Beacon Broadside

Scott Brown Violated the Constitution!!!! (maybe)

Today is Constitution Day (observed). Constitution Day is really celebrated on September 17th, but we can't be trusted to acknowledge the document that grants us our rights and freedoms on a Saturday, can we? So that you may ponder the importance of the Constitution--today or tomorrow, as your schedule allows--we share with you this electrifying post from Jay Wexler, author of the forthcoming (and anticipated! by Amazon!) book The Odd Clauses: Understanding the Constitution Through Ten of Its Most Curious Provisions. The post orginally appeared on his blog.

I hate it when I have to break news that may “alter” the “course” of “American history,” but sometimes that’s what you’ve got to do when you’re an odd clauses expert. The other night I was watching the local news when they did a story on how Senator Scott Brown just came back from a week of service in Afghanistan. Apparently, Brown is in the Massachusetts National Guard and is a member of the JAG Corps. Hearing that a Senator was also serving in the military, at least in some capacity, raised my Incompatibility Clause hackles.

The IC, located in Article I, Section 6, provides that “no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.” The clause is the subject of the first chapter of my forthcoming book. It originally served an anti-corruption purpose–the framers disliked how the English Kings would offer plum executive branch offices to members of Parliament who supported their legislative agendas. Over time, in the United States, the clause has become a key structural provision in our scheme of separated powers. According to the leading academic article on the clause, one author of which, at least, is a major figure in conservative legal circles, the principle embodied by the IC is “one of the five great distinguishing structural features of our constitutional system.”

Can someone be in both the Senate and the National Guard?  I wasn’t sure.  There’s a big case from the 1970s which involved an IC challenge to army reservists who also served in the House of Representatives.  The district court said this was a violation of the clause, and the court of appeals affirmed, but the Supreme Court dismissed the case on procedural grounds (for lack of “standing”).

Of course, the National Guard is not the same thing as the army reserves.  Still, though, Senator Brown’s dual positions led one blogger/observer back in January 2010 to twice tweet (that was fun to write) Brown and ask whether Brown planned to resign his position with the Guard.  When Brown didn’t reply and the blogger happened to see Brown on the street in Southie, he got out of his car and asked Brown directly. Apparently, Brown said that membership in the Guard didn’t count for IC purposes. The account of this meeting is here.

Well, I wanted to do some research into this constitutional question, but the fact is I’m a little too busy at the moment, especially given that on Wednesday I have to teach American Indian Law for the very first time ever and then get on a plane to go to Santiago, Chile for a conference.  (anyone have any recs about what to see/do/eat in Santiago?).

So, I decided instead to pose this question to one of the world’s biggest experts in the Constitution’s odd clauses.  Seth Barrett Tillman is a Lecturer of Law at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.  He’s published a bazillion articles on all sorts of things, mostly the U.S. Constitution and its more obscure parts.  He’s a master of parsing the specific language of the text and making ingenious and provocative arguments–often controversial–about its meaning.  Tillman makes a couple of appearances in The Odd Clauses, one in the IC chapter and one in a chapter about the Recess Appointments Clause.  I asked Tillman what he thought of the National Guard/Senator/IC issue, and this is what he said:

You ask whether there is any incompatibility between a member of Congress and in the National Guard, positing that Senator Brown is serving in JAG as a National Guardsmen.  In analyzing this question, one starts with the Constitutional text:

[The Ineligibility Clause] No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and [The Incompatibility Clause] no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

U.S. Const. Article 1, Section 6, Clause 2 (emphasis added).

The precise reach of Office under the United States (as used in the Incompatibility Clause) is disputed.  For example, some commentators have taken the position that Office under the United States (as used in the Incompatibility Clause) is coextensive with Office of the United States (as used in the Appointments Clause, the Commissions Clause, and the Impeachment Clause).  Professors Akhil Amar, Vikram Amar, and (recently) Saikrishna Prakash have taken this position.  All agree that Office of the United States includes officers appointed under the aegis of the Appointments Clause, Inferior Office Appointments Clause, and Recess Appointments Clause.  In other words, Office of the United States includes persons appointed by the President, Heads of Departments, or a Court of Law to statutory offices in the Judicial or Executive Branches.

The Amars and Prakash would also include the President (and, perhaps, the VP) in the category of Office of the United States.  However, the Impeachment Clause states: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”  Justice Story, noting the absence of the word “other” between “all” and “civil,” argued that the President is named in “contradistinction” from “offices of the United States” and, therefore, the President is not encompassed in that category.  I agree with Story.  (A similar point was made by Chief Justice Roberts in the recent Free Enterprise decision).

Professor Steven Calabresi takes a more nuanced approach and once argued that Officers under the United States is a superset of Offices of the United States, with the presidency included in the former category, even if not in the latter.  My own view is that Calabresi is only half-right.  Office under the United States is more expansive than Office of the United States, but the presidency is not in either category.  When the Constitution seeks to include the presidency, it does so expressly (as in the Impeachment Clause) or uses the more encompassing phrase: Public Trust under the United States (as used in Article VI).

Thus, Office under the United States includes all holding statutory offices (offices created by Congress, or which Congress could destroy by statute, in the sense of removing all the office’s emoluments or powers vis-a-vis the public and/or the other branches).  In other words, Office under the United States includes all holding any Office of the United States and all holding an appointment to any House or Senate office . . . such as the Secretary of the Senate or Clerk of the House, i.e. non-member, non-presiding officers of either House.  To wrap it up, under any of these opinions which I have just discussed . . . that of Akhil Amar, Steven Calabresi, Justice Story, or my own . . . a commissioned officer in the National Guard holds an Office under the United States.  I explain why that is in greater detail below.

In the 18th and 19th century, being in Congress and in a state militia was not a problem.  There was no textual incompatibility.  State militia was state office, which does not trip the Incompatibility clause.  And if the militia were activated, which put it under the command of the President, the status of the office did not change, it remained a state office, although it took on the characteristic of an “office under the Authority of the United States,” which would trip the Ineligibility Clause – - not the neighboring Incompatibility Clause.  So being in the Militia had some implications for joint office-holding even then.  Of course, if the militia were the D.C. militia or the militia of some other federal territory or enclave, then the position would have held a federal office, and such a person would also be under the aegis of the Incompatibility Clause (not just the Ineligibility Clause).  My analysis here adheres to the early congressional precedents, but, admittedly, the record is mixed.  The House once held that there is a prohibited incompatibility between the office of state governor and Representative.  Its reasoning is obscure.

In the early 20th century, prior to WWII, the status of the state militias changed.  Because of several statutory reforms, the state militia evolved into the National Guard.  Officers of the National Guard have true dual status–they take both state and federal oaths of office and the officers hold federal commissions–subject to Presidential nomination and Senate advice and consent.  (Arguably National Guardsmen who are noncommissioned officers or persons below that status [i.e., enlisted personnel], although federal employees in the national military, are not office-holders, and so do not activate the Incompatibility Clause.)  In the constitutional sense, National Guard officers are virtually indistinguishable from other Executive Branch military officers.  So if you look to pre-20th century jurisprudence, if you examine cases relating to the old state militias, which barely have any existence today, your (original public meaning) analysis will go astray.  Professors Jerry Cooper and Steve Vladeck have written on this evolution.  I have too (here and here).

Today, I would say that there is an incompatibility between being a Senator/Representative and a commissioned officer in the National Guard.  One federal court has so held . . . see United States v. Lane, No. 05-0260 (C.A.A.F. 2006) (Gierke, C.J.) (holding that panel of military judges convicting defendant, which included Senator Graham, was improperly constituted, and remanding for a new trial).  Judge Crawford, later Chief Judge Crawford, wrote a spirited–but ultimately unconvincing–dissent.  There is a student note reaching this conclusion–that there is an incompatibility–see David J. Shaw, Note, An Officer and a Congressman: The Unconstitutionality of Congressmen in the Armed Forces Reserves, 97 Geo. L. J. 1739, 1742 (2009).  The Shaw note is less than perfect, but it ultimately does come down the correct way and he cites a plethora of good material.  If these issues interest you, you might want to consider reading my . . . Seth Barrett Tillman, The Originalist Who Came in From the Cold: A “New” View of the Incompatibility Clause, the Removal & Disqualification Clause, and the Religious Test Clause–A Response to Professor Josh Chafetz’s Impeachment & Assassination 1-92 (2011) (unpublished manuscript, on file with author),available here.

Standing, justiciability, and remedy are different questions.

Well, there you have it, folks.  I should add that the “standing” issue–essentially, whether a court would ever actually entertain a challenge to Brown’s dual office holding–is beside the point.  As a Senator, Brown has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, and so he has an obligation to act consistently with the Incompatibility Clause regardless of whether any court would ever enter an order against him.

As I said, I hate to throw the republic into disarray, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

 

Odd Clauses Watch: Cars 2, Knighthood, and the Constitution

Jay Wexler is the author of The Odd Clauses: Understanding the Constitution Through Ten of Its Most Curious Provisions. Wexler is a professor at the Boston University School of Law; prior to teaching he worked as a clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the U.S. Supreme Court, and then as a lawyer in the Office of Legal Council at the Department of Justice. He has published nearly twenty academic articles, essays, and reviews, as well as nearly three dozen short stories and humor pieces, in places like The Boston Globe, Spy, Mental Floss and McSweeney's. This post originally appeared on his blog.

[Editor's note: SPOILER ALERT! In the post that follows, renowned legal Scholar Jay Wexler reveals important plot points from Disney Pixar's Cars 2. Because we care deeply about your enjoyment of family-friendly entertainment, if you have not yet seen this movie consider yourself warned and do not read any further, but do go out and pre-order your copy of The Odd Clauses.]

Hi there. If you have kids and are interested in obscure aspects of the Constitution, then perhaps you are wondering whether it was constitutional for Mater the goofball tow truck from Cars to be knighted by the Queen of England car at the end of Cars 2, following how Mater saved the world and everything. Doesn’t the Constitution say something about titles of nobility, and doesn’t that maybe prevent US citizens from becoming knights and dukes and what have you?

First of all, of course, it might not be the case that the U.S. Constitution governs these cars. How the hell do I know what legal system these automobiles live under? In the first movie, Doc Hudson presided over a court that sentenced Lightning McQueen to fix the road that he ruined when he fell out of Mac and lost control on his way into Radiator Springs. Then again, Doc Hudson also presided over what seemed to be something of a prostate exam on the police car, so who knows what’s going on? It does seem, however, that there is law in Cars land, and Cars does seem to be set in a world that looks almost exactly like our own, only that there are no people and only cars. I think it’s a fair assumption that the Constitution applies. I suppose we could get into the question of whether to assume that if the world of Cars is governed by the Constitution, the founding car fathers also substituted the word “cars” for “persons” whenever that would have been appropriate. What good would a Constitution that refers to “persons” be in a world where there are no persons, right? In any event, I think I’ll just let you stew over that one yourself.

Assuming that the U.S. Constitution applies to these cars, however, it would still have been okay for the Queen car to knight Mater, because although the Constitution prohibits active “officers” of the United States from generally accepting titles of nobility, and although it also prohibits the U.S. federal government or any of the states from granting titles of nobility, it does not prohibit a regular old citizen from accepting a foreign title of nobility. That’s why it has always been okay for various non government officials like Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope to accept foreign titles and lordships and legions of honor and what have you. It doesn’t, of course, explain why French people think Jerry Lewis is funny, but at least he didn’t violate the Constitution. And neither did Mater. Phew.

For more about the Titles of Nobility Clauses, I hope you’ll check out my book when it comes out in the fall, because there’s a whole chapter in there about them.

The Good News is that the World Will End May 21st

Laurie Essig teaches at Middlebury College and is the author of American Plastic: Boob Jobs, Credit Cards and Our Quest for Perfection. Essig writes for the Chronicle of Higher Education's Brainstorm Blog, where this post originally appeared.

photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

Like many people walking around Wall Street this weekend, I received a pamphlet telling me that Jesus is coming to wrap up this project known as the children of God. According the the pamphlet, on May 21st, 2011 there will be a deadly earthquake. There will be dead bodies in October of this year. The saved will rise up with Christ. The rest of us will suffer damnation here on earth. The people who gave me this pamphlet are part of Project Caravan, whose slogan is:

“Have you heard the awesome news? The end of the world is almost here!”

It’s awesome because it’s the Rapture, when the Righteous rise up to Heaven but everyone else is left to live out the End Days.

If you didn’t receive a pamphlet, perhaps you saw the subway or bus shelter placards warning of the End Days? These were bought with the retirment savings of Robert Fitzpatrick, a retired MTA employee and a Staten Island resident who is so convinced of the timing of the Apocalypse that he saw no need to save for his dotage. He is not alone.

The knowledge that May 21st will mark the beginning of the end was provided to us by Harold Camping, 89, who is president of the Christian Family Radio Network. Technically, Camping said that was the day there’s be a huge earthquake and Christ would come back down to earth, but the actual end wouldn’t happen till October. There are now thousands of believers roaming the earth to warn us even though technically Camping did predict the end of the world  in 1994 and he seems to have been wrong about that (unless the world did end and the actual torment is having to watch US politics devolve to the point where the Donald was actually a viable presidential candidate for more than two seconds?).

I just searched “help me be part of the Rapture” and didn’t find much useful advice. It seems I’m supposed to accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior and follow certain Evangelical Christian beliefs- like I’m morally superior to the rest of you sinners AND I get to control what you do with your bodies in the name of God- but the specifics of it are kinda unclear. If I truly believe that the End Days are here, can I spend all my savings on massages, really good champagne, and quit work? Is that going to hurt my chances of rising up and leaving you behind?  Can I rack up credit card debt even though technically I won’t be able to pay it back- – or is that  theft and is theft a big enough sin to actually keep me here in eternal torment AND having to pay back huge credit card balances? More importantly, can I do whatever I want until Thursday and then repent, accept Jesus Christ, live a homo and abortion free life for say 24 hours and then rise up?

As important as these questions are it is also worth asking what the possible lesson of the movement for End Days is about?  The Evangelical Christians most likely to spread the word about the Rapture are probably also those who have been hurt hardest by the current economic collapse– people without high levels of education who work in industries that have mostly been outsourced elsewhere.  They are also, like the rest of us, probably struggling to understand how the stock market can be “robust” and the Wall St. execs getting record bonuses even as unemployment, homelessness, and chronic hunger continue to rise.

In this sense, the appearance of Rapture-ites on Wall St. makes total sense since the workings of global capital are a great and unknowable mystery. Like all divinity stories, there is this sacred land, Wall Street, where magical and yet incomprehensible rituals and words fly about, like leverage and trading derivatives, all of which is then symbolized by numbers and signs.

And so the numbers of a thriving Dow intermingle with the equally inscrutable terms in Numerology to form a coherent set of meanings about “unrest in the Middle East,” “Osama’s death,” and, of course, the weather. Although I doubt Camping is any more accurate than the Mayans (who predict 2012 will be the end), I do think this sort of terror and desire to be set free from suffering without reason and seeing without comprehending is a universal human desire to escape. Not unlike my champagne and massage plan. Because if the world is ending this Friday, I want to make sure I have as good a chance at coming out ahead as anyone.

Jay Wexler: Cape Cod Hullabaloo: A Prayer Parking Space?

Today's post is from law professor and humorist Jay Wexler, author of Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars. He studied religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School and law at Stanford, and worked as a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Wexler teaches at the Boston University School of Law, and he blogs at holyhullabaloos.typepad.com, where this post originally appeared.

As a couple of local Boston area papers have reported, the board of selectmen in the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts, recently voted to allow one parking space at the Old Silver Beach to be used from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day by a group of local churches. The churches can set up shop in the parking space and talk to people who come and talk to them first, but the churches are not allowed to proselytize to people who just want to come and get some sun and surf.

Understandably, this decision has raised some concern that the town has violated the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from making any law "respecting an establishment of religion." This is the part of the Constitution that typically people mean when they talk about "separation of church and state." Well, the use of the prayer parking space, without more, does not itself violate the First Amendment. It's weird--maybe even, as we like to say in Boston, wicked weird--but not unconsitutional. What would be unconstitutional, however, would be if some other religious group--say a Jewish group or a Buddhist group or a Satanist group--asked the town if it could also set up shop in the parking lot, and the town said no.

Video: Kate Clinton the Wiseass White Woman

If you can't see the video in your reader, click here.

Kate Clinton, author of I Told You So, is a faith-based, tax-paying, America-loving political humorist and family entertainer. With a career spanning over 25 years, Kate Clinton has worked through economic booms and busts, Disneyfication and Walmartization, gay movements and gay markets, lesbian chic and queer eyes, and ten presidential inaugurals. She still believes that humor gets us through peacetime, wartime and scoundrel time. You can see this and many other vlogs at kateclinton.com.

You can also check out Kate on the Progressive this week "reviewing" Bruno.

Video: Kate Clinton on Comic Pride Month

Kate Clinton congratulates Senator Al Franken on his new job. If the video doesn't appear in your reader, watch it here.

Sign up for Kate's newsletter, get Kate's latest dates, news, and Vlog archives at: http://kateclinton.com Kate also blogs at Bilerico Project: http://www.bilerico.com/

Kate Clinton: Stonewall 40

Today's post is from Kate Clinton, author of I Told You So. Clinton is a faith-based, tax-paying, America-loving political humorist and family entertainer. With a career spanning over 25 years, Kate Clinton has worked through economic booms and busts, Disneyfication and Walmartization, gay movements and gay markets, lesbian chic and queer eyes, and ten presidential inaugurals. She still believes that humor gets us through peacetime, wartime and scoundrel time. This post originally appeared on Clinton's CommuniKate blog.

On an early morning flight from Orlando, after appearing at the 19th Annual Gay Days at Disneyworld, I was “sirred” twice by a cab driver and flight attendant. All before 7 a.m. I would have thought the brand new faux leopard Croc flats I was sporting would have thrown them off. Or that the “Gay Day” banners everywhere would have heightened their threat levels to rainbow.

Usually I find mistaken identification an embarrassment or irritant. In past years I would correct quickly with "That's Ma'am not Sir," and then try to lessen their discomfort. But this 40th anniversary of Stonewall, I wear the gaffe as a badge of pride. I stare them down. Even if they seem remorseful, I don't help them through their moment. In solidarity with the unsung butch lesbians who were with the fags and drag queens at the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village in 1969, I have been doing my own version of butching it up.

It used to be hard to find a NY gay person of a certain age who did not claim to have been at the Stonewall Riots. I am a New Yorker of that certain age, but I most certainly was not at the Stonewall Riots. In 1969 I had just graduated from a small Jesuit college in upstate New York. Insert "Class of 69" joke here.

I was a member of the Gay Resistance. I was trying not to come out. Because of that resistance, I could not and then would not hear the news of gay liberation spreading upstate from Greenwich Village. Though pre-internet, the Stonewall message quickly reached upstate gays in the anti-Vietnam war, women’s liberation and civil rights movement. Before long even my little town in upstate New York had out gay activists organizing, educating and agitating.

Jay Wexler: Ginsburg Grants a Stay

Today's post is from law professor and humorist Jay Wexler, author of the forthcoming Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars. He studied religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School and law at Stanford, and worked as a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Wexler teaches at the Boston University School of Law, and he blogs at holyhullabaloos.typepad.com, where this post originally appeared.

So Monday, Justice Ginsburg issued a stay of a lower court's approval of the whole bankruptcy deal involving Chrysler and the sale of a bunch of its assets to Fiat and whatnot. Though it doesn't happen often, individual justices of the Supreme Court have the authority to grant stays of lower court decisions when they believe that the stay is necessary for the Supreme Court to decide whether to decide the case on the merits.; In other words, if a lower court decision would result in some irreversible action (like the whole Chrysler deal), and if there's a plausible argument that the lower court decision involves some legal issue that might be worthy of Supreme Court review, the adversely affected party might ask a justice to issue an emergency stay of the lower court decision so the whole Court will have some time to decide whether in fact the case is worthy of review. The request goes to the justice who has authority over the geographical area where the case comes from; Justice Ginsburg is the justice in charge of the second circuit area, which includes New York, and so the request went to her. The justice has the option of either just deciding whether to grant the stay him or herself, or alternatively to bring it to the whole Court to decide whether to grant the stay. A decision to grant a stay doesn't mean that the Court will actually go ahead and decide the case on the merits; it just means that the Court thinks the issue is important enough that it needs some time to consider whether to decide the case on the merits.

When I was clerking for Justice Ginsburg in the 1998-1999 term, I had occasion to work on one of these stay requests. It was late in the term--maybe June or something--and as usual I went on a long lunch break. I can't remember whether it was one of those days when I went back to my rat-infested apartment to eat and watch a rerun of Good Times or whether I went to the Au Bon Cafe with friends or what, but I remember coming back after lunch to find this big file on my desk involving a request for an emergency stay in a really famous religion case-- one in which I discuss in Holy Hullabaloos. Now, I'm good at certain things, but one thing I'm not good at is dealing with emergencies. Luckily, there generally aren't any emergencies at the Court. Clerks do a lot of work, but you always know what's coming and you generally have a good amount of time to do it. This allows you to plan your work in a rational fashion and not have to worry that something unexpected is going to come up and bite you in the ass. Well, this file bit me on the ass, and I freaked out. I said something like: "Ahhhh" and wet myself. OK, I didn't wet myself, but I got very nervous and worried and also a little irritated because now I was going to have to do all this work to figure out what the stay application was all about, which meant that I wasn't going to have time to watch more television or work on my unbelieveably horrible novel about a blueberry muffin called "Arrivederci, Loser," the title of which was based on a piece of hate mail that my wife once received from a former nutso friend who thought that my wife had abandoned her for me (she had).

The case in which the stay was requested is too confusing to describe fully here. It basically involved a first amendment Establishment Clause (church/state separation) challenge to the state of New York's decision to grant a community of Satmar Hasidic Jews its own school district so it could administer publicly funded assistance to disabled children in the community. Back in 1994 the Court had invalidated the first version of this arrrangement in the Kiryas Joel v. Grumet case that I discuss in the book.  In subsequent years, the state made several attempts to comply with the Court's decision in that case while still giving the Satmars the authority they wanted. The thing I worked on was a request to stay a lower court decision holding the most recent attempt unconstitutional. Luckily for me, Justice Ginsburg, as usual, knew exactly what to do and didn't really much need my help and so it all turned out fine (the Court in fact granted the stay but didn't end up hearing the case, though a few justices thought they should have), but I still sharply remember the feeling of YIKES I had coming back to lunch to find the latest iteration of a famous case in my field of interest sitting on my desk.

Re-Gifting: Kate Clinton's Anniversary

Today's post is from Kate Clinton, author of I Told You So, forthcoming from Beacon Press. Clinton is a faith-based, tax-paying, America-loving political humorist and family entertainer. With a career spanning over 25 years, Kate Clinton has worked through economic booms and busts, Disneyfication and Walmartization, gay movements and gay markets, lesbian chic and queer eyes, and ten presidential inaugurals. She still believes that humor gets us through peacetime, wartime and scoundrel time. This post originally appeared on Clinton's CommuniKate blog.

In a quiet ceremony held earlier this month, I celebrated my twenty-eighth year of performing. Please, no gifts.

On the night of March 21, 1981, on a challenge from my best friend, I did my first show in my hometown Syracuse, New York at a woman's club called Ms. Adventure. When my friend, Rita, started heckling me about five minutes in, I stopped. “Rita, what are you doing?” She was older, a photographer, always in black turtlenecks because she fancied herself a beatnik. “It's comedy; we’re supposed to heckle.” Though I was three semesters retired from my teaching gig, I still had my study hall monitor mojo and shut her down expertly. “Cut it out.” She slumped.

Many years and dry heaves later, I marvel at my career. It certainly was not one of the options on the jobs checklist on sixth grade career day. Other: lesbian comic.

The same year I began my career, Pope John Paul and President Ronald Reagan began their careers. Together they were Forgive and Forget. It was also the year that gay men started dying from AIDS. Then it was called “the gay cancer.” Those three events and the thematic variations on them have been intertwined touchstones in my routines for 28 years.

Jay Wexler: Supreme March Madness: The SCOTUS Pool

Today's post is from law professor and humorist Jay Wexler, author of the forthcoming Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars. He studied religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School and law at Stanford, and worked as a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Wexler teaches at the Boston University School of Law, and he blogs at holyhullabaloos.typepad.com, where this post originally appeared.

So, I thought I'd say a few words here about March Madness, because what else is there really to talk about in March other than March Madness? Can you imagine how crappy the month of March would be if it weren't for March Madness? All these way-too-cold days with no days off anywhere or holidays to break up the monotony? Anyway, I've been a fan of college basketball since I was a kid. Not a huge madman like fan or anything, but generally a fan. As a kid I rooted for BC, since they were the only real player on the college basketball scene, but when I went to law school, I went to a bunch of Stanford games and became a much bigger Stanford fan than a BC fan. I was even at the game in February of 1995 when the Stanford Tree got into an actual, not kidding around fight with Oski the Bear, the Cal mascot, right there on the court in Maples Pavilion. Karen and I were in the stands close to where the struggle took place, and a cop came by and asked the fans in our section if we had seen which mascot had started the fight. It was Oski, that piece of crap.

I don't really know if it was Oski, just in case someone was thinking of bringing a libel suit.

Black History Year

Today's post is from Kate Clinton, author of I Told You So, forthcoming from Beacon Press. Clinton is a faith-based, tax-paying, America-loving political humorist and family entertainer. With a career spanning over 25 years, Kate Clinton has worked through economic booms and busts, Disneyfication and Walmartization, gay movements and gay markets, lesbian chic and queer eyes, and ten presidential inaugurals. She still believes that humor gets us through peacetime, wartime and scoundrel time. This post originally appeared on Clinton's CommuniKate blog.

The Inauguration of Barack Obama was the first presidential inauguration I ever attended. Without protesting. On our inaugural pilgrimage to DC our train from NYC was on the track behind then President-elect Barack Obama's train making whistle stops from Philadelphia through Wilmington and Baltimore, so we were delayed by "presidential activities on the route" by three hours. The conductor said, "Complain to the White House," and usually grumpy commuters laughed. Already with the no-drama Obama!

We stayed in Adams Morgan with our gracious hosts, Nancy Polikoff and Cheryl Swannack. They had been studying inaugural road maps in the Washington Post for weeks and were our unerring GPS advisors. In addition to the thrill of the inauguration, the big DC topic was logistics - surface roads, alternate routes, estimated travel time, metro closings, car pooling, taxi hopping. Our hosts were so expert, I am confident they could handle the logistics of getting us out of Iraq.

On Sunday we attended the MCC DC church for a Martin Luther King Day concert with their Gospel Choir. Founded in 1992, the choir is composed of people of varied religious experiences who love to sing and share God's love through song. And can they sing! Choir Director Shirli Hughes, in her selection of songs and soloists, completely captured the full circle joy of the life of Martin Luther King and the inauguration of Barack Obama. In their gorgeously simple church, Michele Lanchester ripped through We Shall Not Be Moved. After the service she agreed to sing it at our saging ceremony the next night at Dupont Circle. "If it's not too cold," she added. Her pipes are a gift, so I understood.

The brilliant community organizer Jose Rodriguez had the foresight to get a park permit for an inaugural week of actions in Dupont Circle. At one entrance he and his cohorts had installed a giant blowup of George Bush and provided shoes for people to toss. Shoe Bush was a huge cathartic hit. Jose let us use the stage for an hour and at 6 pm Dupont Circle began to fill. Park police estimated 2,000. We kept the crowd warm with some world dance music, playlisted by my in-house deejay and girlfriend.

A Modest Proposal for Your Holiday Correspondence

Today's post is from law professor and humorist Jay Wexler, author of the forthcoming Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars. Wexler teaches at the Boston University School of Law. Read more of Jay Wexler's humor at holyhullabaloos.typepad.com.

With Christmas just a few days away and New Year's right around the corner, this is the time when each day my family's mailbox fills up with treasured holiday cards from family, friends, and creepy high school classmates we thankfully haven't seen in twenty years. We love the letters with their welcome updates—a vacation in Europe, a promotion to assistant sales manager, a tumor caught just in time! Our favorite part of these cards, however, has always been the picture. This is our chance to see what you all look like after the passage of another year. Has Father Time treated you well, or could you use some help from the plastic surgery clinic down the street? What kinds of shoes do you fancy, and are your knees still as lovely as I remember? Is your face still symmetrical, or has Father Bell's Palsy paid you a little visit?

Sadly, though, more and more the pictures we receive don't contain images of you at all. Instead, we get measly little photographs of your kids and maybe a pet chinchilla in a sweater with snowflakes on it. This would have shocked the Pilgrims, whose primitive stick-figure Christmas cards always depicted the entire family in their dour black frocks. In fact, it wasn't until the industrial revolution that children occasionally started appearing alone on holiday cards—though these images of dirty child laborers look a bit shocking to our delicate modern sensibilities.

Don't get me wrong: We love kids. We love looking at them, playing with them, dangling yarn around and watching them get all tangled up. What adorable little creatures! But it's you we know, you we once pulled all nighters with in college, you whose shoes we puked on during homecoming. We want to know what you look like after all these years, and even more than that, we'd love to discover what ugly dude you ended up marrying.