§ 2254(a) review will often require consideration of legal arguments not addressed by the state court in its opinion. In this case, for example, we must consider the McKaskle question that the state court avoided and, in doing so, we consider the “alternative rationale” advanced by the respondents for affirming the Arizona court’s decision. Nevertheless, even on § 2241 de novo review, we would reject an alternative and unrelated legal argument of the type advanced by the respondent in Van Lynn. As with any de novo review, our § 2241 review is confined to the alleged wrong and the actual course of events at trial and on appeal. We cannot invent a constitutional sequence of events to justify that which simply did not happen. Cf. Hirschfield v. Payne, 420 F.3d 922, 928-29 (9th Cir.2005) (<HOLDING>). Moreover, when the constitutional right
holding that the boards denial of a motion to reopen is reviewable by the federal courts of appeals holding that the courts denial of either a motion to dismiss or a motion for summary judgment is not a final judgment and is not reviewable  holding that the trial courts denial of appellants motion to enforce settlement agreement constituted an important issue holding that appeal from denial of rule 60b motion raised for review only the district courts order of denial and not the underlying judgment itself holding that the federal court could not consider under  2254d1 a rationale offered by the state for the trial courts denial of the petitioners motion for selfrepresentation when that rationale would have constituted a discretionary denial of the motion