The Noncuratlex blog recently did a post making fun of constitutional law professors’ obsession with the individual mandate case. It includes shoutouts to the VC, co-blogger Randy Barnett, Laurence Tribe, and Metta World Peace:
RENO, NEVADA (Press International), June 25, 2012: The husbands and wives of the nation’s estimated 543 married Constitutional Law professors collectively filed for divorce today in Nevada state court, alleging that their spouses’ complete obsession with the United States Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on the Affordable Care Act had effectively destroyed their marriages.
“It all started pretty innocuously, with him writing a simple symposium piece on whether early 19th Century precedents could somehow justify the ACA’s individual mandate,” said Marla Thompson, wife of UC-Irvine law professor Farley Thompson. “But then Farley got obsessed–the ACA litigation just took over his life. He told me that we couldn’t eat broccoli for dinner because the vegetable represented a ‘tool’ in the hands of the ‘Lochnerians….’ He wouldn’t even carpool to work with me, unless I conceded at the outset of each trip that the government could properly demand that I replace our Honda with a Chrysler.”
Spouses of law professors known to oppose the ACA’s mandate voiced similar complaints. “I wish I had never heard of the Hkolov Cabal,” said Lawrence Tribkin, husband of Notre Dame professor Candace Yanders, referring to the law blog that has served as a central forum for anti-ACA commentary. Yanders, formerly known for her well-regarded work on the Nineteenth Amendment, “guest-blogged” on that site during May 2012. There, she revealed what she learned from 720 continuous hours of listening to the March 2012 oral argument on the ACA, as placed on a continuous loop in her office….
Yanders, who has petitioned to change her name to “Metta World Barnett,” subsequently was committed to a mental institution for treatment.
On the courthouse steps, other petitioners related dysfunctional behaviors by their spouses such as: insisting, for several months running, that they were “this close” to being invited by SCOTUSblog to offer guest commentary on the ACA….
Of course none of this applies to me. I can stop blogging about the individual mandate whenever I want to! And I already have done guest commentary on the case for SCOTUSblog, and will again on Thursday, dammit. Fortunately, my wife agreed to go out with me in the first place in part because she had previously read my blog posts at the Hkolov Cabal, er, Volokh Conspiracy. So she at least knew what she was getting into!