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And there is absolutely no other way I would rather spend the day. In case you are curious, I am only enough to be a Representative, but not old enough to be a Senator.

The federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 allows certain places (Nevada, Montana, Delaware, and Oregon) to operate sports-betting. New Jersey is not on that list. But that won’t stop New Jersey from trying to open a sports-betting program in Atlantic City (which, in case you didn’t know, was on the Jersey Shore).

Under pressure to revive Atlantic City and boost state revenue, New Jersey officials appear to be basing the launching of a planned sports-betting program on a speculative legal theory that has never been tested by the courts, legal experts say.

The state has not officially unveiled its legal strategy, but in a news conference last week, Gov. Christie suggested that the federal government had no basis under the U.S. Constitution for banning betting on major professional and collegiate sports in New Jersey while permitting a handful of other states to have it.

The model for the state’s legal initiative appears to be a 2009 federal lawsuit filed by State Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D., Union) and various gambling interests against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, citing constitutional arguments for overturning the federal ban on sports betting in New Jersey and most other states. The lawsuit was dismissed a short time later on procedural grounds.

And what exactly is the basis of such a suit?

Sen. Raymond Lesniak, the Democratic lawmaker who tried to sue to overturn the federal ban, predicted the law would be overturned.

“To those with a vested interest in the status quo — the professional sports organizations who take a hypocritical stance that wagering will ‘ruin the purity of the game,’ and the Nevada-based gaming conglomerates that have enjoyed that state’s stranglehold on sports wagering for the last 20 years — I respectfully say, ‘Bring it on,’ ” he said in a statement. “The sooner you make an issue of New Jersey’s noncompliance with anunconstitutional federal ban, the sooner we can defeat that ban in the courts, and put New Jersey on the same competitive footing as the rest of the nation when it comes to sports wagering.”

Dormant commerce clause? Federalism? I mean, I don’t even know what the argument would be? Is there some kind of commerce-clause-black-hole in Seaside where federal laws go to die (and tan)?

“I think we are going to win,” he said, “because I don’t believe the federal government has the right to decide that only certain states can have sports gambling.”

Jacoby said he believes the governor’s remarks signaled that the state would seek to defend the plan under the 14th Amendment, affording citizens equal protection under laws.

He said he also anticipated a federalism argument contending that the federal government did not have the authority to regulate gambling under the enumerated powers granted it by the Constitution and that such powers belong to the states.

“The way these things are done,” Jacoby said, “you tend to throw the kitchen sink.”

Kitchen Sink? 14th Amendment equal protection clause as applied to the states (is that even a thing?)?  The 14th Amendment uses the word “person.” Though I suppose if a corporation is a person, why not a state?

But will it work? I can’t imagine any court buying it.

I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier Law School in Southern California and a recognized authority on gambling law in the United States and abroad, expressed astonishment that Christie set the plan in motion before seeking a declaratory judgment by the federal courts that it was legal to do so.

“I thought it was bizarre, really, for Chris Christie to say, ‘OK, come and get me, coppers,’ to violate a major federal antigambling statute,” Rose said. “It certainly is bad lawyering.”

Very, very bizarre strategy on the part of the Governor.

The same day the leagues filed suit, Christie held a news conference in which he seemed to flag the state’s legal theory for defending against legal challenges, arguing that the federal government didn’t have the right to stop New Jersey if it permitted sports betting in other states.

“I think we are going to win,” he said, “because I don’t believe the federal government has the right to decide that only certain states can have sports gambling.”

Though this isn’t the first time Governor Christie was willing to stand up to other branches of government.

The April 16, 1964 edition of the New York Times Magazine was dedicated to predicting New York City in the future.

They were close on estimating the population (331 million estimate v. 281 million actual). They bombed the predicted GNP ($2 trillion estimate v. $10 trillion actual). And they vastly overestimated how flying machines would transform transportation.

H/T Tyler Cowen

A few weeks ago, Justice Scalia famously told Chris Wallace on Fox that “Obviously the Amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried — it’s to keep and “bear,” so it doesn’t apply to cannons — but I suppose here are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes, that will have to be decided.” This created something of an outburst.

In an interview on PBS last night, Justice Scalia elaborated on that answer:

MARGARET WARNER: Let me take another modern sort of situation.

We just had a couple horrendous mass shootings. You have told Chris Wallace on FOX television in an interview recently that you didn’t — you thought it was an open question whether, under the Second Amendment, you could even ban someone from carrying their own rocket launcher.

Really?

ANTONIN SCALIA: Oh, yes. And read the opinion in Heller.

It didn’t purport to say everybody can carry whatever weapons he wants. In fact, it mentioned that there was a misdemeanor in ancient times called affrighting. Affrighting consisted of carrying a frightening weapon, a head axe or something like that, to scare people.

So, it’s clear that certain restrictions on the bearing of arms are traditional and can be enforced. What they are, it will have to be decided in future cases.

I think that is basically what Scalia said on Fox, though his previous answer made it seem more likely that hand-held RPG launchers were constitutional. This answer, more nuanced, simply said the Court will address that issue when it comes up in the normal course of SCOTUS litigation.

Justice Scalia had this interview on PBS last night.

Even those who would be textualists don’t know how to do it very well because it has not been taught in law schools.

Of course, you know, none of them is absolute. This particular canon looks in this direction. Another canon may look in the other direction. And the trick for a judge is to see where the balance lies. It’s like a murder mystery. There are clues pointing one way, pointing another way. Which clues are the most persuasive, that’s what the canons are all about.

Scalia offers the well-worn refrain that the Amendment process is proof that the Constitution was not meant to evolve, though his answer is more Breyer Active Liberty than he would care to admit, with its focus on “principles.”

It doesn’t have to evolve over time.

If it was up to the courts to make it evolve over time, there wouldn’t have been a provision for amendment. It contains a provision of amendment precisely because the framers understood that they may find some provisions in the future are not good and additional provisions are needed. . . .

So it is not that I think the Constitution cannot be applied to new phenomena, such as television, such as telephones, as far as free speech is concerned.

Of course it can. You have to figure out how those principles apply to new phenomena. But as to the phenomena that existed at the time, that is — this is what originalists would consist of — with respect to those phenomena, it doesn’t change.

The interviewer was nowhere near as prepared as Brian Lamb was, but was far better than Piers Morgan.

MARGARET WARNER: But, I mean, the power to tax is in the Constitution.

ANTONIN SCALIA: Oh, the issue is not whether Congress has the power to tax. The issue is whether, in this particular law, Congress was exercising the power to tax.

And in all of our prior cases, we said that, even if you call it a tax, if it’s being imposed for the violation of a law, it’s a penalty. And this one wasn’t even called a tax. It was called a penalty.

H/T My Mom, who frantically called me yesterday to tell me that Scalia was on Channel 13.