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Violation of someone’s civil rights? I don’t know. Just thought of that of late.

I asked just that question after the argument in McDonald.

I’ll get back to the ACA arguments, but my “jump the shark” question was actually provoked by reading Justice Scalia’s dissent in Vartelas v. Holder, where he writes, “Ignorance, of course, is no excuse (ignorantia legis neminem excusat).” I can understand translating an obscure Latin phrase into English, but what on earth was he thinking when he translated a perfectly understandable English phrase into the Latin from which, I’ll concede, it was derived? It suggested to me that he’s lost control of his cleverness, or – put another way – that he’s interested in displaying his cleverness for its own sake (or for his own sake).

We all know that after the mandate was argued, Toobin came out raving mad, saying the argument was a “train wreck” and the mandate was going down.

I think he may just have a vested interest in Obama’s signature legislation being struck down the Court. He has a book coming out in September 2012 called, quite ominously, “The Oath: The Obama White House vs. the Supreme Court.” (Riffing off the Chief’s flubbing of BHO’s oath, nno doubt). Just look at the photo!

Obviously, the book hasn’t been finished yet, but the narrative will work so much better if Obama loses, and decisively so.

By putting himself out there, Toobin can now claim that he *knew* the mandate was going down. It makes the narrative so much better.

Update: Toobin is doubling down:

“I’m not wild about being so far out on a limb, but all I can do is call it the way I see it, and I did,” Toobin said by telephone Monday evening.

“In my experience when the argument goes badly for one side, that side generally loses,” Toobin said. “That’s not obviously a 100 percent guarantee [but] my view of oral argument is based on watching oral arguments change at the Supreme Court over the years.”

While giving an opinion by actually raising one’s hand may never become completely extinct, the devices can give voice to people too shy to speak up.

“Those who talk in class aren’t necessarily those who have the most to say,” said Eric J. Johnson, director of the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia Business School. “But with a clicker, everyone in the room has input and they can express their opinion anonymously.”

But critics say that feedback from clicker surveys is inherently superficial, foreclosing nuanced analysis. And they point out that they can become just one of many must-have devices that are easy to lose, like a Kindle or a cellphone.

From the Times.

I think it is often true that the students that speak the most have the least to say.

Wren also pointed to technological advancements that can help players study data and video wherever they are.

“I think the use of iPads is probably the next great wave — for instruction, for advance scouting, for tendencies and how they’re utilized,” Wren said. “Right now, it’s still illegal to use them on the bench, but instead of using advance books, we’ve got all that information on our iPads.

“When you have notebook after notebook on every team, it’s a lot. You carry one little iPadthat’s three-eighths of an inch thick, you’ve got all of that, and more.”

From the Times.