Blue Donkeys Vow to Stall High Courts Vacancy Past Midterms

The Party of the Blue Donkey announced this week that if it wins the Senate Chamber in the midterms, any High Courts vacancy will stay a vacancy, and High Lord Donwald of the Golden Towers will be sending nominees into a room with no one waiting in it. Grand Vizier Chuck Schemer, the Blue Donkey minority leader, said the goal is to keep "horrible justices" off the bench. He did not say how many would qualify.

Some procedure, for readers who have not spent thirty years in the gallery. The Charter requires the Chamber to advise and consent on High Justices. It does not say when, or in what decade. The Blue Donkeys need a net gain of four seats to control the calendar, and whoever controls the calendar controls the nine chairs. The gentleman from the Painted Desert, Councilor Ruben Galleon, summed up the strategy: "We've got to do exactly what the Turtle did to us."

He means Grand Vizier Mitch the Turtle, whose Time Stop spell once froze a seat for ten months on the grounds that the people should decide. The people decided. The seat was filled promptly. Councilor Richard Bloomenthal of Nutmeg Reach put the odds of confirming a Donwald nominee at "slim to none," which is the most precise figure anyone offered all week.

A Red Oliphant Councilor from the Bayou Reaches allowed that there was "a slim possibility" the Blue Donkeys would relent. Asked whether the Blue Donkey position was a threat, he called it a forecast. Then he called it a threat. The Red Oliphants, who held that earlier seat empty without a blush, now find the practice an outrage. The Blue Donkeys, who called it an outrage, now find it a procedure. Both positions are held with equal sincerity, which is to say none.

The seat in question is occupied. High Justice Sam Alithor the Seated, 76, told the Cauldron Broadcasting Society he had considered retiring and decided against it, and is reportedly staying even if the Blue Donkeys take the Chamber. A courtier who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to be awake said the High Justice "has the only plan both parties can agree on: nobody leaves that chair." The same nine, I note, are currently holding the High Lord's petition against Lady Hillara. They have not been asked about this either.

My tally stands at Promises Made to Block: two. Promises Kept: none, because no one has yet been given the chance. The seat is full and the vote is hypothetical. The grievance, however, is already ripe.

— O.V., from the gallery