Whitman boys.

I’M A FATTY. This is surprising, because until the past few years I considered myself at the upper end of fitness. I was in excellent shape, and ran 10k races regularly through law school. The license to practice law has really done me in–sitting in a chair for ten hours a day has contributed to my thickening. I used the NIH Body Mass Index Calculator today, and found that I am overweight!

So home I go, to my new pair of running shoes, and only one beer as a reward.

BACK ON THE SERIOUS TIP. Reuters is reporting that 43 will endorse a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. This is terrible news on many levels:

1. It’s wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

2. It’s cynical, in the sense that it’s a diversionary tactic; it seems that the Administration is realizing that 43’s Hardball catchphrase “I’m a war president” may not carry the day in November. Suicide bombings continue to fragment the non-anarchy on which our nationbuilding in Iraq relies, the US bodybags keep coming home, and the declared pretexts for war crumble one after another.

3. It’s cynical, in the sense that it’s 43 pandering to his evangelical “base.” (Speaking of evangelicals, somebody tell Kurt Warner he lost his starting job because he fumbled six times in a game, not because he’s born-again.)

4. Maybe most important, it’s woefully unnecessary. As Dahlia Lithwick lays out in this Slate piece, the whole Chicken Little view of the evangelical right is simply incorrect. Legal gay marriage in Massachusetts doesn’t mean that Baptists in Texas will wake up to legal gay marriages in their SUV suburbs. States that articulate a “strong public policy” against gay marriage don’t have to extend full faith and credit to gay marriages recognized in other states. (As Lithwick points out, this is the reason that 1920s Mississippi would not have had to honor the otherwise valid New York marriage of a black man and a white woman). The Defense of Marriage Act attempted (probably unsuccessfully) to make statutory this existing rule of Constitutional law.
Until this administration, federalists, almost all of them politically conservative, would say that personal and family relationships, to the extent they are legislated at all, are properly regulated at the state level, not the federal. But the current Administration comes down on the anti-federalist side of this issue, just as it does on issues of assisted suicide, medical marijuana, abortion, and any other issue where the federal government’s “big stick” comes in handy.

5. Oh yeah. It’s wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

SORRY, QUICK FOLLOWUP. From Jennie Finch’s journal:

“I got to pitch to 6 MLB players, including the Giles brothers, Albert Pujos, and one of my favorites, Mike Piazza. I walked away with 6 Ks so it was a good outing:-).”

This news story confirms, and has Mike Sweeney passing up a chance at the plate. Holy moly.

WELL, SURE IT’S UNSCIENTIFIC, BUT… ESPN.com Page 2 did a “tournament” of reader votes last year to pick “the hottest female athlete.” This was fine, because it was many folks’ first exposure to Jennie Finch, and she would deserve the publicity for her phenomenal (pitching) stats alone. But this year they’re doing it again. Questions (why? what’s changed in a year? is Jennie Finch no longer….hot?) and observations (it’s not the hottest female athlete, it’s the female athlete who has the hottest photo selected by ESPN page 2; Jennie should win again) spring to mind unbidden.

THE NEW MOZILLA BROWSER IS OUT. It’s renamed Firefox, rather than Firebird, but other than that seems to be a lovely little update to a browser that is faster, safer, more stable and less annoying than Microsoft’s. (And it’s free.) IE users, throw off your chains!

NICE CROSS-EXAMINATION.Henry Blodget, himself a disgraced former securities analyst, has been covering the Martha Stewart/Peter Bacanovic trial for Slate. Today’s entry records a beautiful piece of cross-examination, this being Martha’s lawyer Bob Morvillo examining Douglas Faneuil, the prosecution’s star witness:

Q: Mr. Faneuil, in the years 2001 and 2002, you committed a number of crimes?

A: I wouldn’t say a number, but…

Q: More than one?

A: Yes.

Q: Breaching your fiduciary duty at Merrill Lynch … was that a crime?

A: I suppose it was.

Q: Do you know that that’s a felony?

A: I trust it is.

Q: With a maximum term of incarceration of five years?

[Objection]

Q: Your making false statements to the government in January and March of 2002 … that was a crime?

A: Correct.

Q: A felony?

A: I believe it was.

Q: And you told us here that you were involved in conspiring to cover up this crime?

A: Yes.

Q: And you know that that’s a second crime?

A: Yes.

Q: A felony?

A: I’m not sure.

Q: And you know of a crime called obstruction of an agency proceeding?

A: Yes.

Q: And you know that’s a felony?

A: Yes.

Q: And your use of narcotics—you know that was a crime?

A: Yes.

Q: A felony?

A: Yes.

Q: And now all of those felonies are not being prosecuted?

A: Right …

Q: After all those felonies you committed, you pled guilty to a single misdemeanor.

A: Correct.

Q: Your Honor, I have no further questions.

PRINCE OF NERDS! Adorable sweetie Trina was reading her book last night (this is the book she selected for book club, which is Wednesday night, so she has a moral obligation to power through and finish it) and I was next to her on the couch, flipping channels after Antique Roadshow ended. I was looking for something non-decadent, my prurient interests having been sated for some time by Boobgate. Lo and behold, on C-SPAN2, there was my new hero:

He’s Steven Squyres, a Cornell professor who is the principal investigator for the current Mars rover missions. And on C-SPAN2, he was enthusiastically and enthrallingly talking about how to use Opportunity’s rock abrasion tool (RAT) and Mossbauer spectrometer to figure out whether spherules embedded in the rock called “Robert E.” are agglomerated ash, or sedimentary concretions, or tiny volcanic glass beads. Arcane stuff, but he was engaging, communicative, and obviously loves what he’s doing. He is a prince among nerds.

THE SUPER BOWL (#38) TURNED OUT TO BE A GREAT GAME, though it was slow in the first half. The fun part was when Justin Timberlake ripped off half of Janet Jackson’s bra at the end of the halftime show. Check the picture with this story–the look Janet is giving Justin is priceless.