I just picked this up off a legal beagle blog I read occasionally.

Makes a lot of sense.

"Update (AP): A commenter in Headlines speculates that they’re doing
this to stop the petitioners from refiling their petitions with a new
Justice every time they’re rejected by another. For instance, Souter
denied Donofrio’s petition initially; Donofrio immediately refiled
with Thomas, who then dumped it on the Court to be denied summarily.
Wrotnowski’s petition was initially denied by Ginsburg and then
refiled with Scalia, who’s now gone the same route. It may be that the
liberal wing of the Court simply won’t deign to refer this matter to a
full conference whereas the conservatives are willing at least to go
that far in the interests of clearing the cases off the docket as fast
as possible."

There is hope this will go away yet.

I certainly hope so - waste of time.