We'll See Him In Cour– wait, hold on a second

A brief and very mildly amusing update on a much-discussed news story.

When Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva died earlier this year, Arizona held a special election to replace him in the House. Because Americans don’t believe in dynasties or aristocracy, his daughter won the seat. But the House hasn’t been in session, and Speaker Mike Johnson has declined to conduct a swearing-in ceremony for Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva until the end of the government shutdown is at hand and the House goes back to work.

Expressing outrage over the delay in representation for an Arizona congressional district, Grijalva and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes sued the House of Representatives, demanding that a court force Johnson to offer her the oath of office.

A great deal of tough talk followed, as Mayes made the media circuit to talk about her Bold Fight for Our Democracy™. See, for example, if you have a great deal of patience, her appearance on MSNBC:

She wasn’t going to take it — she was going toe-to-toe with the Speaker of the House, with democracy itself on the line.

As the Senate closes in on a vote to fund the government, the House is expected to be back in session very shortly, and Grijalva will obviously have to be sworn in this week. So I looked in on the Arizona lawsuit, to see how it had been going before the controversy was mooted. It was going like this, and click to enlarge:

Arizona filed its lawsuit, and then spent a week correcting mistakes at the direction of the court. Over and over. Sample correction:

The Attorney General of the State of Arizona forgot to include the whole “who are you suing?” thing in the complaint she filed with the court. But they got around to fixing it. “We’ll see him in court!” Query from court clerk: Who is him?

It stuck, finally, and a judge has been assigned. That should be as far as it ever goes.

But at least it will have produced some “news” before it whimpered and died. At the risk of going out on a limb, let me suggest that no one involved in “filing” this “lawsuit” ever believed that it would be litigated.