The Supreme Court has not surprised me since June 2012, when Roberts ruled "mmmyeah, healthcare gets to stand because of interstate commerce laws." We were coming back from Vandenberg, having shot a video of the Delta IV Heavy with the last KH11 go up, specifically to spy on bin Laden. Listening to NPR for some reason and lo and behold, Obamacare.

It's abundantly clear that Roberts' politics are to the right of mine but it's also clear he values his job over his ideology. That's what's saved the court in the past - pragmatism. They have no enforcement arm. They rely on reasonable agreement between the branches or it all falls apart. The "switch in time that saved nine" was a conservative court not wanting the New Deal so badly they were willing to become 17 justices.

There are pragmatists on the court. There are also lazy, incompetent ideologues who are perfectly happy to go "myeah, let's just toss Roe because we fucking feel like it." The more ideological the court becomes, the more they depend on their ideology being in office to not get circumvented. Lost in all this shirt rending is the undeniable reality that the Republicans have the positions they do because of parliamentary procedure, not popularity; they acknowledged back in Tom DeLay's time that they were going to be a permanent minority and the only way to preserve power was through gerrymandering and packing the court.

And it either goes full fascism or it snaps back. Period.