We're 2 weeks from the big Affordable Care Act oral argument...

... and articles shaping your outlook are beginning to pour out. SCOTUSblog has lots of links and summaries. I've been running across a number of these articles, but I don't blog about them if they seem obvious and predictable... unless they have something wrong with them that I want to blog about. And this includes articles front-paged at the NYT website, even when they have striking pictures of the Chief Justice smiling as it's painful to smile. These mainstream media articles tend to focus on personalities. Want to be reminded who Paul Clement is? Check out the Washington Post. Surprised that Scalia's opinion in the medical marijuana case helps the pro-Obamacare side? There's Forbes. Wait. I'll quote Forbes, not for the law, for the language:

Writing for Forbes, Lawrence Hunter describes the White House’s “campaign to hoist the Court on the petard of conservative justice Antonin Scalia’s words,” based on the Justice’s “expansive view of . . . the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause.”  

Let's picture this image. Scalia's words will "hoist" — lift up — the Supreme Court. And his words are — it's a metaphor — a "petard":

The word petard comes from the Middle French peter, to break wind, from pet expulsion of intestinal gas, from Latin peditum, from neuter of peditus, past participle of pedere, to break wind; akin to Greek bdein to break wind. (Merriam-Webster) Petard remains a French word meaning a firecracker today (in French slang, it means a handgun, or a marijuana cigarette).

Did Lawrence Hunter just bumble into that super-apt metaphor? Not only are the words of a Supreme Court Justice equated to farting, but Scalia was farting about marijuana, and a "petard" is both farting and a marijuana cigarette!

The word remains in modern usage in the phrase hoist with one's own petard, which means "to be harmed by one's own plan to harm someone else" or "to fall into one's own trap," literally implying that one could be lifted up (hoist, or blown upward) by one's own bomb.

Or fart, right?

By the way, is anyone arguing that insurance companies should be required to cover the cost of marijuana? People are going to doctors, getting a prescription recommendation. Unlike birth control, the marijuana that is openly purchased in America is for a medical — not recreational — purpose. There's the beauty of medicalizing recreational activities. If it's medical, you shouldn't have to pay for your own supplies. And with marijuana, it's all medical.

Think about it.

And pass the petard.