Quote of the Day, Memory And The Supreme Court Follies edition.

Megan McArdle, while discussing the increasingly amusing flailing about by the Left over King v. Burwell:

…contrary to apparently popular belief, “drafting error” is not a magic word that forces the Supreme Court to give you a mulligan.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.  There’s some good bits in there about why it is that our legal system has a certain bias against leaning too heavily on individual memory as evidence.  Simply put: people remember things essentially by telling themselves stories in their heads.  When the story changes, the same people will often forget the old version.  And they can get a nasty, but legitimate shock when actual evidence appears that demonstrates that the new story is incorrect.  This is actually an interesting neurological… condition? Situation? Party trick? One of those, anyway.

Moe Lane

PS: I can’t help but notice that a lot of the non-lawyer defendant arguments about King v. Burwell are starting to sound like rationalizations for why the Left should be angry about the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in King v. Burwell.  Go figure.

5 thoughts on “Quote of the Day, Memory And The Supreme Court Follies edition.”

  1. Nothing is certain when the Supreme Court hears a case. Now that the truism is out of the way, I want to note that if the court comes back with a ruling that, condensed, says “We aren’t here to fix your mistakes,” then I will feel that sweet, warm satisfaction that comes from having said “I told you so.”
    More sobering, think of how much effort, time, money, and good-will was expended to create this fiasco of a statute? I know what the Democrats will say publicly about any ruling that guts this law, but I would truly like to know what would be said privately about the leadership that brought them here. If any Democrat has the slightest ability towards introspection, that is.

    1. Being a member of the left/Dem/Media circus means never having to remember where you came from and what you did that got you there.

      Kinda like a fake rape accusation.

      Its all about where you are now and where you are going

      1. “Its all about where you are now and where you are going.”

        An ever quickening circle of failure; like a rip-tide, the only way out is to cut across it.
        (I do not expect to hear much introspection from many Democrats.)

Comments are closed.