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The case recycles last month’s leading Supreme Court advocates in the health care cases, with Paul Clement returning for his role as the Reasonable States-Rights Guy, and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli reprising his role of Sober Gentleman Advocate From Another Era, which at this moment in Roberts Court history feels like a guy who brings a butter dish to a gunfight.
Verrilli looks like he wants to be any place but listening to Justice Antonin Scalia—the justice most likely to be pulled over for impersonating a paid Fox News contributor—analogizing the right to demand papers of suspected illegal immigrants to the Framers’ guarantee that the states’ rights to police their own borders included “inspecting incoming shipments to exclude diseased material.
The Supreme Court appears ready to uphold parts of Arizona’s controversial immigration law. - Slate Magazine
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Mr. Verrilli, whose performance in the health care case was sometimes rocky, seemed on Wednesday occasionally to frustrate justices who might have seemed likely allies.
At one point Justice Sotomayor, addressing Mr. Verrilli by his title, said: “General, I’m terribly confused by your answer. O.K.? And I don’t know that you’re focusing in on what I believe my colleagues are trying to get to.
Considering Arizona Immigration Law, Justices Are Again in Political Storm - NYTimes.com
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See ya’ later, alligator

Today, Gail Collins tackles Herman Cain. After examining his personal history and electoral strategy, she stumbles upon this:

For instance, on the matter of immigration, Cain says that he thinks it would be a great idea to build an alligator-filled moat between the United States and Mexico. (“And make it a real big moat.”) So, in the spirit of political fact-checking, I called an expert, Frank Mazzotti of the University of Florida, who said that the cost of keeping the alligators alive in that climate “would be astronomical.” If there turned out to be a spot along the border where the alligators were comfortable, Mazzotti said, they could escape, multiply and create “all sorts of economic problems.” Not to mention the danger to household pets.

Of course, the likely infestation of alligators along the U.S./Mexican border increases the importance of clarifying the answer to this question.

gail collins
Herman Cain
Campaign 2012
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