I Got My Grade! - The Gormogons

Mr. Ghettoputer,

In reviewing your exam, I was troubled by your absolute misunderstanding of Constitutional Law. Of course, noting your less than stellar attendance record, and further noting that on the few occasions you deigned to grace my class with your presence, you were nursing a hangover, I should not be surprised. However, given that I spent each class period pontificating on the only correct form of constitutional analysis, I was still shocked that even someone as unsuited to the legal profession as you missed the point. For your edification, I’ve included the model answer your fellow classmate Hillary Rodham gave.

“There is only one correct method of analyzing the United States Constitution. Justice William O. Douglas in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 484 (1965), stated that ‘specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.’ Using this prime directive of legal interpretation, Justice Douglas made up out of whole cloth — I mean inferred — a theretofore nonexistent constitutional right to privacy that required states permit unfettered access to abortions on demand at any time.

PART I

Utilizing this brilliant bit of legal analysis, I find that there must be an emanation from the penumbra of the Third Amendment that permits gay marriage, adoption by gays and rent-a-womb. The correctness of my application of Douglas’ analytical tool is so self-evident as to require no further explication.

PART II, Subparts A and B

Again, as the only correct constitutional analysis is to determine what rights emanate from the penumbras of the individual Bill or Rights Amendments. It is evident that a right to credit regardless of credit history, a job regardless of ability and race based preferences regardless of merit emanates from the penumbra of the Second Amendment.

Q.E.D. (That’s Latin for “so there”).”

Mr. Ghettoputer, I have given you a grade of “C-” for your exam. Though you missed the essential point of Constitutional Law, you did glean that the Constitution is a living, breathing text, and that a form of postmodern analysis is appropriate. Unfortunately, as you are not a member of a traditionally disadvantaged minority group, I could not give you a bonus multiplier for your grade.

Enjoy the remains of your summer, and remember, we are the change we’ve been waiting for.

The Junior Senator From Illinois

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.