{"id":24906,"date":"2014-03-30T10:11:28","date_gmt":"2014-03-30T15:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24906"},"modified":"2014-03-30T10:11:28","modified_gmt":"2014-03-30T15:11:28","slug":"every-ohio-political-candidate-has-escaped-from-a-lunatic-asylum-and-all-ohio-ballot-initiatives-are-the-work-of-satan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/03\/30\/every-ohio-political-candidate-has-escaped-from-a-lunatic-asylum-and-all-ohio-ballot-initiatives-are-the-work-of-satan\/","title":{"rendered":"“[E]very Ohio political candidate has escaped from a lunatic asylum and all Ohio ballot initiatives are the work of Satan”"},"content":{"rendered":"

P.J. O’Rourke<\/a> finally made his mom proud by filing a brief of Amici Curiae<\/em> to the US Supreme Court:<\/p>\n

Ilya Shapiro, with a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, is Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at Cato and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review<\/em>. He often files amicus<\/em> briefs, especially in cases where constitutionally guaranteed rights are imperiled. But these briefs are serious in tone even though Ilya is funny in person.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also self-effacing, saying, \u201cThere are people who know more about Constitutional law than I do, and there are people who are funnier than I am, but I do occupy the very small area of overlap in that Venn diagram.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Venn diagram seemed like the only proper approach to a law that would make you a criminal in Ohio for saying that Buckeye president William Howard Taft was so fat his wife had to grease the doorframe and tell him there was a banana cream pie in the Blue Room to get him into the White House.<\/p>\n

The fight-a-laugh-with-a-laugh brief was Cato Legal Associate Gabriel Latner\u2019s idea. He wrote the first draft. Cato Research Fellow Trevor Burrus added research. And more jokes. Then Ilya Shapiro took over. I was asked to read it and give it my endorsement because I am an expert on being run out of Ohio. Ask my mother.<\/p>\n

Politico<\/em> posted a condensed version of the brief, and I shared the byline with Ilya. On the Above the Law<\/em> blog David Lat called it the \u201cBest Amicus<\/em> Brief Ever.\u201d (Albeit that\u2019s a low \u201cbar\u201d \u2014 notice how I casually toss in legal jokes now that I\u2019m arguing a case before the Supreme Court.) And a lawyer friend of mine congratulated me on what he said was the first legal brief in history to go viral.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

P.J. O’Rourke finally made his mom proud by filing a brief of Amici Curiae to the US Supreme Court: Ilya Shapiro, with a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, is Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at Cato and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. He often files amicus briefs, especially in cases […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,10,53,13],"tags":[186,463,752],"class_list":["post-24906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-liberty","category-politics","category-usa","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-parody","tag-supremecourt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6tI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24907,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24906\/revisions\/24907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}