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I'm going to (mostly) resist the urge to take advantage of this column's volume number in order to write a really gross column. Numerically, and inventory-wise, a "gross" is (of course) one dozen dozen. Twelve squared.
Of course, there was a bold way Obama could have acted on the issue, but looking at his past record, it would have been nothing short of downright astonishing if he had taken it. This would have been to perform what I would call (keeping in mind I am no lawyer, and realizing there already may be a term for this, which is unknown to me): "prosecutorial nullification." In other words, the government agency (in this case, the Attorney General) could have decided: "The judge is right, this is unconstitutional, therefore we will no longer defend this law in the courts, and let the ruling stand."
"Whenever you get hit with an overwhelming weight, you have to jujitsu it. So we want to turn it against them... I want to tattoo them right on to the Republican candidate," she said, smacking her hand for emphasis. "Big oil, big banks, big health insurance: We're going to tattoo you with that, so it's like doggy-doo stuck on your shoe. Wherever you go, people will know."
I will begin today's column by drying a tear as we all wish Rahm Emanuel a fond farewell. Actually, I am lying. I am drying no tears for Rahm because I am crying no tears at his leaving. Chicago's loss is the White House's gain, as far as I'm concerned.
But all of that is neither here nor there. The style of journalism known as "three-dot" was pioneered and perfected by the late great Herb Caen of San Francisco newspaper fame, and consists of stringing together many disparate items conjoined with a liberal usage of ellipses, or those three little dots which indicate "sentence trails off here" or, in journalism, sometimes "there's a bunch of stuff I cut out from this excerpt here." Three-dot journalism relies on the first, and more common, usage... to trail off... into vagueness... or even innuendo....
First, though, we simply must wish ourselves a happy third anniversary. Woo hoo! Three years of FTP columns!
And the Left really shouldn't complain, either. On many other issues, they've been begging Obama to flex his Executive muscle much stronger than he has (on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," for instance). So why should anyone be upset now that he's doing exactly that?
OK, that was an annoying headline, I fully admit. It was annoying to type out, and I can only imagine how annoying it must be to read.
President Obama may be on the verge of a significant announcement -- the nomination of Elizabeth Warren to head the newly-formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is pure conjecture on my part, I have to admit right up front. But politically, it would indeed give the president a boost right when he needs it most, heading into the midterm election season.
Jollification aside, though, we're still one week away from Congress returning to briefly do their job (or at least give the appearance of doing so), before they award themselves another month or so off, in order to campaign. Labor Day is right around the corner (or perhaps blowing past the corner at 75 miles per hour, if you live in the hurricane zone -- which contains, my television assures me, everything east of about Denver).