Much being made today of now-Chief Justice John Roberts' line about judges being like baseball umpires who just "call balls and strikes." Mercifully, much, much less of it in the afternoon session. Probably because there were no Republicans speaking this afternoon.
It's a ridiculously restrictive comparison, of course, given that most cases that reach the Supreme Court (at their own choosing, by the way) aren't about balls and strikes. If they are, they're generally not granted review. The cases the Court tends to take up are the ones that dispute whether or not the physical object thrown was a baseball at all.
And of course, the last few years in the Court have seen case after case in which the Bush/Cheney "administration" showed up to declare that the ball was secret, you weren't allowed to see it, judges were unqualified to rule on whether it was a ball or a strike in any case, and that the pitcher could have you arbitrarily arrested.
And still, all we heard about was balls and strikes, black and white. Really an infantile view of legal realities. Which is, of course, a designed play. The rhetoric is all about "simpler days, when law was law and men were men." In reality, these guys have perverted the law beyond recognition, leading us to the point where Americans are openly encouraged to question whether -- where the Commander in Chief is concerned -- there even ought to be "law" at all.
Balls and strikes, my ass.