It's almost certainly impossible to write a story on October Term 2006 in under 600 words that doesn't vastly oversimplify matters. Investor's Business Daily gives it a good try and quotes me extensively, along with Eugene Volokh and Jonathan Turley.

TM: Good morning, may I speak to Mr. or Mrs. Frank?
Me: Who is this?
TM: I'm Gannon, calling from the Republican National Committee—
Me: I'm sorry, but as long as Trent Lott is in the Senate leadership, I'm not donating to the RNC.
TM: But he's doing a great job! Ok, not a great job...

Fox News tells the tragic tale of how I lost a tooth while eating a Tootsie Roll in 1980.

Slim: It's a good thing you don't have psychic powers.
Me: Why's that?
Slim: 'Cause the drivers in the cars in front of you would be swerving off the road or having their heads explode.
Me: Maybe my psychic powers are more subtle. Maybe I'm giving them extremely painful and slow-to-develop cancer that will strike them later.
Slim: I don't think so. If your psychic powers could give people cancer, you're a profit-maximizer and would use the power to cure cancer.
Me: But perhaps my psychic abilities are limited and entropic only.
Slim: ...
Me: There, I've wrapped rings around you logically.

Pirate weddings.

Via Mike, Bill Harbaugh of the University of Oregon takes the position that paying taxes feels good.

I disagree. I hate paying taxes.

But, as an economist, I recognize that Harbaugh and I have room for a deal.

I propose that Harbaugh give me $30,000 for a 100-word essay I will write him on taxes and feeling good that will look remarkably similar to this post. I promise to declare this money on my Schedule C, raising my tax burden about $9,000, give or take. I also promise to tithe $3,000 of this money to good charitable causes.

Harbaugh will feel good, because his economic transaction has resulted in more taxes being paid, as well as a donation to charity.

I will feel good, because Harbaugh will have effectively paid most of my taxes for me, relieving me of something I dislike.

We're both better off!

I look forward to hearing from Harbaugh so we can complete this mutually-beneficial deal.

I'll be speaking at Federalist Society events Wednesday, June 20 in Austin and Thursday night, June 21 in Houston on the issue of contingent fees in class actions. Other speakers include the Charles Stuckey of State Farm, Brian Anderson of O'Melveny & Myers, and a plaintiffs' attorney to be named later.

Dude, she is mine own,
And I as rich in having such a jewel
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar and the rocks pure gold.

He writes, perhaps only a little tongue in cheek:

What would be the welfare gains if we banned customers from talking to the sales clerks, and vice versa? I find that at least once a week I am frustrated, waiting in line, while the customers and sales clerks chat merrily. They don't seem to care. They don't know how truly important *I* am. They think their little conversation means something in the broader scheme of things.

And he has an ingenious idea: don't tell people where the secret blog is unless they buy his book, which I did before he announced this scheme, and which I am eagerly awaiting. It will be interesting to watch the sales rank climb.

WaPo reporting that David Chase wanted three minutes of black silence to end the episode.

The articulate Prince William.

According to Sasha Volokh, since my Prager number is 1, and his Bacon number is 2.

Here's one way to deter concert posters from vandalizing city property by using it as free billboard space. (Via TS) I suspect lawsuits would shut down that strategy in the US, however.

A website archive of The Realist is posting four issues of Paul Krassner's magazine a month; first up includes the infamous No. 74 from May 1967 which had both the unprintable scene aboard Air Force One leaving Dallas in November 1963, related entirely deadpan, and the Disneyland Memorial Orgy, which escaped extended litigation by virtue of being judgment-proof. Everything else will presumably be anticlimactic except for completists.

Another North Korean tourism account. Though I can frankly believe that Jimmy Carter "once said Kim Il Sung was greater than Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln combined."

Welcome Above the Law readers; you're probably looking for this Overlawyered post. Nothing to see here, unless you're trying to figure out who my girlfriend is or want to know what DC restaurants I visited in 2006. Check out my serious websites or help my SSRN stats or read some essays.

2002 article on the last years of Charles Nelson Reilly's career.

All national politicians suffer gaffes: it's a natural consequence of having journalists or leakers at your knee every waking moment. The difference is who is punished for them. If your gaffe fits within the late-night-talk-show joke structure for you, you get hammered with it. Thus, because the now-forgotten "Ronald Reagan is stupid" jokes were recycled for Dan Quayle, when a teacher gave Quayle a misspelled word for a spelling bee contest, and he repeated it in telling a student that "potato" had an e on the end, it permanently stuck to him.

But because the one-liner joke for Hillary Clinton for late-night-talk shows is "harridan", rather than "ditz", I suspect she's going to escape repercussions for this equally appalling spelling error (via Language Log).

Oh, sure, she can blame it on a staffer. But that's my point: Quayle wasn't allowed to rely on a public-school teacher's spelling.