It turns out “breaking a norm” only counts when a Republican does it. 

Someone on the Supreme Court, almost certainly a liberal clerk, maybe even a liberal justice, has leaked the forthcoming decision about Roe v. Wade. 

“No draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending,” Politico noted. “The unprecedented revelation is bound to intensify the debate over what was already the most controversial case on the docket this term.”

And that’s exactly what this leaker wanted — to try to exert pressure on the Supreme Court. It’s beyond norm-breaking. It’s an outrageous, horrible broadside against judicial independence. 

Not that we should be surprised. For decades the left was perfectly happy for the court to invent law, like Roe, that it couldn’t pass through Congress. But then the balance shifted to conservatives, and suddenly progressives were calling the Supremes illegitimate. They threatened to pack the court. They enlisted the press to slander Justice Clarence Thomas. And now they’ve leaked inside drafts of a confidential deliberating process.

Will CNN, the Times, the Washington Post, et al. decry the violation? Of course not. They’ll do exactly what they’re expected to do — spend the next month cajoling and threatening the court. Impeachment will be floated. Protests will be encouraged.

They will do the kind of things that, if conservatives did them, would warrant 20,000-word articles about how it was a “threat to democracy.”

Don’t be fooled. The left couldn’t care less about “norms.” They just want to get their way, by any means they can.