Slate's Mark Joseph Stern usually covers the Supreme Court.

But over the summer, with the justices on vacation, he's been doing something a little different.

I spend a lot of time waiting through the fever swamps of conservative legal Twitter.

Mark is using this time to figure out how people he profoundly disagrees with look back on the election of 2020.

You may be trying to forget that election, forget that some people still dispute its results.

But Mark's fascinated, especially by the legal alchemists who tried to make overturning an election seem reasonable.

I read a lot of tweets by the folks who tried to make this happen and the folks who cheered them on

from the sidelines and others who are just insane people who happen to have uh jd's and are

members of the bar and can spew forth this effluvium of anti-democratic arggyl-bargle and give us a little bit of kind of like

a treasure map illustrating where they're going next.

Are these people feeling cowed right now?

No, not at all.

Oh my God, these people are so empowered.

They're like, hell yeah, we did better than we ever thought last time.

And next time around is going to rule, baby.

I mean, there is not a lot of fear on the conservative right.

Mark has been waiting through these legal arguments on conservative Twitter, because even though

the election is over, he thinks these arguments are not going away. Over the last few weeks,

the people behind these conservative legal theories have gradually come into sharper focus.

Lawyers deep in the Department of Justice, attorneys general, in more than a dozen states.

And if they had been a little smarter and a little bit better at cooing, then I think they could have done some more damage.

You're saying this was a learning experience.

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