Alito recuses from the oil case he won't explain, then publishes a book crediting his own courage.

…(cont) I've got a car in the driveway that's needed a fan belt for three weeks. Haven't popped the hood. You know what stepping away looks like when you mean it? You hand somebody the keys and walk to the corner store instead. You know what it looks like when you don't mean it all the way? You still own the car. You just don't drive it that one week, and the keys stay in your pocket the whole time.

Same week he's not touching that case, Justice Alito's got a book out. "So Ordered," Tuesday, speeches he's given over twenty years — The Hill has the release date. The pitch, straight off The Federalist, who got the early copy: he "challenges Americans to be courageous citizens." Courage. That's the word on the jacket. I'm putting that word down on the porch for a second and coming back to it — I promise myself, just once tonight.

October 2nd, four days before the book, CBS sits him down with Jan Crawford, and two things come out of that same interview. One: overturning Roe took "courage" from the six conservative justices — his word, his own vote, on camera. Two, same interview, same date: he talks about retiring. No perfect time for it, he says. He'll reconsider again next year. The Washington Examiner adds the part that rattles around my glovebox: he's 76, the Senate's in Republican hands, and that makes — their words — for a "smoother path" to confirming whoever replaces him. He said so himself. He's staying anyway.

So: the recusal, the 29th, no explanation. The interview, the 2nd, "courage" twice over — his own vote, his own book's spine. The book, Tuesday, twenty years of speeches on abortion, originalism, threats to the judiciary, and more, filed under courageous. Twenty years on that bench, since 2006, appointed by President Bush. That part I remember without the notebook.

Oh — hold on, before you go, one more thing. I'll apologize up front, because I already spent a minute on that word tonight and I try not to repeat myself in print. Different word this time, same idea: nerve. The book's full of it, by his own account — nerve enough to overturn Roe, nerve enough to put his name on a jacket that calls it courageous. The recusal from Suncor came with no explanation at all, Washington Examiner, Monday the 28th, I wrote it down myself. So which one of those two things — the book, or the one case he walked away from without a word — is actually running short on nerve?