"Retrievers Tepidly for McCain Because We Are Suspicious of Third Party Potential To Transform American Politics" wouldn't really fit on a banner.

Banner, spotted hanging from a house at 16th and Corcoran: "Labradoodles for Obama."

Barbri was more vexing than usual. Most of the class found Erwin Chemerinsky's chosen pace obnoxiously slow. I agree, but I find him even more annoying on ideological grounds. That is, I suppose he was trying to be centrist and moderate. That only hit home how far away my own views are from the received wisdom predominating in most American law schools.

Relatedly, every time that Chemerinsky got to a decision I found particularly objectionable -- Wickard, Raich, etc. -- I found myself imagining that I might have landed in an alternate universe, one in which the courts might have actually have enforced the Commerce Clause. Thus there were all these weird thrilling pregnant pauses just before he got to the offensive holdings. I have found myself doing the same thing many times before when reading histories of the Russian Revolution. Do other people, I wonder?

I had to listen to a painfully stupid motivational lecture last week. The speaker recommended, among other career planning tactics, that one draft a "personal mission statement" and offered up hers as an example, which involved "advancing liberty in a uniquely Christian way." It occurred to me tonight that mine ought to be "overturning Wickard v. Filburn in a uniquely atheist way." Of course, I'd much rather see Wickard v. Filburn overturned in a uniquely Christian or Jewish or Muslim way than stay on the books. But seeing it overturned in a uniquely atheist way would rank still higher on my hierarchy of preferences.