Of Federalism, Lochner and Broccoli: A Recap of the Second Day in the Obamacare Arguments

Okay, gang, so I listened to it (you can, too, here) and…  yeah, this looks pretty good for those of us who don’t like the mandate.  First, any hope that Scalia would uphold the law seems like a pipe dream.  And Kennedy seemed to be very troubled by this statute.

So let me show you the parts I found interesting or significant, for what it is worth, in chronological order.

Early on Alito highlights a theme of the anti-mandate forces: that this is not just about insuring that when you go to the hospital that you already have set up a method of paying for the care, but instead this is about subsidizing the health insurance industry generally by forcing people who wouldn’t buy insurance to buy it.  So it’s not really about solving a free rider problem alone:

JUSTICE ALITO:... Respondents -- the economists have supported -- the Respondents estimate that a young, healthy individual targeted by the mandate on average consumes about $854 in health services each year. So the mandate is forcing these people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies for other purposes that the act wishes to serve, but isn't -- if those figures are right, isn't it the case that what this mandate is really doing is not requiring the people who are subject to it to pay for the services that they are going to consume? It is requiring them to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else.

GENERAL VERRILLI: No, I think that -- I do think that's what the Respondents argue. It's just not right. I think it -- it really gets to a fundamental problem with their argument.

Please note the Solicitor General is frequently referred to as “General Verrilli,” which is admittedly strange—I mean you picture generals only in military contexts—but it’s how it has been done for a while.

And early on Kennedy was hammering them with big doubts.  Indeed right out of the gate, we get this exchange:

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?

GENERAL VERRILLI: That's not what's going on here, Justice Kennedy, and we are not seeking to defend the law on that basis.

In this case, the -- what is being regulated is the method of financing health, the purchase of health care. That itself is economic activity with substantial effects on interstate commerce.

And then later on he gets to the really big issue:

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Could you help -- help me with this. Assume for the moment -- you may disagree. Assume for the moment that this is unprecedented, this is a step beyond what our cases have allowed, the affirmative duty to act to go into commerce. If that is so, do you not have a heavy burden of justification?

I understand that we must presume laws are constitutional, but, even so, when you are changing the relation of the individual to the government in this, what we can stipulate is, I think, a unique way, do you not have a heavy burden of justification to show authorization under the Constitution?

GENERAL VERRILLI: So two things about that, Justice Kennedy. First, we think this is regulation of people's participation in the health care market, and all -- all this minimum coverage provision does is say that, instead of requiring insurance at the point of sale, that Congress has the authority under the commerce power and the necessary proper power to ensure that people have insurance in advance of the point of sale because of the unique nature of this market, because this is a market in which -- in which you -- although most of the population is in the market most of the time -- 83 percent visit a physician every year; 96 percent over a five-year period -- so virtually everybody in society is in this market, and you've got to pay for the health care you get, the predominant way in which it's -- in which it's paid for is insurance, and -- and the Respondents agree that Congress could require that you have insurance in order to get health care or forbid health care from being provided -

PSA: The Second Day’s Arguments Are Online

And since I am a health lawyer, I think I can justify listening right now.  You can listen and read the transcript, here.

Update: I haven't listened to any of it yet, but Jeffrey Toobin is not optimistic:



Which makes me optimistic.  The early consensus, though is that Kennedy has left an opening to uphold it.  I think though, I will go into my Fortress of Solitude, see what I think unpolluted by the influence of others and let you know.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.  And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here.  And you can read a little more about my novel, here.

“What makes all these people who are threatening George any better than the person they think he is?” The Latest Zimmerman/Martin News Roundup

Okay, we have a lot of news stories and commentary to aggregate, so let’s jump into it.

As a way of review, in my legal analysis (here and here) there are three crucial questions to determine whether Zimmerman validly invoked self-defense:

1)      Who struck the first blow? 

2)      At the moment Zimmerman shot Martin, did Zimmerman have a reasonable fear that Martin was about to inflict legal force on him?

3)      If Zimmerman struck the first blow, did Zimmerman have a reasonable opportunity to escape?

I say that having reviewed enough evidence that it makes it pretty clear that there was some kind of fight between them before Zimmerman shot him.  Obviously things would be very different if Zimmerman shot him with no fighting beforehand.  So pay close attention and you will see that, maddeningly, for the most part the only person who can answer those questions is Zimmerman.

First, for the first time we have heard George Zimmerman’s account.  Via the Orlando Sentinel (hat tip to Dustin in the comments):

With a single punch, Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who eventually shot and killed the unarmed 17-year-old, then Trayvon climbed on top of George Zimmerman and slammed his head into the sidewalk, leaving him bloody and battered, law-enforcement authorities told the Orlando Sentinel.

That is the account Zimmerman gave police, and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say. There have been no reports that a witness saw the initial punch Zimmerman told police about...

In his version of events, Zimmerman had turned around and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from behind, the two exchanged words and then Trayvon punched him in the nose, sending him to the ground, and began beating him.

If You Want to Listen to the Obamacare Arguments—Or Read the Transcrtipts...

Here’s the place to do it.  Just to preview—not having listened to it at all—what they are talking about is a law that prevents challenges to tax laws before there is an attempt to collect.  So far there has been no attempt to collect.  Whether it is a “tax” or a “penalty” is significant also to the ultimate constitutionality of the law, too—in other words, it is not just a matter of a procedural bar, but it becomes much easier to justify it in the final analysis.  But it also would have the effect of kicking the can down the road, until well after the election.

In my opinion, the analysis of Judge Vinson on the subject is the absolute best.  You can read me commenting on it in a post back in my Patterico days entitled Judge Vinson to Congress: You Really Should Read These Laws Before You Pass Them.

Via Althouse, who saved me some googling today.

I’ll be listening to it tonight and sharing my thoughts.

Update: How’s this for a biased, “breaking news” email from Cnn:

Nearly one in three Americans thinks the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn the entire 2010 health care law signed by President Barack Obama, according to a new CNN/ORC poll.

The poll finds that 43% want to strike down only some provisions of the law and 23% think the court should leave it as it is.

Got that?  The lede isn’t the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans think that the law is at least partially unconstitutional, it’s that only a third think that the whole law should be thrown out.  And given that that question is based on a more esoteric concept in constitutional law, I am not sure how much those numbers tell us.

By comparison, here’s the lede in the article at Cnn’s site, apparently based on the same poll:

Washington (CNN) – Most Americans don't want the Supreme Court to completely overturn the landmark yet controversial 2010 federal health care reform law, but only a quarter of the public wants to see the high court leave the measure alone, according to a new national survey.

That is a lot more neutral.  And by the way, Cnn, why is this a breaking news story?  It’s not an event that just happened, it’s just a poll.  Breaking news should be reserved for terrorist attacks and the like.  Not that you are the only ones to do this, but you are the ones I am talking about right now.

Interestingly enough, if you go into the detailed results, you find out that 50% of the population believes that the Supreme Court will make its decision based on its political views, and 46% believe they will base it on their objective interpretations.

So just to do the math, 73% of the public believes that the Supreme Court should strike down at least part of the law as unconstitutional, but only 46% of the public believes that the Supreme Court will follow the law.  That suggests that the best way to convince the people that the Supreme Court is following the law is to strike down part of the law.  So if the Justice Kennedy is driven by protection of the institution of the Supreme Court as I have argued, then he will vote to strike down only part of the law.

But the dilemma is this.  Striking down only the mandate would result in a catastrophe for the insurance industry.  Yes, Congress would have time to avert it, but do you think that the parties can work fast enough to do so?  Not frickin’ likely.  So the option that will enhance the prestige of the court the most would invite economic disaster.

Update (II): So I had a chance to listen and read, and I agree with numerous commentators that it looks like the Supreme Court was extremely skeptical of the notion that this was a tax and not a penalty—including some of the more liberal justices.  Now there is some wiggle room in that they were discussing whether or not it was a tax for purposes of a statute, rather than the constitution, and literally the same word might mean different things in two different laws.  But typically the Supreme Court likes to read the language of the law in a unified way, if only to make it easier for lay persons to understand the law.

Here’s a Video I Missed

A news report just after the incident:

And do listen to the end.  His parents deserve your respect and sympathy.

The guy in the red sweater was Zimmerman.  It’s another instance where the crucial moment wasn’t seen, but still it contradicts the narrative that Zimmerman shot the kid in cold blood, or Charles Johnson’s misleading statement that:

Zimmerman ... chased the boy down, and shot him in the street.

It seems safe to say that Martin and Zimmerman got into a fight.  Which doesn’t justify shooting the kid automatically.  Instead that turns on the following questions:

Who struck the first blow?

Did Zimmerman have a reasonable fear that Martin was about to subject him to lethal force?

If Zimmerman struck the first blow, did he have a reasonsable chance to escape?  (because contrary to what you heard, there are some circumstances where you are required to retreat in Florida)

If Martin struck the first blow and the answer to the second question is yes, then Zimmerman was justified in shooting.  Even if Martin didn't intend to do serious bodily harm to him, even if he had a chance to escape.

If Zimmerman struck the first blow, he did have a reasonable fear, and he did not have a reasonable chance to escape (for instance, if he was still on the ground), again he is innocent.

And the key thing is this.  As far as I can tell, the only living witness to those crucial moments is Zimmerman.  The only person who can answer those crucial questions, who is alive, is Zimmerman.  So barring surprising evidence to the contrary, I don’t see how they can even justify trying him.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.  And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here.  And you can read a little more about my novel, here.

New York Times: Hey, Isn’t It Great the Way Obama Brought his Race Into the Trayvon Martin Case?

Earlier today I talked about this statement by Obama:

Update: That video is not loading, so here's a substitute.

And among other things, I had this to say about it:

[H]ere is the absolute worst part of what Obama said:

“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said. “All of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves.”

At the beginning of the statements Obama notes that as head of the executive branch that might very well prosecute George Zimmerman for a crime, he is limited in what he can say.  He rightly recognizes that if he makes statements indicating any kind of prejudice in the case he could harm the ability of the government to prosecute it.  And please note when I say “prejudice” I don’t mean merely if he expresses any bias based on race, sex, etc. but any pre-judgment, any kind of judgment before the facts are in.

But ironically that very statement exposed himself to charges of prejudice—the kind of prejudice you think of first when you think of the word, bias based on race.  He just implied that because of racial affinity he feels particularly bad about the Trayvon killing.  So then since a hypothetical son of Barrack and Michelle Obama would not look like George Zimmerman, does that mean he feels less sympathy for him?

And indeed Trayvon does not look particularly much like Barrack or Michelle Obama.  The only way you could say that Obama’s hypothetical son would look like Trayvon is if you think all black people look alike, and gee, I thought that was a racist point of view?

One does have to wonder how this will play in the Hispanic community, too.  While the President didn’t indict Zimmerman, his racially charged remarks might play badly.  The President should have made no reference to the race of anyone involved; and indeed all good people feel sympathy for the Martin family, regardless of skin color.  If you don’t feel bad for them, yeah, I think there is something wrong with you.

But according to Jackie Calmes and Helene Cooper of the New York Times, this is swell:

President Obama did not mention race even as he addressed it on Friday, instead letting his person and his words say it all: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

Weighing in for the first time on the death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager shot and killed a month ago in Florida by a neighborhood watch volunteer, Mr. Obama in powerfully personal terms deplored the “tragedy” and, as a parent, expressed sympathy for the boy’s mother and father.

“I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids,” Mr. Obama said. “Every parent in America,” he added, “should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and that everybody pulls together — federal, state and local — to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”

While speaking movingly from his perspective as the father of two girls, one a teenager, Mr. Obama notably made no reference to the racial context that has made the killing of Trayvon and the gunman’s claim of self-defense a rallying point for African-Americans. Since Mr. Obama first began campaigning to be “president of all the people,” as his advisers would put it when pressed on racial issues, he has been generally reluctant to talk about race. And after his historic election as the first black president, Mr. Obama learned the hard way about the pitfalls of the chief executive opining on law enforcement matters involving civil rights.

Trayvon Martin Shooting Roundup

There’s a lot of idiocy going around these days, starting with the President’s reaction via Michelle Malkin:

There’s a lot there.  Some of it is uncontroversial.  The assertion that this is a tragedy seems pretty safe.  As I said yesterday, it seems extremely safe to believe that Martin was innocent in all this.  I say that even though I noted evidence that Martin attacked Zimmerman.  As I noted in the comments it was very possible for us to have seen a scenario of cascading errors.  Zimmerman erroneously believed that Martin was “up to something” so he followed him.  Martin saw this man following and got scared and reasonably attacked Zimmerman believing he was defending himself.  Zimmerman reasonably got scared that Martin was pulling a gun on him and drew first and fired.  That is pure speculation, but it is very easy to imagine that kind of cascading reasonable errors that led to this death.  In any case, a young man who by all indications was doing absolutely nothing wrong is dead and even if it is not a crime, it is a tragedy.

I am faintly irritated by the President’s assertion that this is an occasion to re-examine the law.  As I pointed out yesterday, this really had little to do with the no-retreat rule in Florida.  Incidentally I will take this moment to point out that I was trivially wrong on one point.  If Zimmerman threw the first punch the law in Florida apparently would impose on him a duty to retreat (remembering that it only applies if one can reasonably do so in safety—you don’t have a duty to run when you know you are likely to be shot trying to escape).  Which means that far from being a radical jurisdiction, Florida is solidly in the mainstream of most states.  Most states only impose a duty to retreat on aggressors outside their own homes.  But as I showed when discussing the Bobbitt case (not the famous Bobbitt case), the Florida courts radically imposed a duty to retreat even on a battered wife in defending her own life in her own bedroom.  That seems to be a bit much.

Every state in the union recognizes a right to self-defense that goes by whether one reasonably believes they are in danger.  No matter how robust or stingy the right of self-defense is, it always has that core where you have a right, under the right circumstances, to kill another based on a reasonable fear of death, serious bodily injury and so on.  And since it goes on your perception of the danger, rather than the reality of it, mistakes like this are inevitable.  That is, it is inevitable that sooner or later an innocent man will be mistakenly thought to pose a threat.

Would we really want any other rule?  Imagine that you face a situation where you believe that your life is in danger.  If you sincerely believed you were in danger, would hesitate to use whatever force is necessary to save your own life?  And remember the same rule applies to the defense of others.  So if you really believe someone has a gun to the head of a loved one, would you hesitate to do everything necessary to protect that person’s life?  Outside of military conscription, the law cannot and should not expect you to risk your own life, period.  That is why, while I think Roe v. Wade was generally wrongly decided, I do believe a woman has an absolute right to abort a fetus if her life is in danger—because it is just self-defense.

And most people get that.  For instance, I think it is safe to assume that everyone has watched the movie Die Hard.  For the five people who haven’t, the set up is that terrorists take over an office building and off-duty cop John McClane is trapped in the building and doing what he can to stop the bad guys.  And one of the best parts of the movie is the relationship between McClane and Al Powell, another cop on the outside.  They only talk on the radio for much of the movie, only meeting in person at the end, and by then they are friends for life.  In one powerful scene, John asks why Al chose a desk job.  Al replies:

I shot a kid.  He was 13 years old.  Ohhh, it was dark, I couldn't see him.  He had a ray gun, looked real enough.  You know, when you're a rookie, they can teach you everything about being a cop except how to live with a mistake.  Anyway, I just couldn't bring myself to draw my gun on anybody again.

He’s not saying he was demoted or imprisoned for it.  Just that he felt so horrible about the thing that he couldn’t bring himself to draw his gun any more (which makes it that much more powerful at the end when he does use his gun to save his new friend).  I don’t think a single person watching that movie thinks that Al did the wrong thing, and certainly no one thought he should go to prison.  If you thought that, then I start to think there is something wrong with you.

What all of this is, is the worst example of “there oughta be a law” syndrome, which was classically lampooned by this bit from the Onion:

Truck Accident That Killed Rafters in Canyon Sparks Truck-Canyon-Rafter Reform Debate

There is no realistic and just way to avoid every failure—to prevent every innocent person from being killed.  And saying this means we need to reform the law only ensures that injustice will occur.

But I am burying the lede here, because here is the absolute worst part of what Obama said:

“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said. “All of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves.”

At the beginning of the statements Obama notes that as head of the executive branch that might very well prosecute George Zimmerman for a crime, he is limited in what he can say.  He rightly recognizes that if he makes statements indicating any kind of prejudice in the case he could harm the ability of the government to prosecute it.  And please note when I say “prejudice” I don’t mean merely if he expresses any bias based on race, sex, etc. but any pre-judgment, any kind of judgment before the facts are in.

But ironically that very statement exposed himself to charges of prejudice—the kind of prejudice you think of first when you think of the word, bias based on race.  He just implied that because of racial affinity he feels particularly bad about the Trayvon killing.  So then since a hypothetical son of Barrack and Michelle Obama would not look like George Zimmerman, does that mean he feels less sympathy for him?

Friday Frivolity: Those Wheels are Real, and They’re Spectacular!

This isn’t mature, but it’s pretty funny.

So in Canada they are having their own political season.  I guess.  And one of the local party leaders is Danielle Smith, who you will see in a moment is pretty easy on the eyes.  So naturally they are using a large picture of her on the side of a campaign bus and everything was going well until, um, this happened:

Mmm, yeah.  So there are a few snickers about the whole thing and at the same time Shannon Stubbs, a local party spokeswoman, well…  spoke on the subject:

“We’re getting it adjusted right now since it will be a distraction throughout the campaign,” said Shannon Stubbs, party spokeswoman and candidate in the Alberta riding of Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville. “Nobody really noticed, since we have been focused on providing a solid campaign platform. There were a couple of comments when we were doing the initial draft a long time ago, but the majority of the team didn’t notice or didn’t anticipate it would be an issue.”

Those people who didn’t think this would be an issue are to be pitied, because they were clearly born without a funny bone.

The image in question has Smith’s head above the rear wheels, making it look as if the tires are taking the place of her breasts.

“We do think that if this is the absolute worst thing to go wrong in the campaign, then that’s not too bad,” Stubbs said. “We’ve been having a bit of laugh because of the attention it’s been getting. Somebody suggested we submit a picture into Leno or Letterman to get international attention, as well as the national coverage we’ve been getting.”

However, she also suggested that not everyone is amused.

“I did see someone comment that it might be one of the reasons why women are dissuaded from entering politics, and I think there might be a valid point there.”

So she goes from juking about it and talking about sending it to Leno for media attention, but then complaining that this somehow is a feminist crime.

And really?  You don’t think this would happen to a man?  Imagine if, for instance, the photo was of a man only it showed his upper body, going from his head down to his pelvis, so that those tires were exactly where his “beans” would be.  Or imagine if they put him up on a wall mural and a flagpole just happened to be where his “frank” would be.  Tell the truth, we’d be snickering about that, too.

For myself, I keep thinking of this classic scene in The Naked Gun:

I won’t say “rest in peace” to Leslie Nielson.  I will say “rest in laughter.”  The world is not as funny without you.  (And he was a fine dramatic actor, too.)

Via Ace.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.  And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here.  And you can read a little more about my novel, here.

Reasonable Beliefs: Prejudice, Myth and Reality in the Trayvon Martin Shooting (Or “Why Han Solo Had the Right to Shoot Greedo First”)

Strap yourself in because this is a long one.

So here we go again, a local criminal incident becomes national news, for some reason and thus all of the world pretends to know something that it cannot know.

We saw this before in the Duke non-rape case.  Those Duke lacrosse players were accused of raping that woman and somehow people just knew that they were guilty.  I remembered wondering immediately why they were so sure.  Hopefully they at least read a few newspaper accounts, but they didn’t look in the alleged victim’s eyes as she described what happened to her, or in the eyes of the accused as they denied it.  So for me the only logical position was to be agnostic—maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, we’ll have to wait and see.  But these people were somehow sure.  There was no word for it but prejudice.  As I wrote in a different context:

To pre-judge a person is to literally “judge before.”  Before what?  Before it is appropriate, before you have all the facts.  Of course normally we think of prejudice as being based on specific traits.  Racial prejudice is to judge a man by his skin color, rather than getting enough facts to judge him as an individual.  But it can be based on anything.

And there was definitely some kind of premature judgment in that case because eventually it was revealed that one of the accused was on video at an ATM at the time he was supposedly committing rape.  And after that the entire case fell apart.

What was the prejudice there?  Well, besides the Hatfield and McCoy feud between alumni of Duke and Carolina, you have to think there was leftover jock resentment, and also part of the calculus is that it fit the sad historical pattern of black women being victimized by white men, and the historical concern that her rights would not be vindicated because she was black.  These are valid to an extent, but just because historically African American women have been victimized by white men, didn’t mean that those particular white men did so; and not only did the local authorities take her claims of rape seriously, but Nifong was so zealous in his prosecution that he ended up violating ethical rules and being disbarred.

And we see this in other instances, where reporters sitting there with the bare text of transcripts decide that a person convicted by a jury of their peers twenty years ago was absolutely definitely innocent, even though an appropriately skeptical person standing from afar wonders how they can be so sure when they never looked the witnesses in the eye.  And certainly the chronic failure by reporters to understand the law itself only compounds the error.

So we have another case of a racially charged incident and everyone pretends to know what happened.  I have looked at the news reports and at this point in time, if you cut through all the clutter one simple truth emerges: at the crucial moment where the law decides whether George Zimmerman committed unlawful murder or justifiable homicide under the principle of self-defense, there is only one living witness: George Zimmerman.

For instance, there are numerous 911 recordings aggregated at this post over at Mother Jones.  It and the reportage generally puts certain facts beyond dispute.  George Zimmerman was doing some unofficial “neighborhood watch” work when he became concerned that Trayvon Martin might have been engaged in criminal conduct.  I will assume his family is correct in insisting that he wasn’t engaged in criminal conduct—and to do so would be out of his character.  And there is certainly no dispute that Martin was unarmed, although he had a bag of skittles and an Ice Tea on him.  So Mr. Zimmerman called the police and as he called them pursued Mr. Martin.  Then at some point the call ended and... some kind of confrontation happened and Mr. Martin ended up dead.  So it seems an innocent man died.  And thus we get this push across the country for Zimmerman to be prosecuted.

But let’s clear out some myths, first.  First, people always seem to take it as a given that it is self-evidently murder to kill an unarmed man.  That is not the case.  The lawfulness of your conduct is not determined by whether the defendant is actually in danger, but whether the defendant is in reasonable fear.

[Please note this is not legal advice.  This is only a discussion of the law for the purpose of discussing the merits of the law so we as citizens can decide whether to change the law.  For legal advice, you need to hire your own lawyer.  I am a lawyer but I am not your lawyer.]

Tune In Tonight for a Smart Preview of the Obamacare Oral Arguments

Yes, once again that is my pun-tastic way of saying I am going to be on John Smart’s radio show.  One thing that strikes me as funny when talking about him is that despite a wide political difference, on a lot of things we think very much alike.

I am going to be on around 9:15ish Eastern time, if you only want to tune in for me, but you know what?  Don’t.  He is truly an independent thinker and he has views worth listening to.  And if you care to listen, here is the link.  Supposedly people will be able to listen there, somehow, at the time.  And the topic will be previewing the Obamacare oral arguments.

I am actually seriously thinking of taking some time out to go and watch those arguments, except as I understand it they don’t let anyone just sit and watch.  They let you come in, watch for like 2 minutes and then shuttle you out.  Which really kind of misses the point.  But I believe they will release the audio of the hearing and I will definitely be listening to that as quickly as I can.

Just to preview, the one to watch is Kennedy.  While it is dangerous trying to read tea leaves like this, well…  we’ll probably do it anyway and his leaves are the one to read.  As one wag put it, this is Kennedy’s Constitution, and we just live under it.

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Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates.  And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here.  And you can read a little more about my novel, here.