You know someone would come up with this...

Another ruling on the merits of the legal challenge to the "individual mandate":

As previous Commerce Clause cases have all involved physical activity, as opposed to mental activity, i.e. decision-making, there is little judicial guidance on whether the latter falls within Congress’s power...However, this Court finds the distinction, [...] to be of little significance. It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not “acting,” especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something. They are two sides of the same coin. To pretend otherwise is to ignore reality.

As I read this, the judge in the case is basically suggesting that everything, including "mental activity (i.e., the choices you make, and more significantly, the choices you fail to make), is properly the subject of government regulation and oversight.

This is doubtless something that will make a lot of politicians—Democrat and Republican—drool in anticipation of what they could do with such power.

Let's hope that some subsequent "judicial guidance"—if it must find a way to impose an awkward law for which nearly 1000 exemptions have been granted (mostly to parties that supported its passage)—restores some sanity to the discussion of what is and is not within the purview of state control.

Cheers...

Milestone...

I've finished my first pass through Feht's job. It was definitely not an easy job, either from the point of view of the vocabulary or the emotional involvement of translating the memoirs of a man who was imprisoned in labor camps for 7 years for what, in the end, was found to lack any of the essential elements of a criminal act.

In other news, I ran across a curious blog whose author set about converting moves on a chess board to music. The results are not something I would line up to buy or listen to, but they are of one-time interest.

I was particularly struck by the author's selection of the 6th game of the 1972 match between Fischer and Spassky as one of his examples (link to music), which is described as follows:

This chess game produced a wild jumble of syncopated sevenths and minor seconds. I tried to find order in the atonal chaos by laying in major ninth and suspension chords. My hope was to somehow evoke the major seventh chord sound of the 1970s, when this game was played. It came out sounding like if Schoenberg wrote intro music for a morning talk show.

The game/melody: 1. c4 e6 2. Nf3 d5 3. d4 Nf6 4. Nc3 Be7 5. Bg5 O-O 6. e3 h6 7. Bh4 b6 8. cxd5 Nxd5 9. Bxe7 Qxe7 10. Nxd5 exd5 11. Rc1 Be6 12. Qa4 c5 13. Qa3 Rc8 14. Bb5!? a6?! 15. dxc5 bxc5 16. O-O Ra7 17. Be2 Nd7 18. Nd4 Qf8 19. Nxe6 fxe6 20. e4 d4 21. f4 Qe7 22. e5 Rb8 23. Bc4 Kh8 24. Qh3 Nf8 25. b3 a5 26. f5 exf5 27. Rxf5 Nh7 28. Rcf1 Qd8 29. Qg3 Re7 30. h4 Rbb7 31. e6 Rbc7 32. Qe5 Qe8 33. a4 Qd8 34. R1f2 Qe8 35. R2f3 Qd8 36. Bd3 Qe8 37. Qe4 Nf6 38. Rxf6 gxf6 39. Rxf6 Kg8 40. Bc4 Kh8 41.Qf4 1-0

The game is of some significance to me, as I remember exactly where I was when it was played, and still have the book in which I recorded the moves as they were relayed by commentator Shelby Lyman.

Galina took off for Houston early this morning, so for the nonce, it's just me, Shiloh, and the cats.

Cheers...