Talking Points Memo turns 10.

"The post was about Ted Olson making his debut as the chief Bush lawyer in the emerging Florida Recount battle."

Yes, it's also the 10-year anniversary of the big Florida recount. I wish I'd been blogging then! It would have been so much fun to write about that every step of the way. I'd have liked to show you in real time that I really wanted my guy, Al Gore, to win, and I also accepted nearly everything the Supreme Court did in the complicated litigation over the recount. But there are so many missed blogging opportunities in the past. I'd have loved to have blogged the Clinton scandals too. And the Clarence Thomas hearings. The Bork hearings.

Here's that first TPM post:

As if things couldn't get any weirder, did you notice the name of the lawyer who made the Republicans' unsuccessful arguments before that federal judge today? That would be Ted Olson, a man Washingtonians often refer to as a 'Washington super-lawyer.' Who is Ted Olson? Well, that would be the same one knee-deep in the Arkansas Project, which in league with the American Spectator spent a ton of money digging dirt on Bill Clinton in Arkansas....

Well, now, isn't that weird? I just blogged this morning about that Think Progress blogger who confronted Justice Alito and he was going on about the Arkansas Project:

Last night, the American Spectator — a right-wing magazine known for its role in the “Arkansas Project,” a well-funded effort to invent stories with the goal of eventually impeaching President Clinton — held its annual gala fundraising event....

That first TPM post wove Justice Scalia into its conspiracy-ish riff:

Of course, Olson... is also the Olson from Morrison v. Olson, the supreme court case which upheld the constitutinality of the Independent Counsel statute. Olson was against it. Come to think of it, we Dems now think he and Scalia were right. So maybe chalk one up in his favor.

So that's how TPM first talked about law. Yikes. Spelled "constitutionality" wrong too.

I'm going to start reading the lefty blogs more and writing about them, I think. I'm interested in the way they string ideas together, and I think they need some more push back.

Do you want me to write more about lefty blogs?
	No. Don't give them traffic.
	No. I don't care what they say.
	Yes. They need monitoring and criticism.
	Yes. Broaden your view and see what happens.
	Eh. Not sure. Depends on how sharp and funny you make it.
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Ted Olson says: "It would be appropriate for them to say 'the law has been deemed unconstitutional, we are not going to seek further review of that.'"

I agree.

"It happens every once in awhile at the federal level when the solicitor general, on behalf of the U.S., will confess error or decline to defend a law," said former George W. Bush administration solicitor general Ted Olson, who is leading the legal challenge of California's ban on same-sex marriage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state attorney general have both declined to defend the law in court.

"I don't know what is going through the [Obama] administration's thought process on 'don't ask, don't tell'...."

He doesn't know, but I bet he has some ideas. He's too dignified to tell. But I think we know.

Ted Olson...

... "softened"? By his new wife? I find it hard to believe. But if he gets a new haircut and new glasses, then I might believe.

"Would you like your right to free speech... put up to a vote and say well, if five states approved it, let’s wait till the other 45 states do?"

"Would you like Fox’s right to free press...? These are fundamental constitutional rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees Fox News and you, Chris Wallace, the right to speak. It’s in the constitution." 

Said Ted Olson.

Here's something Rush Limbaugh said in the middle of his monologue about the Prop 8 opinion:

The left uses issues such as gay marriage as battering rams to wreck the US Constitution and that's what's going on here. ...  Well, the Democrats who are cheering this ruling, overturning California's Prop 8, are not really cheering gay marriage.  They want gays to believe that they are.  They are cheering and they are giving standing ovations to this judge for weakening the US Constitution, for ripping it to shreds, because that is the objective of the American left....

The Constitution was written to deemphasize the power of federal governments.  Our Founders had fled tyranny.  They certainly didn't set up tyranny when they founded this country with the Constitution. But the left -- the Marxists, socialists, progressives, whatever you want to call them -- want tyranny and they want to be in charge of it.  The Constitution stands in their way.  So this judge is being cheered ostensibly for recognizing homophobia in the heterosexual community for thousands of years.

Thousands of years of discriminatory homophobia has led to gay people not being allowed to marry, and this judge (finally someone enlightened) has come along and seen it. Wrong.  They are cheering the fact that this judge has rammed the Constitution with a battering ram.  These are the same Democrats who have either remained silent or openly advocated the building of a mosque where Sharia law is the word of Allah at Ground Zero.  Now, Sharia law not only bans gay marriage, it bans gays. Permanently.  So why in the world would leftists who are cheering a judge who has just said that Prop 8, voted on by seven million Californians is unconstitutional because of decades -- generations, thousands of years -- of homophobia and discrimination practiced by heterosexuals...?

I like Rush enough to believe that when he got to this part of his monologue, he knew he'd become incoherent. If you don't want the majority's idea of morality imposed on everyone, you need individual rights that courts enforce against the will of the majority. The Constitution limits what can be imposed on individuals. It limits the federal government, and — with the 14th amendment — it limits the state.

"I thought, why wouldn’t I take this case? Because someone at the Federalist Society thinks I’d be making bad law? I wouldn’t be making bad law."

Ted Olson.