The next day during business hours I called, but no one answered. Eventually, that Friday, I got a call back from a "Mr. Harris," who said that the booklets had just arrived and they would be examined the following week. So I stressed some more.

Facing the prospect of having to re-do everything, and generally furious that I'd had to do any of it to start with (besides writing my legal brief), I decided not to leave everything to the last minute. I went back onto Craigslist and tried to find out if the more sophisticated printer I'd thought about purchasing—capable of printing fifty pages per minute double sided—was still available in Richmond, California, an hour and a half away. It was. So I got in my car and drove to Richmond in rush hour traffic.

This proved to be a mistake for two reasons. The first, of course, was that rush hour traffic near Berkeley (which Bay Area natives will recognize as the intersection of interstates 80, 580, 880, and 980) is horrible. The second was that when I finally got to see the printer, sitting in the back of a combined Mexican-Portuguese-restaurant-slash-copy-store in an impoverished part of a very clearly poor town, I instantly knew it would not fit in my car. It was enormous and weighed 160 lbs.

Luckily, the seller had a van, and generously offered to drive it down to Palo Alto the following day. I gave him an extra wad of cash for the trouble. If the Supreme Court was going to object to five-sixteenths of an inch, I'd be ready. If it didn't, I could easily start a business printing Supreme Court briefs now that I was wise to their game.

Finally, on Wednesday, Mr. Harris called again from a blocked number. My booklets had been accepted.

In the end, I spent $200 on equipment, around $20 on gas, probably another $20 on electricity (since laser printing is very energy intensive), $300 on the official fee, $95 on fancy paper, $26 on binding, and $24 on postage. Then I sold the LaserJet 5000N for $175 and bought a LaserJet 9050dn (worth nearly $4,000) for $280. My total costs therefore came to about $790, of which $490 was spent preparing the booklets. (I won't include the expense of Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign, or the years spent acquiring desktop publishing skills because I already had all of those things, unlike the other ingredients in this crazy soup.) So I basically saved myself up to $1,410, or 75% of the quoted expense.

I also couldn't help but to use the brief itself to make a point to the Court about their Rule. Despite the strong suggestion that one ask the Court to answer no more than three questions, I added a fourth to my Petition: "WHETHER, this Court's Rules regarding document submission (e.g. Rule 33.1) and the various conflicting rules of lower courts serve the interests of justice in an age of instantaneous and costless information transmission over the internet." It's extremely doubtful that the Court will actually answer it.

Clearly, the Rule begs many questions. How can the Supreme Court reasonably expect people to file if they are not incredibly wealthy or already professional printers? Why are the dimensions required so unusual? Who cut their hand on a staple? How much does it cost the Court to process documents in this manner, and how much would using an electronic process save? And most fundamentally, if this abject nonsense is typical of the justice system at the highest levels, why do we place our trust in it at all?

It is now a few weeks later. I have some leftover giant paper, a paper cutter big enough to chop off tree limbs, and an unreasonably large, fast printer. It is unlikely the system will change anytime soon. So I have one final question. Does anyone need some Supreme Court booklets printed?

Edited July 28, 2022 by NWBuck
Clarity

TheStoicPaisano · July 28, 2022

Sry for body shaming.

TexEx15 · July 29, 2022

Remind me again about the whole non-partisan court thing.

RexWilson · July 29, 2022

"Religious liberty is under attack in many places because it is dangerous to those who want to hold complete power," Alito said. "It also probably grows out of something dark and deep in the human DNA -- a tendency to distrust and dislike people who are not like ourselves," he added.

Sounds like he describing himself.

WhatTheBuck · July 29, 2022

Just what you want to see, political snark from a Supreme Court Justice who doesn’t know what DNA does.

Biff Tannen · July 29, 2022

What a fucking asshole.

Satchel · July 29, 2022

The SC is just latest in a string of once venerable American institutions that has lost favor with the American people.

HenryJames · July 29, 2022

Just an apolitical justice doing apolitical stuff.

SKJ · July 29, 2022

I swear to God, the only saving grace that uncle Thomas ruckus sits on the court is watching him soft shoe and be Stephen to the Django in every situation.

He's stuck self- loathing through his horrid, backbroken life but able to even live his own heritage and to suck the white cocks of every conservative justice to try and prove his alliance, joyfully fullthroating every piece of racism his cohorts can muster and then asking "got anything else for me massah" his whole pathetic life.

I wish some actual historian would write the book of his uncle Tom ass pretty soon so that he would be alive to be able to read it, and to maybe realize the truth of his filth before he so rightly dies in the arms of his fat, horrid ditch pig (thanks @bama) wife that truly really only loves him for his subservience to her master race class, such as he is her house boy.

I wish that book to be written, and for him to have to see that truth.

And then to die with that truth constantly flashing before his eyes as he shuffles off this mortal coil understanding that he was one of the worst humans to ever dawn a robe post Warren.

But other than that, he's cool

Edited July 29, 2022 by SKJ
@

Satchel · July 29, 2022

15 minutes ago, SKJ said:

I swear to God, the only saving grace that uncle Thomas ruckus sits on the court is watching him soft shoe and be Stephen to the Django in every situation.

He's stuck self- loathing through his horrid, backbroken life but able to even live his own heritage and to suck the white cocks of every conservative justice to try and prove his alliance, joyfully fullthroating every piece of racism his cohorts can muster and then asking "got anything else for me massah" his whole pathetic life.

I wish some actual historian would write the book of his uncle Tom ass pretty soon so that he would be alive to be able to read it, and to maybe realize the truth of his filth before he so rightly dies in the arms of his fat, horrid ditch pig (thanks @bama) wife that truly really only loves him for his subservience to her master race class, such as he is her house boy.

I wish that book to be written, and for him to have to see that truth.

And then to die with that truth constantly flashing before his eyes as he shuffles off this mortal coil understanding that he was one of the worst humans to ever dawn a robe post Warren.

But other than that, he's cool

Agree with this and what I saw on black Twitter - “Clarence Thomas would have told on Harriett Tubman.”

F250 · July 29, 2022

45 minutes ago, SKJ said:

I swear to God, the only saving grace that uncle Thomas ruckus sits on the court is watching him soft shoe and be Stephen to the Django in every situation.

He's stuck self- loathing through his horrid, backbroken life but able to even live his own heritage and to suck the white cocks of every conservative justice to try and prove his alliance, joyfully fullthroating every piece of racism his cohorts can muster and then asking "got anything else for me massah" his whole pathetic life.

I wish some actual historian would write the book of his uncle Tom ass pretty soon so that he would be alive to be able to read it, and to maybe realize the truth of his filth before he so rightly dies in the arms of his fat, horrid ditch pig (thanks @bama) wife that truly really only loves him for his subservience to her master race class, such as he is her house boy.

I wish that book to be written, and for him to have to see that truth.

And then to die with that truth constantly flashing before his eyes as he shuffles off this mortal coil understanding that he was one of the worst humans to ever dawn a robe post Warren.

But other than that, he's cool

There have been books written about Thomas. His background is pretty interesting from a psychological perspective. At one point in his life he was part of the Black Power movement. I heard an interview on NPR with a writer that wrote a book about Thomas and it was pretty similar to the description in this article below.

I am not Black so I won't attempt to explain their plight or pass judgment on Thomas on their behalf nor defend him. But there is a lot of stuff written about him and his blackness.

I will say if you are White you should probably drop the racist jokes. It’s not the place of Whites to make that judgment.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/clarence-thomass-radical-vision-of-race

Quote

“There is nothing you can do to get past black skin,” he said. “I don’t care how educated you are, how good you are at what you do—you’ll never have the same contacts or opportunities, you’ll never be seen as equal to whites.” This was no momentary indiscretion; it was the distillation of a lifetime of learning, which began in the segregated precincts of Savannah, during the nineteen-fifties, and continued through his college years, in the sixties. On the Court, Thomas continues to believe—and to argue, in opinion after opinion—that race matters; that racism is a constant, ineradicable feature of American life; and that the only hope for black people lies within themselves, not as individuals but as a separate community with separate institutions, apart from white people

SKJ · July 29, 2022

1 hour ago, F250 said:

There have been books written about Thomas. His background is pretty interesting from a psychological perspective. At one point in his life he was part of the Black Power movement. I heard an interview on NPR with a writer that wrote a book about Thomas and it was pretty similar to the description in this article below.

I am not Black so I won't attempt to explain their plight or pass judgment on Thomas on their behalf nor defend him. But there is a lot of stuff written about him and his blackness.

I will say if you are White you should probably drop the racist jokes. It’s not the place of Whites to make that judgment.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/clarence-thomass-radical-vision-of-race

It very kind that ha authors use his words, but his jurisprudence is more telling if his beliefs than his words.

I am not Black. But I have stood toe to toe against 1000 white racists in order to stand up for my beliefs without the protection of my beliefs with no security, and no protection, and not in the free world.

His jurisprudence stands for his beliefs regardless of the lies, and nonsense he says in interviews. His jurisprudence is complete racism toe his own people.

Think of it like this: say slorch was Black. Then try to understand why lessez Faire is the correct path for people who've been oppressed for a couple hundred years, without the benefit of maybe 000.01% becoming Supreme Court justices... then thunk that it's because only you had the tenacity to earn it, even though you were given every opportunity by complete chance, or faith, to make it.

Do you despise those that didn't have that good fortune like slorch? Or see the disparity?

Only complete asshole cunts like slorch see that they were somehow so compelling that their bootstraps worked because they're too stupid to see that 1% of 1 % will make it through complete chance.

The other million people will succumb to the forces because they didn't have a benefactor, or the lottery odds that they found some niche.

Uncle Tom ruckus is the slorch. The cunt that got lucky but missttributed it to some calling or talent that they magically had, even though they were the complete exception of the rule... then the develop hated of their own kind ringing that "they just didn't work as hard as Me bell, then completely abandon who they should support because they "made it only on their own efforts"

Don't be a slorch

Catdaddyhorn · July 29, 2022

3 hours ago, F250 said:

There have been books written about Thomas. His background is pretty interesting from a psychological perspective. At one point in his life he was part of the Black Power movement. I heard an interview on NPR with a writer that wrote a book about Thomas and it was pretty similar to the description in this article below.

I am not Black so I won't attempt to explain their plight or pass judgment on Thomas on their behalf nor defend him. But there is a lot of stuff written about him and his blackness.

I will say if you are White you should probably drop the racist jokes. It’s not the place of Whites to make that judgment.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/clarence-thomass-radical-vision-of-race

I read the same article and listened to the same podcast not too long ago. Thomas has perverted some of the elements of black nationalism that he got from his time with the Black Panthers (yeah, his story there is pretty interesting). He basically starts from the same place that black nationalist/conservatives such as a Malcom X and Marcus Garvey started from, with a fervent distrust of government, and to some extent white people, but he warps into some weird belief that in order for black achievement to be fully fleshed out, society has to not only not coddle blacks, but return it to as close to its racist origins as possible. Believing that black achievement in this particular environment will forge some sort of steelier resolve within the black community by having to overcome it. He's a fucking lunatic.

Here's the podcast referenced above: The discussion on Thomas comes in the 2nd half around the 23 minute mark. The author of the New Yorker article is interviewed.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/locked-and-loaded/id73330715?i=1000568482676

Edited July 29, 2022 by Catdaddyhorn

WhatTheBuck · July 29, 2022

6 minutes ago, Catdaddyhorn said:

but he warps into some weird belief that in order for black achievement to be fully fleshed out, society has to not only not coddle blacks, but return it to as close to its racist origins as possible.

That must have happened after he took advantage of affirmative action in order to attend Yale Law school. Maybe it happened after Nov, ‘83.

Quote

In a November 1983 speech to his staff at the federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, Thomas called affirmative action "critical to minorities and women in this society."

Then, his remarks got personal: "But for them (affirmative-action laws), God only knows where I would be today. These laws and their proper application are all that stand between the first 17 years of my life and the second 17 years."

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19950626&slug=2128294

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