After the first half of the BCS championship game, I didn’t know who I felt worse for – Colt McCoy or Garret Gilbert.  On the one hand, Colt McCoy was knocked out of the biggest game of his life, just as Texas was about to take an enormous lead against Alabama.  On the other hand, Garret Gilbert was a true freshman quarterback who had know run game to prop him up as he floundered to establish a tempo with his receivers.  Colt McCoy had a golden arm, and Texas built its entire offense around it.  And then, at the last minute, Alabama pulled the rug out from under them and forced them to go to their untested freshman.  I felt bad for McCoy, but I felt worse for Gilbert.

But then Gilbert started to get his rhythm down, and I thought “this can’t be that bad for him – he’s playing in front of the entire nation with no expectations and he’s making this an interesting game!”  I started to feel worse for poor Colt McCoy, standing there on the sidelines listening helplessly to the play calling.

And then, when it was 24-21, came the worst play for Gilbert: the sack and fumble.  I knew who I felt worse for.  Strictly speaking, I’m sure I’d have preferred to be Gilbert over being McCoy.  But I felt worse for poor Garret Gilbert, thrust into the limelight without proper preparation against the #1 team in the nation.  His final line of 15/40, 186 YDs passing, 2 TD and 4 INT doesn’t really tell the whole story.  Gilbert is still the premiere young QB in the game today.  He just got called up on the day he least expected it.

Given that I consider the Nobel Peace Prize (past recipients include: Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Henry Kissinger, and Yasser Arafat*) and hosting the Olympics (past recipients include: Beijing ‘08, Moscow ‘80, Berlin ‘36) to be dubious ‘honors’, I really can’t get particularly worked up over Obama winning the former and losing the latter.

*The Nobel Peace Prize is to be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work [1] for fraternity between nations, [2] for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and [3] for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.  Given that I sincerely do not consider the latter two goals on the list admirable,I cannot take the ‘award’ too seriously.

It’s not surprising that Mike Huckabee comes in first, with 28%, but I think it’s notable that Mitt Romney, an until-recently pro-choice Mormon from Massachusetts, does no worse that Tim Pawlenty and Sarah Palin among religious conservatives.  Also, watch out for Dark Horse Mike Pence.

I don’t really follow tennis, but I would have to agree that this is one of the most beautiful shots I’ve ever seen:

Joe Posnanski is on point, as always.

House MD and Heroes are on at the same this year.

Ernesto Zedillo just told his seminar that, given the recent economic meltdown, “all of you who can still get out of economics – do so”.  Perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Seriously, it is.  It’s so far ahead of Windows Vista that I’m never going back.  I’d encourage anyone who has the ability (Yale students, for instance) to immediately upgrade to Windows 7 for free.  It took me a total of 3 hours, and has made me a very happy man.

And Windows Live Writer is amazing too.

A specter is haunting America: the specter of profit. We have become fearful that somewhere, somehow, an evil corporation has found a way to make lots of money.

- Yale Law Prof. Stephen Carter in today’s Washington Post.

Read the whole thing.

As members of Congress discuss a tax on cosmetic surgery to pay for the healthcare bill, the blawgosphere covers the pressing question raised by Glenn Reynolds – whether this taxation of medical procedures could be extended to abortion.

Paul Caron suggests that a tax on abortion specifically (although not generally) would be seen as infringing on the constitutional rights of women:

In Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, 460 U.S. 575 (1983), the Supreme Court held that a Minnesota use tax on the cost of paper and ink products violated a newspaper’s First Amendment rights. Although the precise contours of this doctrine are much debated, a tax singling out the exercise of the constitutional right of abortion would likely face special scrutiny. But a general tax on elective cosmetic surgery that also reached elective abortions may be permissible under the Minneapolis Star doctrine.

Jonathan Adler agrees, citing Casey specifically, but suggests that there might be quite a few SCOTUS Justices who disagree with its standards:

Of course, this assumes that Casey would govern the case, but I think that is a fair assumption. While at least two, and perhaps as many as four, justices believe the “undue burden” test is too restrictive on states, Justice Kennedy was part of the Casey decision that established this test and has shown no indication he is willing to abandon it.

To the pro-life movement, a tax on abortion would be the ultimate “Sin Tax”, but this entire debate seems to me to only illuminate the problems with Roe v Wade. The decision in Roe was based on a constitutional right to privacy – and this suggests that abortion can no more be taxed than gay sex (ie: Lawrence v Texas). On the other hand, there’s no inherent reason why an abortion – a trivial medical procedure in the parlance of Pro-Choicers – is any more constitutionally guaranteed than a botox-injection, tummy-tuck, or tonsilectomy.

When Ross Douthat spoke at Yale last year, I asked him a pointed question on abortion, to which he responded that the problem with abortion in America is the Roe decision, because it puts abortion on a constitutionally-protected pedestal so that nothing can touch it.  Policies to limit abortions (say, to the first trimester, as is the law in some European countries) or discourage abortion (through taxation, counseling, or incentives) are perfectly legal in every other developed country in the world; only in the United States is abortion afforded special status as a fundamental right, and it is for that reason it is nearly impossible to implement policies to bring down abortion rates in America.

EDIT: Eugene Volokh extends this discussion to gun rights.

Shelby Steele says affirmative action is a distraction:

We blacks know oppression well, but today it is our inexperience with freedom that holds us back almost as relentlessly as oppression once did. Out of this inexperience, for example, we miss the fact that racial preferences and disparate impact can only help us — even if they were effective — with a problem we no longer have. The problem that black firefighters had in New Haven was not discrimination; it was the fact that not a single black did well enough on the exam to gain promotion.

Ilya Somin proposes getting rid of the bar exam, or at least exposing its utter uselessness.

Richard Posner takes Paul Krugman to task for … ignoring Keynes?

But Krugman’s passionate support for the Administration’s health-care program suggests that he has not absorbed one of the central elements of Keynes’s theory, which is the role of uncertainty in depressing investment spending and, both by depressing investment and by increasing passive savings, in depressing consumption spending as well.

In defense of Michael Vick:

But just because pro athletes have careers we covet doesn’t mean those careers come with further obligations than ours. Society’s approval is not part of the job description any more than it is for a banker.