Alito's oil recusal gets called the bare minimum, the same week his book calls marriage decisive.

…(cont) September 29th. Common Dreams. Justice Alito recuses himself from the Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil case out of Boulder, Colorado — the oil companies on one side, the county on the other — a week before arguments. Critics call the recusal the bare minimum, given the ties to the oil industry already in the reporting.

October 2nd. Two things happen the same day, which I find easier to understand than hard to. And on a different tape, same date, same network: Alito talking about how he'll decide when to retire. Not if. When.

Also October 2nd — I keep having to go back to this drawer — CBS again, a longer quote this time, the whole sentence instead of half of it, because I shorted him once already this week and that's not how I do business: "It's part of the job that you're going to displease people by making decisions on controversial matters." That's what he told them, about losing friends over Dobbs. The whole sentence. I wanted to get that right.

And then today. The book is out. Same-sex marriage, a turn against religious liberty — that's the line from the book. That's the sentence sitting next to the recusal from Suncor.

Here's where I go out to the car, because I can't think sitting still. The car doesn't start without a minute of coaxing — fan belt, probably, I keep saying I'll get to it — but it starts, and while it's warming up I open the glovebox and I'm looking for the toll receipts, because I drive the turnpike for work and I keep every one, not out of pride, just habit. Four this month I didn't take the E-ZPass lane. Four times I pulled into the cash lane instead, waited, paid by hand. I don't know why I do that on some days and not others. I just know I can count it.

That's what a recusal is supposed to be, isn't it — the one lane you don't take. Suncor, Boulder, Big Oil. He didn't take that lane. The question the receipts leave sitting there is what happens to the other lanes — the ones with his name already stamped on the toll, Dobbs, marriage, the whole turnpike of decisions he's still driving while the book hands out its own word for each one.

I was halfway down the porch steps, dog at my heel, book bag on my shoulder, when the kid from the corner store flagged me down about a delivery — and while I was signing for it, he asked me something I didn't have a good answer for. He'd heard about the recusal on the radio. He wanted to know if a justice can step out of one case and still get credit, in the same week, in his own book, for being brave about the rest.

I told him I'd have to check my notes. I already had. The word for the oil case is already written down, back in September, from people who don't work for him. The word for the marriage case is newer, and it's his own — and I'm sorry, I know I already used it once, but there's no better word on the page for it: decisive.