Anyone, and I mean anyone, who tells you with certainty the precise day that the U.S. Supreme Court will issue its opinion on Arizona's breathing-while-brown statute Senate Bill 1070, is full of something that rhymes with the word "twit."
I wish I had a dime for every journo, TV talking head and know-it-all who declared that the high court's decision would land yesterday.
With those proceeds, I could at least afford java at Starbucks for a week, and maybe a slice of coffee cake per diem to boot.
The reality is, no one knows when the decision will drop. It could come this Thursday. It could come next week. And nope, no one has inside dope.
A lawyer pal of mine runs in the kinds of circles that would know. He told me recently, "The Supreme Court doesn't do leaks."
That's why more than 10,000 people tuned into Bloomberg Law's ScotusBlog Monday, which had reporters live-blogging as opinions were handed down. By 7:30 A.M. our time, it was all over, and obviously, 1070 was not one of the decisions announced from the bench.
ScotusBlog's Lyle Denniston, blogging from the court, reported that, "The press room is filled with media, no doubt many expecting [the Affordable Care Act cases] to be decided."
However, ACA was not one of those decided. Know what that means? That means members of the D.C. press corps did not know what was coming Monday, but had to be on hand nevertheless.
The ACA cases were not among those decided, natch.
Indeed, ScotusBlog's scribes took pains to keep telling their audience that they could not say what case would be decided when. All they could do was offer conjecture, which they labeled as such.
"There is no real way to predict which of the outstanding cases we might get today," one of ScotusBlog's writers offered. "All of them are `due,' in the sense that any of them could reasonably be ready to be issued, except the SB1070 Arizona immigration case, which was argued a month after health care, on the last day of the term."
That same blogger laid his bet on the 1070 decision coming next week, though Thursday is the next opinion day for the court.
The one thing I know for certain is that the local Phoenix yocals on the boob tube do not know anything for certain. They're just as in the dark as the hard-core SCOTUS-heads out there.
I mean, the local news-readers have been presenting recalled, disgraced ex-state Senate Preisdent Russell Pearce as a freakin' "expert," for cryin' out loud.
So, uh, just where did Pearce get his law degree?
Apparently, the same place Sand Land's know-it-alls got theirs.
