First Principles

Amused Cynic points out this centuries-old but all-too-relevant warning from James Madison in Federalist No. 61:

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule which is little known, and less fixed?

You’d think that in all those years of teaching Constitutional Law, Obama would bother to have read the Constitution’s liner notes.