“Don’t kid yourselves. If they didn’t know what they’re doing, they wouldn’t be there.”

David Letterman is absolutely right: “Any time there’s a big stink like this, it’s money. Don’t kid yourselves—it’s all about money.” That’s exactly what’s going on at the Supreme Court this week.

The Court is, like NBC, flip-flopping on a decision it just made and upsetting a lot of people, mainly Antonin Scalia, who I understand is a Conan O’Brien fan. Just last term, Scalia wrote for the Court that the Confrontation Clause requires that chemists preparing lab reports for use in criminal trials are subject to cross-examination. Now that Souter is gone, the Court is looking at the issue again for no other reason, Scalia pointed out during argument, than to overrule the newly minted decision.

And why? Because it’s expensive. Twenty-some states filed an amicus brief saying producing witnesses is costing them a lot of money. And some of the justices actually listened to them. When Richard Friedman, arguing for the petitioners, ventured that “the expense is not inordinate,” Justice Alito rebuked him: “How can you say that? We have an amicus brief from 26 states and the District of Columbia arguing exactly the contrary.” Has Alito even heard of Gideon v. Wainwright, another Sixth Amendment case in which a unanimous Court required the Nation to spend kajillions of dollars? Could it be that Scalia and Stevens are the only people left on the Court who know what it is the Court is supposed to do for the Republic? Does it not even occur to the others that maybe, just maybe, the Constitution deliberately and by design makes it extremely difficult to enforce Prohibition-type laws because the values embodied in that document are in many ways irreconcilable with the tactics necessary to keep people from harming themselves by ingesting things that are bad for them? Do we really have a bunch of beancounters up there measuring the value of our rights in dollars? Are rights no different than a multi-million-dollar late-night television show contract, to be reconsidered and rescinded within months of being recognized?

Predictably and correctly, actions like this paint the Court as a political body, no different than the White House or Capitol Hill, dismissive of logic & reason & precedent & rules & everything but the personalities of those holding the office. Which is why Scalia, correctly, openly from the bench criticized “us for taking this case.” And as for the important and immediate impact of all this: How am I supposed to teach constitutional decisions with a straight face if they get made this way?