Judicial Watch is pouring out the paper junk mail. I keep getting stuff from them, for reasons I don’t know. Their consistent features are deception and petulance. One of their mailings tried to look like a US census form. They demanded that I return it if I wasn’t interested, then sent a follow-up speculating on why I hadn’t.

Given how dishonest their mailings are, I wasn’t particularly worried when I got an envelope from them labelled “LEGAL NOTICE,” but I wondered what trick they were pulling. The mailing includes a “litigation support form” to return with a “yes” sticker placed on this statement: “I fully support the Litigation Efforts of Judicial Watch to EXPOSE and LEGALLY CHALLENGE the outrageous abuse of my tax dollars and to demand in a court of law that DC bureaucrats cut wasteful and fraudulent spending on evil, Marxist, racist and woke programs.” The mailing says on the inside that the form must be returned “Within the Next 72 Hours.”

This was designated as a “legal notice,” so you might reasonably suppose returning the form makes you a party to a legal action. But what action? The description of the “Litigation Efforts” is completely open-ended. It doesn’t say which actions are being challenged, under what law, or in what venue. If you’re a party to a lawsuit, it’s important to know what you’re signing up for. What exactly are the lawyers going to do in your name? What liability might you have if the ruling goes against you? On the other hand, there’s no requirement to sign the statement. I doubt that any court would accept a form with such vague wording and no signature as binding, but I’m no lawyer.

Or maybe they just put “LEGAL NOTICE” on the envelope to scare people into opening it? Surely they wouldn’t do such a thing.

The statement’s goal is strangely modest. If government agencies are expending money fraudulently, why is the action merely to cut it? Suing to reduce a ten-million dollar illegal expenditure to a five-million dollar illegal one would be a strange petition.

When did the clock start ticking on the 72-hour requirement? Judicial Watch had no idea when I’d get my mail. Did the clock magically start when the envelope went into my mailbox? Or maybe when I opened it? It’s reasonable to have a cutoff date, but it makes no sense to set it at Unknown Date + 3. It looks like a trick to rush people into responding, a tactic usually associated with scammers.

One of my earlier posts on Judicial Watch was among my post popular ones, so I’ll run with a good thing. I’ll tag all the relevant posts “Judicial Watch.”