Around the Blawgosphere: Blog Seeks Out Humor in Outrage, Smugness on Web After Health Care Ruling
“KHAAANNNN!”
“Patrick” from the blog Popehat announced an informal contest on Thursday morning, before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Affordable Care Act ruling came down and before U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder became the first member of a sitting president’s cabinet to be cited for contempt of Congress. The blog is looking for the “most egregious example of hysterical, shrieking outrage, or smug, gloating condescension, produced on the World Wide Web today” in the wake of these two events. Submissions are to be posted in the comments. The prize for the individual who finds the winning remark wins a Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan DVD.
Actor Alec Baldwin got a nomination for this tweet with an unclear meaning: “SCOTUS fixed game in Bush v Gore, bc they hated Gore. What does 2day’s decision say about GOP faith in Romney? #SCOTUSworks4GOP.”
You may be too late to enter the contest, which ends at 10:30 a.m. ET today. But the comments are there for you to enjoy or object to.
Long Week, Short Poems
This seemed like a good week to check in with the blog Supreme Court Haiku Reporter, which provides links to Supreme Court decisions accompanied by quick haiku summaries.
The Affordable Care Act merited three haiku, each of which appeared on Twitter before appearing on the blog.
The first one:
It’s unanimous!
The Anti Injunction Act
Does not bar challenge
The second:
Commerce Clause can’t save
individual mandate
But Taxing Clause does
The third:
Medicaid changes
States can’t lose existing funds
New programs opt-out
The blog also wrote haiku this week about Arizona v. U.S., regarding an an Arizona law designed to crack down on illegal immigrants; American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock, which reaffirmed the court’s support for its controversial Citizens United ruling; and Miller v. Alabama, which barred mandatory sentences of life in prison without parole for juveniles convicted of murder.
On ‘Having It All’
After last week’s Atlantic story by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former Harvard law professor who gave up her State Department job because of family demands and criticized the work culture of law firms, Vivia Chen of the Careerist decided to get some female BigLaw partners’ takes on the article.
One partner who talked to Chen but asked not to be named said that junior associates often perceive a female partner’s reality to be worse than it is. “We don’t always tell them that we’re going to school events and how much time we spend with our kids,” she said. “We don’t want anyone to think we’re not committed to our jobs… . We are happy with our personal lives.”
Another sentiment that Chen noticed is that “there are high-powered jobs, and there are ridiculously high-powered jobs.” Working for the State Department is on a whole different plane than being a law firm partner. “She was trying to do the absolute hardest of the hard,” Debevoise & Plimpton partner Maura Monaghan told Chen. “She’s away from home; she can’t unwind at the end of the day. She’s in a job that’s all-consuming. It’s more like being in the military.”
