IT'S NOT ONLY THE JUSTICES WHO READ THE CONSTITUTION

"Oh and by the way, I can read the Constitution, which says the president gets to nominate and the Senate gets to confirm, or not, and neither one of those two things is going to happen, therefore I'm not staying."

Gen. Peter Pace, U.S. Marines, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, on the refusual of the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, to submit his name to Pres. Bush to re-nominate him at the expiration of the general's short term in office, effectively retiring him from further service.

Constitutional law is practiced everywhere, not just before the Supreme Court or by "constitutional lawyers", of whom there are very few who practice in this area. Why? Because all lawyers are expected to be familiar with the constitution of the country and bring it to bear in their work. That's why we teach it in law school and test for it on bar exams. You may not see a constitutional issue every day in your cases, but it's their, like gravity, always present, always helping you to keep your balance.

Conlaw is our legal ether, present whether you're paying attention or not.

(Yes, I know, that Michelson-Morley failed to detect the ether, effectivly eliminating the idea, almost, at least. We still can't figure out how gravity can act in two distant places at once without some connecting signal. Some folks, like Einstein, placed their bet on some form of an ether, although it didn't pan out in observation or theory. So they're still looking. They've got relativity for the big stuff and quantum theory for the little stuff, which have proved correct, as far as one can prove such things by carefull measurment, observation and theory, but the two conflict with each other. The betting is that they can be reconciled by coming up with a more general theory, called superstring, or "string" for short, but don't ask me what that is. I haven't finished the book, while the boffins haven't finished the work.)

I admire Gen. Pace, up to a point. I'd like him at my side in a battle, or better yet, right there ahead of me.

What I get nervous about with him, however, is that he's a bit too dedicated to following the orders of his superiors when perhaps he should have done a better job of questioning them. But you don't get to head the Joint Chiefs by resisting your superiors, I don't think. Pace wanted to rise to the top more than he wanted to be right, is my guess. I thought that about Colin Powell's remarkable false statement to me, the U.N., and the world, to the effect that he'd seen the evidence of WMD allegedly possessed by Saddam Hussein, and therefore we were justified in invading Iraq. Is it ever justifiable for the U.S. to invade another country which has not attacked us, based on a phony case for war? Where was the good case for war? Powell wanted to be on the team. His bullsh*t detector was running on low. He didn't give the urge to war strict scrutiny, as some of us might say.

Pace's biggest mistake may have been to insist on following the Administration's faulty plan to the letter, even when it guaranteed failure.

He's lucky he's out, a hero, entitled to retire on his laurels, while a new team of Navy guys, whose fingerprints are not on the plans, takes over to clean up the mess, meaning bring the troops home sooner, rather than later. We lost five more overnight.