Republican Justices May Be Less-Than-Amateur Social Scientists, But They’re World Class Partisan Hacks

Linda Greenhouse has a good column on the absurd level of bad faith on display during the oral arguments over the census case, with the only question how to be to separate the lying from the genuine pompous cluelessness:

Don’t take my word for it. Read the transcript. The conservative justices were at pains to challenge the very idea that the citizenship question could depress noncitizens’ response rates, despite the fact that numerous Census Bureau studies have shown that to be the case. “What jumps out,” Justice Samuel Alito said to Solicitor General Barbara D. Underwood of New York, “is the fact that citizens and noncitizens differ in a lot of respects other than citizenship. They differ in socioeconomic status. They differ in education. They differ in language ability.” And so, he went on, “I don’t think you have to be much of a statistician to wonder about the legitimacy of concluding” that the response rate would go down “because of this one factor.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch weighed in. “There could be multiple reasons why individuals don’t complete the form.” He continued: “We don’t have any evidence disaggregating the reasons why the forms are left uncompleted. What do you do with that? I mean, normally we would have a regression analysis that would disaggregate the potential cause and identify to a 95th percentile degree of certainty what the reason is that persons are not filling out this form and we could attribute it to this question. We don’t have anything like that here. So what are we supposed to do about that?”

Justice Alito then returned to his theme. There were “many factors that could explain a decline when you’re distinguishing between citizens and noncitizens,” he said.

When Ms. Underwood started to explain that the Census Bureau studies had controlled for the differences, Justice Gorsuch broke in. “It’s fair to say we don’t have this isolated, though, isn’t it?” he asked.

At this point in the transcript, Justice Stephen Breyer’s exasperation with his colleagues almost jumps off the page. “There are a million factors,” he said with evident sarcasm. “There are pet dogs, you know. I mean, there are cats.”

It fell to Justice Elena Kagan to bring the argument back to earth. “Would it be right to say, General,” she said to Ms. Underwood, “that it was the Census Bureau’s conclusion, a bureau full of statisticians, that it was the citizenship question that was driving the differential response rates?”

“That is correct,” Ms. Underwood replied.

Many of you will recognize what Gorsuch in particular is saying is just gibberish, but here’s a helpful thread on the matter:

Neil Gorsuch, who definitely understands regression pic.twitter.com/Z1SQEsp4c7— CJ Libassi (@clibassi) April 30, 2019

Look, if you’re determined to be lickspittles for Donald Trump, you can’t afford not to be made to look ridiculous.