Triangle Man vs. Universe Man: Who Wins?

I've been wondering about this for years now, and I don't feel like I'll ever have closure on the subject. Triangle Man and Universe Man are the two surviving, undefeated parties at the end of The Song. We're left hanging. There is an obvious classic matchup in the offing, but we're never treated to the particulars. It's sort like the AFL and NFL before the leagues instituted a Super Bowl to settle the matter.

I should qualify this talk about a "classic" matchup, as well as my AFL/NFL comparison, by noting that by no means is Universe Man a champion. He is not battle-tested. He is undefeated, but only by virtue of never having fought. Could I get behind a fighter with an 0-0 record in a contest of this magnitude? Would I put money down on him? Let's do a tale of the tape:

Location: Universe Man is the size of the entire universe, man. Simple logic commands that whatever venue the promoters select for the fight will be familiar and comfortable to him. He has per se home field advantage. That is, unless the fight breaks out in Triangle Man's house, in which case I declare it a neutral field.

Size/Agility: I cover these characteristics in tandem, for reasons you'll understand shortly. This is obviously a David and Goliath-style matchup. We don't know Triangle Man's dimensions. In fact, we don't know anything at all about him, except that he's chippy. He's chippy, and he channels hatred well. I think, though, that we can safely assume that Universe Man, at the size of the entire universe (man), will tower over Triangle Man. As the smaller party, Triangle Man is certainly the more agile combatant. For my purposes, I define "agility" as "litheness, ability to move, ability to escape and elude an attack." Universe Man takes up all the space in the universe. In theory, this renders him completely immobile, and that immobility hurts his case. On the other hand, for these same reasons Universe Man is inescapable. He completely envelops Triangle Man, thereby neutralizing Triangle Man's greater agility. (I should add that by this analysis, I find it pretty likely that this will be a lousy fight, from a spectator standpoint. By definition, Universe Man and Triangle Man must be in a clench at all times, and no amount of refereeing can separate them and make the combat worth watching.)

Shape: Cosmologists have ventured a number of theories as to Universe Man's shape. I won't presume to declare one of these models to be better or truer than another. I will say, however, that Triangle Man is pointy. Pointy is sharp, and sharp can hurt. In fact, pointy-sharp can arguably tear through the space-time fabric, if its wielder is sufficiently motivated and skilled. Advantage: Triangle Man.

Essential Qualities: As I have noted, we know very little of Triangle Man, except that he has an unblemished record, and he appears to have been the party who picked the fight in both instances. Triangle Man's irrational hatred of others fuels his aggression. He's a dynamo, no doubt about it. But remember that Universe Man has a watch with three hands, and when they meet it's a happy land, and for this reason, he is a powerful man, Universe Man. That three-handed watch may be the trump card here. If the alignment of hands conjures up happiness throughout the land, one would expect its spell to be binding on Triangle Man as well. Its effect should be to neutralize Triangle Man's aggression, thereby rendering him a substantially less formidable opponent. So long as Universe Man can hold out until minute hand, millennium hand, and eon hand meet, he has a shot here.

Deeper Analysis: Clearly Triangle Man is the symbolic embodiment of fascism, and clearly The Song means to leave us to consider the challenge of fascism to certain "universal" truths. We know the destructive effects that pointed, militant, simple-minded hatred can have on particles and persons. But what threat does it pose to the universe writ large? Are we talking about the collision between matter (in the form of Universe Man) and anti-matter (in the form of Triangle Man)? What follows? One would think an absolute canceling-out is what would follow. We're left with nothing. Emptiness, a void. Silence, you might say. When one considers that this is the likely outcome, we finally understand why The Song never reaches the point of reporting on this fight we're so curious to see. The Song doesn't mean to tantalize is. It does not mean to deprive us of this gold medal round. That's not the case. The Song just ends: it ends like everything must if Triangle Man takes up arms against Universe Man. The silence does not mean that the fight never happened. It means that the fight did happen. Do you see?

So who won? Well, it depends on how you look at it. If Triangle Man and Universe Man definitionally obliterate one another, then arguably no one wins. However, it's important to note that Triangle Man is not self-reflective. Triangle Man is entirely outward focused. That is, he fights not to vindicate some important interest of his own — he fights because he hates the opponent. If Triangle Man joins a fight, and the outcome of that fight is that both parties are destroyed, then Triangle Man has achieved his principal objective and lost nothing. He has destroyed Universe Man, the object of his hatred. That he is also destroyed is immaterial. He accomplished what he came to do. Triangle Man wins.

Thus, Triangle Man, Triangle Man, Triangle Man hates Universe Man. They have a fight, Triangle wins. Triangle Man.

This is where I stand right now, today, but if past history is any guide, I will surely revisit this question again some weeks down the line, and I can't promise I won't come round to the view at that point that Universe Man is the obvious winner. Right now? today? It's Triangle Man.

In the Course of Which 2 of 3 Feigned Outrage Authors Prove Themselves To Be Nimrods

The following substantially transcribes a phone conversation late Monday night, the subject being an online Scrabble game:

Ethan Allen Hawley: What's wrong with "bailif?"

Phutatorius: I have your other "f" on my rack.

EAH: Two f's?

P: Two f's.

EAH: That's ridiculous. That can't be right.

P: Of course it's right. Name one word in English that ends in "-if."

EAH: "If."

P: Yeah, OK. Fine. But "bailiff" has two f's.

Kosovo Declares Independence . . .

. . . Serbs take their toys and go home.

(Note FO's first link to a Brisbane Times article.)

So I have occasion now to wonder: how long a waiting period has to lapse before the historically brutal and oppressive state gets to complain about the conduct of the ethnic minority it brutally oppressed? I suppose it's a subjective calculation. From where I'm sitting, though, ten years is way too short.

I say we send Jack Bauer on a secret mission into the vacant Serbian embassy to short-sheet all the beds. I'm not a master of diplomatic protocols by any means, but it seems a reasonable way to send a message. If you'd prefer something more straightforward, I propose a letter on Department of State stationery that reads, Hey, Serbia: before you come back, why don't you contribute something to world culture other than mass rape and attempted genocide? You pricks.

Should We Use the Olympics?

There's been an undercurrent in the news lately about the awkwardness with China, which will host the Olympic Games in Beijing this year, even as it tramples all over international norms in an effort to bring resources home to fuel its growing economy. Now there isn't a "developed" nation on this Earth that hasn't behaved unscrupulously on its climb into the world's economic elite. Colonial abuses, slash-and-burn agriculture, deforestation, displacement of native peoples, child labor, sweetheart deals with foreign leaders to exploit local resources — it's all there in the historical record. No one is innocent, to be sure — not even the U.S.

Right now, though, the world leader in amoral economic policy is the Chinese government. If your country has resources the Chinese economy can use, the Party will do business. It doesn't matter that you're promoting the wholesale slaughter, rape, and displacement of ethnic minorities, or that your military government just defied the international community and gave shoot-to-kill orders on peaceful protesters. Got oil, Sudan? Got pipeline prospects, Myanmar? Let's talk.

Which brings us to the Olympics, which supply an occasion for people to call attention to China's complicity in human rights disasters around the globe. Or not.

It occurs to me that, more than any other institution, the Olympics are a universally-shared human value. Sure — al Qaeda won't be sending a delegation of athletes anytime soon, notwithstanding its members' well-documented tire-course expertise. (They only do obstacle-course competitions on Battle of the Network Stars.) But nihilistic transnational terror groups excepted, everybody else loves the Olympics. Everybody believes in the Olympics, whatever else they may believe.

And so I wonder: given the Olympics' status as a shared, transcendent value, should we be using it to promote our sublunary politics, however benign and upright our intentions? I'm of two minds here. I genuinely believe that there are certain baseline human values that should enjoy the same worldwide appeal and enthusiasm that the Olympics do. Those values — life, liberty, autonomy, equal treatment, the rule of law, freedom of expression, etc. — are certainly more important to me than a shot-put contest. If we can exploit an institution like the Olympics to advance these values, then we certainly should do it. Right?

On the other hand, as I just noted, it's fair to say that the Olympics are the only value we all hold in common in this so-often vicious world. That counts for something. It counts for a lot, actually. President Carter's boycott of Moscow 1980 to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan didn't accomplish much. The Eastern Bloc's retaliatory decision to eschew the L.A. games in 1984 was predictable and — dare I say it? — lame. We look back on the boycotts as pathetic gestures, instances of down-and-dirty politics sullying an institution that we hold very dear to our hearts, and that (we hope) will continue to survive and thrive after petty conflicts like the Cold War are long gone.

We'll never be able to distill the politics out of our Olympics. In fact, I would argue that we shouldn't try. Politics give the Olympics a lot of their dramatic kick, after all: we all grew up pulling for our aw-shucks regular American kids to go higher, faster, farther than the affectless Frankenroiders from East Germany. The competition offered us all a kind of safety valve: we were able to see the two camps compete — capitalism vs. communism, West vs. East played out on ice, in a pool, in the gym, rather than with ICBMs. And what better storyline is there than Jesse Owens, the epitome of grace in competition, conquering his Aryan rivals in Berlin in 1936? Without politics, Jesse Owens is Carl Lewis — a great athlete, but not a hero. (Did I say that Jesse was a Buckeye?)

The Olympics are The It-Institution. Off the record, six drinks deep into a Saturday night, the United Nations tells the bartender it wishes it could be the Olympics. No other idea has ever been so broadly embraced by the world community as M. de Coubertain's. Consider China as a classic example: this government goes around the world arming genocidaires and could give a crap who complains. But give it a shot at hosting the Olympic Games, and suddenly the Chinese are desperate to impress the international community. That's cachet, people, and you'd really like to think that cachet could be leveraged to bring the world something bigger than impenetrable performance art (though I do love you, Björk, more than you'll ever know) followed by two weeks of televised sports. On the other hand, I'm not sure who to trust to get that done, and I worry that the effort will spoil the Olympics — and we'll end up a more fragmented world community than we are even now.

Thoughts? Help?

Legislatures

Making the impossible possible, and the irrational rational, since at least 1897.

Think of all the dorky "how many decimal points can you recite?" contests that this law could have averted. Oh, you mathematicians! [shaking fist]

Hypocrisy

There is a very interesting piece in the Boston Globe about political leaders and hypocrisy.  Perhaps there's nothing terribly earth-shattering, but it puts all the pieces together in a nice way.  I'm no fan of hypocrisy, but what if the alternative is really too much consistency (and therefore an inability to learn and change course as necessary) or too much simplicity?

For Romney, the illegal immigrants working for the landscaping company he hired seems completely irrelevant and reminiscent of AGs who were disqualified because they didn't pay social security tax on their housekeeper's pay.  And we all know what happens if you disqualify AGs on these grounds - you end up having to look at pictures of Janet Reno for years.

For Obama voting to provide funds for the Iraq war, this doesn't seem to be hypocrisy at all.  Being against the war shouldn't compel someone to cut off funding.  He was right on Iraq in the beginning, but he's not a moron.  Whether he wanted it this way or not, we are at war and we need to wage it effectively.

The hypocrisy accusations against Clinton seem more valid.  Initially for a bad war, but then against it when it's unpopular and we really need to keep fighting.  It seems like hypocrisy here, but it could just be consistently bad judgment, which would be even more troubling.

I don't know too much about McCain's positions on Bush's tax cuts.  Maybe he is a weasel and a hypocrite like the rest, but it seems like in the primaries you're going to get some inconsistency from everyone as they pander to the extremes of their respective parties.

Anyway, it's an interesting read.

Specter and Spygate: Feigned Outrage, To Be Sure

So two days before the New England Patriots play in the Super Bowl, Senator Arlen Specter (R, Pennsylvania) is demanding that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell explain why the League destroyed evidence relating to the "Spygate" scandal of earlier this year. To which I — no Boston fan, I emphasize — have to say, You've got to be kidding me. And I've got company in London's Globe and Mail.

You may remember in Week One of the NFL season, New York Jets head coach Eric Mangini complained that the Patriots had cameras trained on the Jets' sideline to record hand signals the Jets' coaching staff was making to players on the field. Goodell found that the Patriots had violated league rules, and he ruled the violation to be a flagrant one, because it came on the heels of an explicit directive the League had issued in a memorandum earlier in the week. Much teeth-gnashing and garment-rending followed. Pats head coach Bill Belichick tried to dismiss his team's violation as a simple misinterpretation of the rule. Players on other teams attributed playoff losses to the Patriots' cheating. There was much discussion of whether the use of cameras at issue here really confers a meaningful advantage, and of course there were a steady stream of excuses served up by callers to Boston sports radio on the order of "Come on — everybody does it." (As if Chuck from Quincy would be in a position to know . . .)

The Pats were docked a first-round draft pick and the League personally fined Belichick $500,000 — a non-negligible amount of money. A Jets fan filed a class action, claiming he and similarly situated football fans who bought tickets to Jets/Pats games were deprived of fairly-contested play and should get their money back. Oh, the outrage.

For those of us who could give a crap about pro football, the New York Jets, and the New England Patriots, the "Spygate" story was flatly uninteresting, much ado about nothing, a scandal hardly deserving of the "-gate" suffix that was so quickly attached to it.

But for those of us who find our sensibilities offended daily by the sad, silly personages who purportedly represent our interests in Congress — well, now we do have to dignify this subject matter, because over the past few years our earnest legislators in Washington have learned that they can score points with constituents by taking on organized sports.

First it was steroids in baseball — this is an ongoing matter of concern for the United States Congress, which holds Major League Baseball's exemption from the antitrust laws in its back pocket, so empowering it to haul the sport's august personages (and its Commissioner) into the Capitol for regular beratings.

Last year the hot topic was sports on television. As Opening Day approached and it became clearer that MLB's sale of exclusive Extra Innings programming rights to DirecTV would result in something close to a nationwide blackout of out-of-market baseball games, John Kerry got involved. Because of the NFL Network's ongoing negotiating beef with Big Cable TV, the Patriots' final regular season game against the Giants would have been available only to a limited audience. Pressure from Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island Congressmen, along with a joint letter from Senators Specter and Patrick Leahy (D, Vermont), prompted Goodell to relent and make the game broadly available on the networks, so the nation could actually watch New England finish off a perfect 16-0 season.

Now Specter, citing his concerns for the "integrity" of pro football, is waving the NFL's antitrust exemption in the air, crying Look at me! Look at me! Let's put aside for just a minute whether the National Football League and Major League Baseball are comparable American "institutions." I recognize that people actually like to watch the NFL, and for the sake of argument I'll accept that point. But the gap in magnitude between the steroid scandal and Spygate is dramatic. For starters, steroids are controlled substances under federal law. Second, we gather that the use of steroids in baseball was so pervasive as to severely threaten the health of players, distort the outcomes of games, and destroy the sport's hallowed record book. Third, there is abundant evidence to suggest that team owners and league officials willfully turned a blind eye to the scandal, notwithstanding the abundant violations of federal law and the enduring threat to the integrity of the game.

Spygate is a simple instance of one team cheating, arguably to no substantial advantage. This is not a matter in which the Commissioner's Office was complicit, by commission or omission: Goodell absolutely hammered the perpetrators. The Giants stole signs down the stretch in their historic overtaking of the Dodgers in 1951. Gaylord Perry threw spitballs. Sammy Sosa and Albert Belle corked their bats. Bill Laimbeer played dirty. All that sucks. Now is it Congress's business? Humph and hardly.

I wrote to friends a couple weeks ago about my ambivalence on Congress's involvement with the steroids issue:

I'm of two minds about this. For starters, Congress is pathetic. They're not only venal, self-absorbed, and perspectiveless — they're lazy. They slap together a rewrite of the federal government's surveillance powers at the last minute so they can go on vacation — no worries, they tell us: the law only applies for six months. By then they'll have their act together. Right. And these jackasses yesterday couldn't even be bothered to know anything about the subject matter of their questioning. It's real easy to criticize Bud Selig, but it's even easier to pronounce his frickin' last name correctly. So I'm with you on one score, Mark: when you consider how seriously Congress takes its time off and how not-seriously it takes it work hours . . . well, yes, it demonstrates a bit of a priority gap for them to preoccupy themselves with hearings like this. To be fair, though, it's just one committee. I believe they do it because feigning outrage and abusing people while they're under oath is what they're good at. It gets them in front of cameras and allows them to perform. Of course, it also reveals many of them to be jackasses when they arrive utterly unprepared and then participate anyway — any one of us would be fired from our jobs if we didn't bother to prepare ourselves for work.

* * *

But I agree with Bob, too: this is a situation that Congress is peculiarly situated to help solve. MLB had absolutely no interest in policing itself until players were called to testify back in 2004. Once McGwire and Sosa humiliated themselves and the sport before Congress, the union and the league and commissioner's offices finally got on the same page and implemented an aggressive testing policy. Congress does its worst when it legislates, to be sure, but it does its best when it threatens to legislate — any institution with half a brain will walk through fire to avoid letting these bumbling idiots get their hands on it. Congress has a hook here: the antitrust exemption it's given baseball in light of its status as the national pastime. It can regulate if it wants to. Nobody wants that to happen. So calling the bad actors and nonactors to the carpet here isn't the worst idea in the world.

I know you don't think much of the sport, but baseball is an important part of our national heritage, and a lot of people in this country care about it. If [Congress] can make some noise at the last minute and help prompt the NFL to show the Patriots-Giants game to a national audience — because it expects to be historic — then certainly this is within the purview of Congress, if not its very limited range of competence.

To that I don't have much to add, except that we shouldn't be surprised that our Congressmen continue to stick their noses deeper and deeper into organized sports. It's really the perfect subject matter for them: (1) sports inflames the passions of Americans, so with sports you're assured of appealing to voters' most deeply-held beliefs (as opposed to appeals about the genocide in Darfur, which are just boring); (2) big, contemptible monied interests are involved, so you can call people in for hearings and humiliate them to general applause; and (3) the stakes are hardly life-and-death, as in the larger scheme of things, sports are meaningless — so there is no great importance in solving the problem or appearing to manage it competently.

So go get Roger Goodell, Senator Specter. Because, as you say, Goodell's exercise of discretion as Commissioner of the NFL to destroy the Spygate tapes really is "analogous [to] the CIA destruction of tapes" of its pressure-based interrogations.

Steroid Social Network

Another link from Slate (I know, I know — I need more diverse reading habits): this one posts Adam Perer and Chris Wilson's "social network" drawing, based on George Mitchell's report on steroid use in baseball.

It's interesting, but woefully incomplete. I'd like to see this network expanded to include information on the BALCO investigation and the accusations leveled by Canseco in his book. For example, Miguel Tejada is given a "green" label indicating that he was a peripheral player with "four degrees of separation" from core distributor Kirk Radomski. But we know as well that Rafael Palmeiro (not named in the Mitchell Report) tested positive, and that Palmeiro insisted he never knowingly took PEDs — but he had recently been given a Vitamin B-12 shot by Tejada.

We also know that Tejada's career took off in Oakland, where it all started, with the Bash Brothers. Canseco openly admits his steroid use (and is now capitalizing on it with his periodic exposés — another will hit the shelves on Opening Day) and named Mark McGwire as a partner in crime. Jason Giambi, another admitted user, started his career with the Athletics and shared a dugout with McGwire. Later in his career — after he tapped into BALCO's product offerings — Giambi played with Tejada in Oakland. Canseco went on to Texas, where he says he introduced Palmeiro to steroids.

George Mitchell should be credited for the diligence and integrity he showed in preparing his report, but let's call it what it is: a biopsy report. Mitchell found a malignant piece of tissue, he put it under a microscope, and he reviewed the hell out of it. What he didn't do was go rooting around for every lesion, every suspicious growth, every cancer cell. He worked with the sources he had, and his rigorous standards of proof would not admit every shred of rumor or innuendo (there's legal liability to consider, for crying out loud). I'm guessing a lot of players heaved sighs of relief when the report came out and their names weren't mentioned.

If this much wasn't apparent from the report itself — to be sure, when a guy produces 409 pages of fact reporting and analysis, it gives the impression of an exhaustive search — the social network drawing makes it quite clear. When I look at the Slate drawing, I can't help but think there's a much larger, integrated work lurking out there beyond its margins, and we've only managed to turn the flashlight on this small section.

It's doubtful we'll ever get to see that full picture of the "steroid social network," so we can authoritatively and completely track the PED diaspora in baseball. There is, however, more information out there than has been found to meet the George Mitchell Gold Standard for reliability. It would be interesting to see a network that takes account of the data we have and includes Canseco, McGwire, Palmeiro, Barry Bonds, Greg Anderson, and Victor Conte — for starters.

So Mr. Perer, Mr. Wilson, get back to work!

Feds Preempted State Efforts To . . . Er, Preempt Subprime Mortgage Crisis

So says Nicholas Bagley at Slate. States like Georgia, New Mexico, and New York passed legislation that would have subdued the market in subprime mortgages, but a federal agency, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which apparently draws its operating budgets from banks — and is therefore, in Bagley's eyes, unduly beholden to their interests — wrote regulations preempting these laws.

I'm not sure what to take from this.

There's much to be said for the states serving as "laboratories of democracy," that is, for state governments enjoying the authority to test out legislative solutions within their own borders. Varying state laws will produce varying results that can in turn inform public policy at the national level — or even among the states, as they look to one another for effective solutions to social ills. Massachusetts, for example, is a "laboratory" for mandatory-subscription universal health care. And we'll see how it goes. California hopes to impose its own program to alleviate or limit global warming. If the legislation isn't held preempted by federal law, we'll see where that goes, too.

The state-as-laboratory theory can't be absolute, however, because if 50 states pass 50 laws, companies that do business across the nation have to answer to 50 different legal standards, some of which may impose conflicting obligations. So there is a virtue as well to writing laws at the national level.

That's the backdrop to all this, and I suppose Bagley would conclude that the subprime crisis supplies a classic example of why certain matters ought to be left to the states. I've argued that this is all well and good, but that state governments have atrophied over the years — principally because all the action is happening at the federal level. State legislators are hacks; if they aren't, they're treating their jobs as stepping stones to something better. And legislation isn't the beginning and end of the matter: state legislation is interpreted and applied in state courts, and please, oh please don't ever get me started on the quality and dedication of state court judges. So Mr. Bagley will have to pardon my cynicism on this score: he himself writes that the AARP — a lobbying group — basically wrote the pioneering subprime regulations in Georgia. In retrospect, the AARP and the legislators it owns in Georgia (if they're writing laws there, just imagine who's running the show in Florida) may have had the right answer. But it's not the AARP's job to consider the long-term effects of subprime mortgages on the larger economy and the global financial markets, is it? My guess is Georgia got it right, in retrospect and by accident. This doesn't make me more confident in the ability of states to solve the nation's problems — except that maybe because there are so many of them, it's statistically more likely that one or more might stumble upon a right answer. But I suppose it's encouraging that at least three other states adopted Georgia's solution. Color me equivocal, then.

Which brings us to the federal government. Another "preemptive" strike, another disaster. Score it! Clearly it's far from optimal to have bankers so peculiarly positioned to dictate federal preemption legislation. One would hope the OCC would be more independent than it is. And there's the obvious irony that the OCC apparently made its case to The Federalist Society. One wonders how the OCC's position was received there: did it meet catcalls from the purported "states rights" folk in the Society, or did the Federalists nod agreeably, understanding as all good conservatives do that what is good for the short-term interest of the nation's banks must be good for America?

Humph.

Another Reason (I Don't Count Them) Why I Am Scornful of Michigan

Rich kid gets richer, ditches Michigan. Then he comes back as more of a prodigal son than a native son, except unlike in the parable, he's asking for something, and he's copping a 'tude. He blames Washington, D.C. for the state's economic malaise, and Republican Michiganders, no doubt admiring his lush head of hair (as seen in minutely television commercials), hail him "the victor" in the state's Presidential primary.

Hey Mitt: I suppose it's Beltway Politics, too, that are responsible for the Wolverines losing four straight to my Buckeyes?

You big dork.

Here's a Hint, TSA

When the Department of Justice has paid for a guy's plane ticket, he's probably not a guy you need to subject to additional security scanning.

Honestly — what the hell kind of profiling is that?

Anyway, more on this trip tomorrow.

Screw the Fascists at Jolly Rancher! Screw 'Em!

"Thank you for contacting The Hershey Company. Your comments about JOLLY RANCHER hard candy are important.

We are sorry to disappoint you, but JOLLY RANCHER lemon flavored hard candy is currently not available. This product is not being produced for nationwide retail distribution at this time and we are unable to provide you with details as to when and where you might be able to obtain this product. We apologize for any inconvenience and assure you that your comments will be shared with our Marketing Department.

Your interest in our company is appreciated."

(sigh!)

It's good to see that I'm not the only one mourning the passing/discontinuation of the lemon-flavored Jolly Rancher, which might have been the single best species of hard candy every marketed. Peach, too, has disappeared without a trace.

Testimonials to The Lemon lie here, here, here (great for catching rats in your garden!), and here (a scented body-lotion, for crying out loud!)

In the place of these giants, these Members Emeritus of the Flavor Fraternity, we now have the newly-introduced tasteless "grape" and a bizarre non sequitur called "blue raspberry" (as in "I don't who's [sic] fucking idea it was to add 'blue raspberry' to the basic canon of false-fruit-flavors . . . .").

I'm not one to carry a grudge, but I'm still not over Taco Bell's retirement of the Belgrande (see here), and it will be some time before I'm ready to forgive Hershey for this. Actually, I'm willing to let them off the hook if they'll hand over to me the names and contact information of the ridiculous candy-tasting hacks they had in their focus group when they reached this absurd decision. These people need to be neutralized before they can do any more damage.

Huckabee's Sales Tax Proposal

I officially don't know what to think about it. It has the virtue of simplicity. The sudden price jump on goods and services will be jarring, but in the long run it might result in people grumbling less about their taxes: they'll be getting nickeled and dimed all year long, and they won't be in a position of having to pay a lump sum in April — or even to have to examine the bottom line of a 1099 form that tells you, almost sneeringly, what you gave the government this year to spend on objectionable projects. Making the federal tax levy more insidious and less of a cause for annual outrage might have the salutary effect of supporting deliberative democracy. So many people I know vote consistently Republican because they want lower taxes — even though they disagree fundamentally with so much of what the GOP does when it's not slashing tax rates.

Steven E. Landsburg's recent article in Slate points out one other important virtue of Huckabee's proposal: if you're taxed at the point of purchasing goods and services, you're encouraged to save money. Thus we don't have to invent exceptional vehicles for tax-free saving, like IRAs and 401(k)s and all these other accounts that people with the time, money, and initiative to hire tax planners and financial consultants get to have — but many other people don't. All savings are tax-free.

But Mr. Landsburg's argument assumes that the tax rate will simply transfer over: it compares a 20% income tax rate with a 20% sales tax rate. That can't be how it would work in practice. First, we're all paying different tax rates, on the principle that a progressive tax is fairer than a flat tax. I'm not sure how you replicate that fairness in a sales tax paradigm, except perhaps by the clumsy way of making the tax rate higher on luxury items or expensive goods and lower on cheaper goods or necessities. And now we've compromised the simplicity of the sales tax model to make it fair — and it's still arguably not as fair as the progressive income tax model. Some middle-income people want to own BMWs, right? Whenever someone from a formerly lower tax bracket wants to buy an item keyed to a higher sales tax bracket, the tax would be regressive — at least more so than the current income tax system. Remember, too, that the current system provides a lot of tax breaks for people who need them (as well as certain people who don't, admittedly, so maybe that's a wash). It would be hard to carry over the current tax code's many gestures at fairness into a sales tax model.

(Also, having learned what "fair and balanced" apparently means when applied to news coverage, I can't help but be skeptical at the outset of any tax plan that feels the need to call itself "fair.")

I've read, too, that for the government to generate the same amount of revenue as it does now, the sales tax rate will have to be higher than the income tax rates. This is because — as I gather — the income tax rate is guaranteed to be paid. The sales tax rate is linked to a contingency: it's added to the price of goods and services that you may or may not elect to purchase. Remember: we're not talking tax in a vacuum. We pay taxes so that the government can run its (term used loosely) business. It's a means to an end. It's not necessarily the ceteris paribus proposition that Mr. Landsburg suggests. If the sales tax rate is expected to exceed by a significant amount the income tax rate, could a federal sales tax actually overencourage saving? Too much saving isn't good for the IRS or for the economy.

And finally, we seems to have a consumer debt crisis in this country. People spend on credit cards like there's no tomorrow, but unfortunately tomorrow does come — with a bill. AM radio is thick with ad spots promising to negotiate or restructure your credit card debt: those companies are out there for a reason. Banking laws promoted by credit companies are making it more difficult for people to get out from under their consumer debt. If people aren't disciplined enough to spend money they don't have, does it make sense to slap a significant surcharge on what they buy? I guess my point is this: maybe the sales tax will encourage people to save. But maybe it won't. If it doesn't, profligate spenders will screw themselves even worse than before. I guess the trick is to do the analysis and predict as best you can how a sales tax would affect consumer spending/saving habits. You want to encourage saving, but not too much. On the other hand, you don't want to slap a hefty sales tax on, well, everything, and find that nobody saves at all.

Bear in mind that I wrote all the above with a bare-minimum understanding of (and in most instances, interest in) economics and finance. So I'd be interested in having everything I say reviewed and rebutted by someone with a modicum of expertise. There seem to be a lot of complicated questions here. I wonder, too, if it's not just a Fear of the Unknown that undergirds a lot of what I wrote. We shouldn't resist innovation explicitly — nor should we do so instinctively and then rationalize away the resistance. But I do think there are a lot of questions that need answering, and that won't be accomplished in a campaign soundbite/debate answer format.

Howlin' Pelle Almquist, Meet the InstaSheep

Back in April 2004 — when conservatives were leveraging the Oil-for-Food scandal to try to disqualify the UN from playing any meaningful role in the reconstruction of Iraq (never mind that the United States government had armed Saddam) — I wrote the following comment to one of Richard's posts on the subject:

Holy crap, Rich! This blog's blown wide open!

But here's my problem with your post: certainly generalized dishonesty, incompetence, and opacity cannot be factors that disqualify an institution from playing a role in Iraq — or the Bush Administration would have to go to the back of the line as well.

But I know, I know: you destest my casual "apophases," and Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Bremer are our exploitative cronyists and demagogues, so let them run amok. The simple fact is that the UN, for all its faults, is a better bet for nation-building than the US, particularly under these conditions.

Putting aside the simple fact that they're more experienced at it (for better or for worse), they're not American. And that means something, for legitimacy purposes, when the Iraqi people, right or wrong, are increasingly suspicious of the motives underlying the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. Sure, the case can — and will — be made that the UN, when it acts, is simply an extension of the American hyperpower's will.

But multilateral peacekeeping spearheaded by the UN, and not the US, has a certain cachet of trustworthiness that the "U.S.-led coalition" peacekeeping does not — for the same reasons that an invasion of Iraq with the UN's approval was amply preferable to the invasion without it, and for the same reasons that supported our jeers at the Administration's decisions to consider only coalition country-based corporations (and to short-list Halliburton) for reconstruction contracts.

Yeah, fine: the Oil-for-Food scandal was terrible. These bad actions compromise the integrity of the entire UN institution. We get it. But you fail to show how this failure peculiarly disqualifies the UN from the specific enterprise of helping to transition Iraq into democracy. And I think that's an important question, when so much of the problems we're dealing with now are rooted in concerns that the U.S. is trumping up a puppet government of preferred Chalabis.

Do you really think that internationalizing this thorny problem will result in rapacious U.N. officials grubbing for shares in Iraq's oil reserves? Because otherwise I don't see what the Oil-for-Food scandal has to do with the U.N.'s ability to provide constructive aid to this process — a process that we're having some trouble with on our own.

For this I was set upon by a herd of InstaSheep who were briefly grazing on Richard's site, at the direction of their Shepherd. Years later, of course, bittersweet vindication: the CPA stiffarmed and subordinated the UN, to the considerable detriment of Iraq. Samantha Power writes in this week's New Yorker about the lost opportunity. Regrettably, it's only an abstract of the article online, but it probably wouldn't kill you to go out and buy a hard copy of the magazine.

All this is of course a roundabout way of announcing Feigned Outrage's first promotional event: the first 50 InstaPundit readers who make their way here and post an appropriately "Sheepish" comment will be awarded a copy of The Hives' Hate To Say I Told You So off iTunes. Please leave your email so I know where to send the gift. Richard, you're eligible. And so are the rest of you comment heroes: reheatedsouffle, AST, Steve in Houston — all of you.

Justice Clinton? Yeah, Right.

The speculation about President Hillary nominating her husband to the Supreme Court bench seems, to me, a bit much. The Wall Street Journal hit it first, presumably to trump up further right-wing indignation about a prospective Clinton Dynasty. Now CNN is in on the action, explaining that federal anti-nepotism laws don't apply to a President's judicial nominations.

So it could happen. But would it?

One key issue that I haven't seen discussed is recusal. I went on Westlaw a moment ago. In 2007 the Supreme Court issued 16 orders or opinions in cases in which President Bush was a named defendant. These are all "official capacity" cases, of course, and many of them relate to Guantanamo detentions. So it's possible and even likely that a President Clinton would find herself sued in federal court less frequently than her predecessor. Still, though, it's pretty much a certainty that a case will land in the Supreme Court in which she's on one or the other side of the "v."

It seems to me an open question whether Bill should recuse himself from reviewing executive actions taken by his wife. Recusal would be pretty much automatic if Hillary were sued in her personal capacity. Official capacity is a different matter: Justice Scalia invoked the distinction in a case involving official actions taken by a certain hunting buddy of his. So there is precedent for a Justice Clinton to stick around in an official capacity case against his wife. And for that matter, the precedent comes from a right-wing justice in a case against a Republican Vice President. But all the ingredients for a firestorm of conservative outrage are here, nonetheless. In politics, if there's an occasion for outrage, there will be outrage — whether or not it's warranted or hypocritical.

As I see it, it just wouldn't be worth the grief. To be sure, I think Bill Clinton would be a more-than-adequate Supreme Court Justice. Bill could bring to the bench eight years' experience with matters of national security on the executive side. We've seen an unprecedented expansion of executive power in recent years, and the questions about the constitutionality of the President's arrogated (and to be fair, occasionally delegated) powers are steadily making their way to the Supreme Court. I think it's fair to say that the Court could rule more confidently in these cases if a former Chief Executive sat on the bench. The extent to which a President needs to be able to do X to keep the nation secure from cataclysmic harm is probably not, in most cases, an appropriate consideration when the Court is asked to review the President's authority to do X. That said, you can bet the Court takes this and other practical considerations into account when it rules on the constitutionality of X. Having former President Clinton on the bench would add value on this score.

But again, I say it wouldn't be worth the grief. The recusal question would occur and recur, and even in cases when it wouldn't be on the table per se — for example, in any other case challenging executive action that does not rise to level of the President's desk (suits against the Attorney General, or executive agencies) — you'd hear howls of bias from the nongovernmental party. Moreover, if a Justice Clinton did have to recuse himself, he'd not be very useful to the President. You nominate justices who you think will advance your interests while on the bench (see, e.g., Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito). Toward that end, you want a full-timer.

Finally, there's the Perfect Storm Scenario: Bush v. Gore all over again, but in 2012, with President Hillary Clinton's reelection hanging in the balance, and her husband on the Supreme Court bench. In this case Justice Bill would have to recuse himself: it's his wife, suing or being sued in her personal capacity, and the stakes couldn't be higher. What if Justice Bill opts out and the Court splits 4-4? Wow.

In the end, I just don't think Hillary cracks open this can of worms. It may make for interesting speculation, or easy fearmongering, but it just wouldn't happen. Bill seems pretty committed to the prospect of traveling the world as American goodwill ambassador, if Mrs. Clinton wins. He can do a lot of good in that capacity — indeed, with his name recognition, charisma, and cachet abroad, he's uniquely suited to fill that role. There are a dozen or so accomplished liberal jurists who would do as good or better a job on the Court. Let Bill do what Bill does best, and don't — er — "Court" controversy.

Professor Krebs Sez: Play It Cool with Moderate Moslem Leaders

This seems well argued to me: anti-American/anti-Western sentiment has reached such a fever pitch in the Islamic world that support of any kind from U.S. or European governments actually hurts the political aspirations of moderate Moslem leaders in Islamic democracies.

Professor Krebs's proposed solution: pull back from folks like Nawaz Sharif so they can carve out an ideological space for themselves that is distinct from both Islamic extremism and Western liberalism. If we appear to like a candidate too much, his hopes are dashed.

Krebs acknowledges that there's a bit of a paradox here: if our object is to win hearts and minds, it's hard to make meaningful progress by maintaining a cold and critical distance. But he argues that it's a paradox with a way out: you give the Sharifs of the world time to establish themselves and sell their moderate position on the relationship between Islam and state. Then you can do the glad-handing and relationship-building.

Sounds to me like an interesting long-term strategy, but it makes me a bit uncomfortable, too. After all, it's not in America's nature — Katrina, excepted — to sit back and hope in the face of a crisis. That's what Krebs would suggest: hope folks like Sharif emerge and flourish in these states' democratic processes, hope they can put forward a moderate agenda that will enable long-term normalization of relations with the West, hope they don't go off the deep-end themselves. A lot of hoping, to be sure. Maybe we can advance our hope a little with some back-channel support, maybe the occasional discreet wink/nod encrypted into the critical rhetoric?

On the other hand — and this might initially come across as patronizing or politically incorrect, but hear me out and I hope it won't — the West's frustrating dealings with the Islamic world sure seem a lot like what a parent faces with a difficult adolescent child. Bring down the hammer, and you make the kid hate you. You can go the other route and try to be the kid's best friend, but he doesn't want any part of you. A teenager needs to — and in fact is entitled to — define who he is. There's a point in his development where the only way he knows how to do that is to rebel against the parents — the standard he knows, and the standard he's had thrust upon him (fairly or unfairly) since he was born.

Like the teenager, Islamic states are entitled to figure it out for themselves. They're entitled to self-determination. They're at the point now where they only now what they don't want. They're rejectionist and reactionary. As Krebs notes, even the moderates know that they don't want their societies to turn into The West All Over Again — But Steeple-Free and with Minarets! And so long as Whatever These States Come Up With meets some bare-minimum standards and is able to function, if not flourish, in the larger world, we should be content. It's not our place to command the Islamic world to conform to our image, any more than a parent should insist that a child make the same choices. So maybe it does make sense to give the societies that are best positioned to figure it out — the ostensibly democratic Islamic states — the time and space to fashion a distinct, constructive identity for themselves. Krebs proposes this approach as a matter of political expediency for the West; I wonder if it simply isn't the right thing to do.

And maybe it's just our job, in the interim, to keep the Pakistans, Iraqs, and Indonesias from breaking the neighbors' windows, crashing the car, and — God/Allah help us — pulling the geopolitical equivalent of a Columbine. On this last part, Krebs does not offer any advice. So it goes.

GPS Navigation Devices/Am I Missing Something Here?

I just got the TomTom GO 720 for Christmas, and I think it's terrific. I do worry that my ability to feel my way from Point A to Point B will atrophy, just as I no longer remember phone numbers (they're recorded digitally in contacts), email addresses (they auto-complete), or anything else (I send emails to myself). But the point of this sort of technology is to free up my mind for the sort of exercises we do here: philosophizing, argument, irrational rants — the sort of thing computers can't do for us.

But I'm afield a bit of the reason for my post, which is this: I've heard from more than one person that I need to be careful about leaving the TomTom in the car. They're hot properties around Boston, and there have been a lot of broken-window thefts of portable nav devices. This got me thinking — shouldn't GPS nav devices be the one thing a person can't steal? When it's powered up and running, at any given time 5 or more satellites know exactly where my TomTom is. So if someone smashes out the window of my Prius and makes off with it, shouldn't somebody — TomTom seems a good candidate — be able to find it for me, the minute the thief turns it on and receives a signal?

There must be some complication here that my simple mind hasn't grasped. Or maybe theft control is one of the hundred or more ancillary services TomTom and Garmin supply at additional cost. Is it? Shouldn't it be?

Hm.

Presidential Candidates

We propose a general framework for evaluating presidential candidates.  The idea is not to come up with a model that provides a precise assessment of each candidate, but simply a framework for discussion.  If we can break down the candidates by key attributes, I think we are more likely to have an objective and fair discussion as free as possible from personal prejudice and ideology.  Let's make sure we agree on the categories and descriptions before we begin evaluations of each candidate.

Once we have established the framework I propose that we evaluate George W. Bush as a starting point (and perhaps Bill Clinton).  We don't have to agree 100% on this one to continue, but it will hopefully give us a good test case for how this works.

After that we will go through the major candidates - perhaps in order of current tradesports odds of winning to make sure we spend our time on the most important players.  The judgments need not be final, but can be updated as we learn more and think more about the various candidates.  Note: while the next president may very well be a woman, I am using male pronouns in the framework (as the vast majority of viable candidates are male).  If you are already offended by this you should probably find another blog to read.

Desired Attributes of the President of the United States:

Integrity:

• Do you believe what he tells you?
• Do his stated positions represent his personal beliefs or political expediency?
• Will he abuse the power of the Presidency or seek to expand the powers of the Presidency beyond what he thinks is right and constitutional?
• Will he stick to principle over ideology if and when he believes the states or congress should have jurisdiction (even if the states may adopt policies contrary to his own personal ideology)?
• Will he make appointments that are best for the country or that reward loyalists?

Judgment (includes intellect, wisdom, and experience)

• Does he have the intellect and confidence to take in (possibly conflicting) information and advice from cabinet members and other advisors and make the right (or best) decisions?
• Does he have enough experience to have an intimate understanding of the key issues of the day and avoid naive judgments?
• Do the key decisions of his career give you confidence that he will make the right decisions as President?
• Does he appear susceptible to diplomatic gaffes or offenses in his speech or conduct?

Courage

• Will he take an unpopular position he believes is right?
• Will he confront his party/base in order to do what he believes is right?
• Will he take a course of actions for the US that he believes is right in the face of opposition from the UN, NATO, other allies, and other countries if necessary?
• Will be be willing to take unconventional approaches over politically safer options?
• Based on new information and/or understanding will he make necessary changes to policy even if such changes will expose him to charges of inconsistency?
• Will he stick with a policy he believes is right even if it becomes unpopular?

Leadership

• How good an ambassador will he be for the United States?
• How well will he unite the country behind him?
• How well will he be able to drive public opinion to his side?
• How well will he be able to persuade congress to enact his policies?
• Does he have enough experience and support to navigate politics in the capital and lead even if his popularity slips?
• How good a role model will he be?
• Will he be able to call upon the American People to make short-term sacrifices for the good of the nation?  If so, does he have the capacity to bring the People along with him?
• Has he demonstrated the capacity to be a coalition-builder, across party lines if necessary?
• In his career has he pursued constructive solutions over political stonewalling?

Vision

• Does he have a good vision for where this country should be years from now or can he only think in incremental steps?
• Is he capable of new and better ideas where they are needed in place of the standard Democratic and Republican party lines?
• Is he capable of adopting a long-term perspective, or will he get drawn into simply putting out fires?

Management

• Will he defer to the expertise of his generals and political appointees?  Will he be so deferential as to abdicate his leadership role?
• On that score, what measure of authority will he give political appointees over agency careerists?
• Will he tolerate or even cultivate dissenting viewpoints on his staff, or will he value loyalty over truth-seeking?
• Does he develop relationships or burn bridges?

Personal Ideology.  There are some desired qualities in a President which are inherently personal (eg, a person who believes that one day old embryos have souls and that destroying them is morally equivalent to murder may think differently about a pro-choice candidate than would someone who believes one day old embryos are little more than soulless blips).  These may be impossible to resolve in such a forum.  I say we leave them alone for now and use the other attributes as a starting point.

Candidates to evaluate:

Clinton, Obama, Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Huckabee, Paul, Edwards, Gore, Thompson, Bloomberg

Reason #77 Why I Feel Alienated from the Rest of America

Reason #77: People actually give a crap about the National Football League. Put aside for a minute Michael Vick's ongoing criminal enterprise and Pacman Jones "making it rain." Put aside the fact that they continue to rewrite the rulebook to protect the antiquated "dropback quarterback," who would be a bloody smear on the field right now if he were allowed to be hit and knocked over like the other 21 players on the field. Put aside the fact that there are 130 teams and 70 divisions. Put aside the de rigueur pregame kaffeeklatsch on every network, wherein the washed-up players and retired coaches rib one another for an hour and celebrate their effervescent jacked-for-TV "personalities." NFL pregame shows are like live jazz performances: the people on stage are having a hell of a lot more fun than the audience, and the entertainment gap is not just disquieting — it's flat-out aggravating.

Let's forget all that and talk about why this league really sucks. Right now Cleveland and Tennessee are tied for the last playoff spot in the AFC, going in to the last week. They have identical 9-6 records. On Sunday the Browns play the 49ers and the Titans play the Colts. There might be room for some drama here — except that the way the tiebreakers work, only one of the games needs to be played. The first tiebreaker is head-to-head competition. Cleveland and Tennessee didn't play this year. We proceed, then, to the second tiebreaker, which is record against AFC opponents. Cleveland is 7-5 right now against the AFC and will end the season that way, because the game against San Francisco is out-of-conference. The Titans are 6-5 and will be 7-5 — tying the Browns — if they beat the Colts. If the Titans don't beat the Colts, the Browns make the playoffs even if they lose, because they win on the second tiebreaker. But if the Titans win, we proceed to the third tiebreaker — common opponents, which favors the Titans, regardless of whether the Browns beat the 49ers.

In short, nothing Cleveland does on Sunday has any bearing on the playoff picture. They aren't in the playoffs, and they aren't eliminated. They are very much alive, going into the final week of the season, and the game they play will be completely irrelevant nonetheless.

It's absurd in any case that these tiebreakers decide the fate of teams on the playoff bubble. People complain about the BCS deciding teams' fortunes off the field, but the NFL playoff tiebreakers are about as arbitrary and arcane (if not as subjective). And it's certainly never the case that the outcome of the final game of a college team contending for the national title would be completely irrelevant going into the game.

If I'm Browns head coach Romeo Crennel, I'm calling a press conference to ask league officials why I shouldn't forfeit the game to get a higher draft pick.

Romney Doesn't Believe in Separation of Powers

If it's not enough that Mitt Romney tried hard to obstruct stem-cell research in Massachusetts when he was Governor, would it sway your vote to learn that Wily Willard doesn't particularly support constitutional government? Because he doesn't. Observe:

On May 31, 2005 the Massachusetts Legislature passed the state's current stem cell law, by a two-thirds override of Governor Romney's veto. Romney's objections to the bill, which affirmatively authorizes research on embryonic stem cells — but under strict conditions, and subject to a state regulatory regime — were that it did not incorporate certain amendments that he proposed on May 12. One of those amendments would have added the following language to the law:

No person shall knowingly create an embryo by the method of fertilization with the sole intent of using the embryo for research.

The Senate rejected Romney's amendment on May 19, without a vote:

Mr. Brewer, for the committee on Bills in the Third Reading to whom was referred the Message of His Excellency the Governor (Senate, No. 2052) returning with recommended amendments the Senate Bill enhancing regenerative medicine in the commonwealth (see Senate, No. 2039, amended) reported recommending that the Senate consider the amendments in the following form:

* * *

In said section 1, in subsection (b) of said section 8 of said proposed chapter 111L, by inserting after the first sentence the following sentence:- "No person shall knowingly create an embryo by the method of fertilization with the sole intent of using the embryo for research.";

* * *

The bill was before the Senate subject to amendment and re-enactment.

* * *

Mr. Lees further moved that the engrossed bill be amended in section 1, in subsection (b) of said section 8 of proposed chapter 111L of the General Laws by inserting the first sentence, the following sentence: "No person shall knowingly create an embryo by the method of fertilization with the sole intent of using the embryo for research."

The amendment was rejected.

That same day, the House rejected this proposed amendment on May 19, 2005, by a 107-48 margin:

The second amendment recommended by the Governor then was considered as follows:

In section 1, after the first sentence of section 8(b) in chapter 111L, inserting the following sentence: "No person shall knowingly create an embryo by the method of fertilization with the sole intent of using said embryo for research.".

After debate on the question on adoption of the amendment, the sense of the House was taken by yeas and nays, at the request of Mr. Peterson of Grafton; and on the roll call 48 members voted in the affirmative and 107 in the negative.

The votes to override Romney's veto of the bill were dramatic: 35-2 in the Senate and 112-42 in the House.

The limitation that Romney had proposed would have been a significant impediment to research of genetic diseases like ALS, Tay-Sachs disease, and sickle-cell anemia, as well as diseases like diabetes for which genetic predispositions have been established. The reason for this is that existing stem-cell lines will not support the research: investigators need to have the flexibility to create embryos with the disease gene, so they can harvest lines relevant to their inquiries. Barring developments with somatic cell nuclear transfer techniques (basically cloning, but for research purposes), the only way to derive these stem cell lines is to collect sperm and eggs from persons with appropriate genotypes and fertilize an embryo in vitro. Romney's amendment would have criminalized this practice.

But this was not the end of the story. The stem cell law authorized the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to draft appropriate regulations to advance the law's purposes. DPH was an executive agency under then-Governor Romney's thumb, and when the Department published its first set of regulations, sitting right there as Proposed 105 C.M.R. § 960.005(A) was a provision that was for all practical purposes identical to what the legislature had rejected:

No person shall knowingly create embryos or pre-implantation embryos by the method of fertilization with the sole intent of using the embryo for research.

So let's recap: Legislature writes law. Governor proposes Amendment X. Both houses of Legislature soundly reject Amendment X. Governor vetoes law. Legislature overrides veto. Governor writes Amendment X into a regulation. This is an absolute, unequivocal, not-close, flagrant, per se violation of the Commonwealth's constitutional separation of powers. A Romney can't make law unless the legislature authorizes him to do it. When it does, the Romney can only make law within the narrow parameters set down for him. You can't accomplish by regulation what you can't accomplish by veto.

This is elementary civics, and this Romney knew it. By the time these proposed regs were circulated in the fall of 2006, Romney had all but abandoned the Governor's office in favor of drumming up national interest: he knew he was running for the Presidency, and he could tell religious conservatives that he had fought tooth-and-nail against stem-cell research. He no doubt had plans to accuse justices of the Supreme Judicial Court of "judicial activism" when they invalidated the regulation, as they inevitably would.

Thanks to the 2006 statewide elections, however, Romney never had the chance to defend his actions — in a Massachusetts court or in the court of public opinion. Shortly after taking office in 2007, Attorney General Martha Coakley declared that the regulation was unconstitutional and practically begged someone — anyone — to challenge it in court. It never got to that point, as Governor Patrick took notice of the offensive regulation and withdrew it before it ever landed in the Code of Massachusetts Regulations.

All's well that ends well, I suppose, but what of a Presidential candidate who so willfully and casually acts outside his constitutional authority to score political points with another constituency? Massachusetts legislators wrote the stem cell law. As much as representative democracy can, the law reflected the "will of the people." Romney made much of the "will of the people" when the rights of same-sex couples were on the line. It's one thing, apparently, for a handful of justices to vindicate the rights of a political minority. That's undemocratic. But when one man unconstitutionally overrides the legislature — it's fair game.

But I'm running a bit afield of my thesis, which is that Romney evinced a staggering disrespect for constitutional government with his actions here. A certain amount of pushing and pulling is to be expected between legislators and executive officials grappling for a political edge. What happened here, though, is just startling. To be sure, it's not Jeb Bush sending a police squad to thwart the execution of a court order — Romney didn't use force to attempt a limited coup. He just overrode the rule of law. Whatever your views on stem-cell research, that should give you pause.