The Yin Blog

Zombie running shirt

I think I may need to get one of these T-shirts:

 

 

The ACA "Under Siege"

While reading various reactions to last week's arguments in the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, in particular, criticisms of the performance by Solicitor General Verilli (and compliments toward Paul Clement), I was strangely reminded of the best Steven Seagal movie, which is Under Siege (aka "Die Hard on a Battleship"). In it, Seagal played Casey Ryback, ex-SEAL and current head cook on a soon to be decommissioned U.S. battleship that gets taken over by a bunch of terrorists led by Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey. Jones and Busey and their henchmen have managed to capture and lock up just about every sailor on the ship, except for Seagal and a few others who hid. Seagal then wages an insurgency to take back control of the ship.

At one point, seeing the latest mayhem that Seagal has inflicted (dead terrorists, etc.), Jones turns to a henchman played by Colm Meaney (aka Chief O'Brien on ST:TNG) and says, "Daumer, Daumer, Daumer, why didn't you hire this person? I don't know what his price would have been, but it would have been worth it!"

(start at 0:22 in the video clip)

You have to wonder if team Obama felt the same way after the oral arguments. . . . I say this not as a critic of Verilli; although it's certainly possible to get a plum federal appointment without much actual qualifications as political payback, I highly doubt that's true about the SG. This is more of a reflection of how brilliant Clement is universally acknowledged to be as a Supreme Court advocate.

Anyway, you have to wonder if team Obama was thinking, if only we had Clement on our side! 

Of course, one suspects that Clement personally believes himself to have the better argument on the Commerce Clause issue. But when we had Clement here at Lewis & Clark as our Kennedy Speaker last fall, he did a lunch time presentation for our students, and one of the (many) interesting things he said was that there have been occasions when he wanted to argue one side of a case, but it was the other side that approached him for his services. He's the ultimate lawyers' lawyer in that sense -- he argues the client's cause.

So what if the Obama Administration had looked ahead to this day of reckoning before the Supreme Court, and thought, that's who we want arguing our case? Would the President have ever been willing to consider appointing Clement as the Solicitor General?

Well, for most lawyers who are Supreme Court wonks, it would be incredibly hard to turn down an offer of being the primary advocate for the United States, the so-called Tenth Justice. But since Clement has already had that experience, having served as President Bush's SG from 2004 to 2008, it would probably hold less appeal for him than for most others. And the prospect of contacting an opposition party member with such a plum prospect, only to be turned down, would no doubt be embarrassing for any administration, so I don't really think that Obama would have been willing to try even if he would've wanted Clement on his team.

Still, can you imagine, after last week's arguments, President Obama saying, "David [Axelrod], David, David, why didn't you hire Clement before the oral argument? I don't know what his price would've been, but it would've been worth it!"

Prof. Bainbridge on a reason to support Gingrich

Prof. Bainbridge writes:

Newt versus Barak, however, could be vastly entertaining. Two really smart guys, both of whom are good speakers, and both of whom will be at least affecting being really pissed off at the other and the other's base. If the Newt who tore into John King the other day shows up at the debates, they will be truly great TV.

Since I don't think anybody in Washington or running to be in Washington can fix the problems we face, why not vote for the circus?

My usual heuristic is to vote for divided government, though that's sometimes tricky in Presidential elections when Congress might be in play. And I do sometimes override it, such as in 2008, when I ultimately could not bring myself to vote for a McCain/Palin ticket.

But I'll admit that at times, I've pondered the "Jay Leno factor," which is similar to what Prof. Bainbridge has in mind. The difference is that he's thinking about the general election campaign season, whereas I'm thinking about the next four years. Now come on, for those of you who remember the Clinton years, there was incredibly entertaining fodder for late night talk shows. Who can forget the awesome job that the late Phil Hartman did as Bill Clinton on "The Tonight Show"? I've been trying to find a YouTube clip of the skit with Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5" and all of Clinton's . . . women.

Can you imagine if Bob Dole had won the Presidency in 1996? Dole would not have provided anywhere near the same entertainment value!

Yes, I'm not proud to admit that I see our Presidency reduced in part to how much fun comedians can make of the President. . . .

 

How to survive a zombie apocalypse, nerd style

Okay, I have the nerd part of this "How to survive a zombie apocalypse" guide down, and I've been working hard on the fitness part. 

Lawyers and math

One of my students shared this photo with me:

"You cannot be serious!"

Ann Althouse has been poking fun at Josh Marshall (and Nancy Pelosi) for what she calls "constitutional argument by laughter," the idea being that Marshall's disdain for constitutional arguments against healthcare reform's mandate could not have been serious.  Of course, a federal district judge disagreed earlier in the week.  I can't help but imagine that maybe this was Marshall's (and Pelosi's) reaction:

 

 

UPDATE: Welcome, Althouse readers!  Please check out the rest of my blog, including a lot of entries on the Portland bomb sting case.

Mocking the FBI, Portland Mercury style

I haven't seen it in a print, but I gather the Portland Mercury is an alternative weekly paper, with an edgy view of Portland matters.  This "poster" -- titled "Solve All Your Problems with . . . THE FBI UNDERCOVER STING SQUAD!" -- probably does accurately capture the sentiment of some not insignificant portion of the city.

Is Iowa a swing state? Not according to Meghan McCain. . . .

Leon Wolf's eviscerating review of "Dirty, Sexy Politics" by Meghan McCain is one of the most entertaining book reviews I've ever read.  He absolutely shreds her book with ample examples (show, don't tell!) of poor writing, nonexistent research, and shoddy reasoning.

I found this part of the review especially interesting:

For instance, McCain devotes a lengthy passage to explaining how Mike Huckabee’s victory in the Iowa Caucuses ipso facto proves that the nominating process is broken. McCain claims that the first two contests which set the tone for the nomination are Iowa and South Carolina, which are “specifically conservative” (as opposed to generally conservative, which would presumably be less scary and ominous).  Therefore, her “reasoning” goes, the process tends to lead to someone unelectable like Mike Huckabee getting the nomination.

Let’s unpack this a little bit. First, Iowa is a swing state. It went for Gore in 2000, Bush in 2004, and Obama in 2008. It is one of the few states in the entire country that swung to Bush in 2004, and then to Obama in 2008 (unless I am misreading my map, New Mexico appears to be the only other). Republican voters in Iowa have got some idiosyncratic tendencies (they tend to be very conservative on immigration and are big on ethanol pork), but it’s flatly erroneous to call Iowa as a state “specifically conservative,” insofar as we can safely assume that “specifically conservative” means “very conservative.”

It seems generally safe to call Iowa a swing state, but a commenter at Michael Froomkin's blog argues otherwise, stating: " I grew up in Iowa, and I was there two months ago to visit family and friends. It is not a swing state, not in the least. It is conservative, and always has been. Throw wolf's review in the trash, where it belongs."

Now, I didn't grow up in Iowa, but I did spend seven years there, so I think I can say a little about it.  (Granted, I lived in Iowa City, which is pretty much the most liberal part of the state.)  People tend to focus on how states vote in Presidential elections and ignoring other statewide races, which give additional information about the leanings of the state.

First, let's start with the federal offices.  Iowa has had a very liberal senator (Tom Harkin) and a kind of conservative senator (Chuck Grassley) for decades now.  Both are strong on agricultural issues, which is how they keep getting re-elected.  If Iowa were always a conservative state, how would Harkin keep getting re-elected?

Now consider the governors that Iowa has had in recent years.  It's been 12 years of Democratic governors (4 of Chet Culver, and 8 of Tom Vilsack).  Before that, it was 16 years of a Republican, Terry Branstad.  Branstad is running again, and it looks like he's going to clean Culver's clock.  Even so, from a statewide standpoint, if Iowa's conservative, it doesn't show in the governor's mansion.

How a few inches changed the Star Wars universe. . . .

Just about everyone I know hates how George Lucas tinkered with the original "Star Wars" for the 20th anniversary re-release.  Maybe the most loathed scene change is how in the original version, when Greedo confronts Han Solo, Solo shoots first; whereas in the revised version, Greedo shoots first, somehow missing Solo at point blank range (actually, it's even more preposterous, since Solo dodges a laser blast).

I came across this re-imagination that asks, what if Greedo had shot first and blasted Solo away?  It turns out that the universe would be quite different . . . .

I am a Wii boxing champion!

The International Law Society chapter here at Lewis & Clark has been sponsoring the Law School Olympiks (sic) as a fundraiser, with events like a table tennis tournament that concluded yesterday.  Today was the day for Wii boxing, and the enterprising students went around and got a number of faculty to agree to fight each other (in addition to student-on-student matches).

I was game, not least of which because I was able to avoid wearing a suit today even though it's a teaching day (and I usually wear a suit when I teach).  As I explained to my Crim Pro students, who immediately noticed how I was dressed, "James Bond may be able to fight while wearing a suit, but I don't think I can."

My worthy opponent was my colleague George Foster -- like me, a newcomer to Lewis & Clark, which is why we were matched up.  It was a three round match, and in the first round, we traded knockdowns, but no knockouts.  In the second round, though, I scored the decisive knockout victory.  Yea me!