The administration that will livestream a firing squad at one o'clock on December 3 has lost the same case three times since September insisting that White House press access is a privilege, not a constitutional right.

…(cont) On October 9, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights told Agence France-Presse that "The livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture." Absolute — absolute, you see, not a balancing exercise, not a thing weighed against a calendar. The schedule did not move. It did not move that Tuesday, when Mike Johnson said, "I wouldn't be watching," which is a viewing preference and not an instruction. It did not move on Thursday the 15th, when retired US generals called the plan barbaric.

Different building, different lawyers, same month: the question of who may watch the White House. On September 24, Judge Timothy Kelly, appointed by this president, ordered the three banned outlets' hard passes back — "immediately return, reinstate, and restore" — having found a likelihood that the ban and the revocation of credentials violated the Fifth Amendment's due process protections. Reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico arrived at the complex that same Thursday morning and were turned away. On October 3, the Justice Department petitioned the judge to reinstate the ban, arguing that access to the White House is a privilege and not a constitutional right, the filing reporting a conclusion of the President's: that the three had failed to maintain basic minimum "standards of professionalism." A privilege ... their word, and the position of a government that has not won with it. Kelly extended his order on October 8, for longer. Three losses on the one case since September, and the administration has vowed to appeal.

The state of Tennessee stopped. Its attempt to execute Christa Pike on September 30 left her unconscious and intubated. On October 3, Frank Strada, commissioner of the department of correction, resigned; all scheduled executions in the state were halted. On October 7, Judge I'Ashea Myles ordered that "Anything that was in the actual room" be preserved. On October 10, her lawyers said she had been discharged from hospital and returned to the prison she has lived in for thirty years.

The Pentagon's date was given on October 8 and holds. Add up, then, what the public has been handed for the end of a sixty-five-year run: one assurance that attendance is optional, one Speaker who would not be watching, one finding that the broadcast would breach an absolute prohibition. Three items, and a camera.

One o'clock, Thursday, Fort Hood.