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If you are a baseball fan, the most envious place to be today would have been in Seattle watching the Mariners and the Chicago White Sox.  Sox pitcher, Phillip Humber, did something so rare it has only happened 21 times in all of Major League Baseball history: he threw a perfect game.

The perfect game is one of those very special things that you can only hope that you get a chance to witness in person some time in your life.  It is one of those things that could happen any day you go to the ballpark, but is so rare to be almost mythological.

Today there are fathers in Seattle trying to explain to their son or daughter how special this day is, and how they’ll truly appreciate it some day.

Perfection.

In 2010, one of the first casualties among moderate Republicans was Utah Senator Bob Bennett, who could not muster enough support among GOP State Convention delegates to even give him an opportunity to be on the primary ballot.  It was a stunning blow to the establishment and there was immediate speculation that Utah’s other Senator – Orrin Hatch – was next.

However, Hatch saw the hand writing on the wall and has been, as they say, “workin’ it hard” for the last 18 months to ensure he doesn’t suffer the same fate as Bennett.

It worked.   In Saturday’s Utah State GOP Convention, Hatch not only received enough votes to get into the primary, but came within a hairs-breadth of winning the nomination outright (60% of the vote is needed to win outright, Hatch reportedly received just over 59%).

Here’s the headline of the AP story: Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch forced into primary fight

And here is the lede of the story:

U.S. Sen. Sen. Orrin Hatch has been forced into a primary fight for his seventh term.

Hatch failed to get the needed 60 percent of delegate votes during Saturday’s Utah Republican convention that would have made him the outright GOP nominee.

A more accurate headline might have been: Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch Happily Gets into primary fight

Say what you will about Sen. Hatch – he recognized what he was facing and has done a pretty remarkable job of turning his fortunes around in a pretty short amount of time.

The bad news for those who opposed Hatch in the convention is that if they couldn’t beat him there, they aren’t going to beat him anywhere.

If there was any doubt that there is a war on women, Democrat advisor Hilary Rosen proved it continues to rage: liberals loathe women who stay at home to raise their children.  Just read what Rosen had to say about Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann:

“Guess what, his wife has actually never worked a day in her life,” said Rosen, who was being interviewed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper about the “war on women.”

Not only did Ann debut on twitter with a response (“I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.”) but even the Obama campaign realized it needed to distance itself from this misogyny:

“I could not disagree with Hilary Rosen any more strongly. Her comments were wrong and family should be off limits. She should apologize,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a tweet.

Top Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod also tweeted his disapproval: “Also Disappointed in Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney. They were inappropriate and offensive.”

I suspect that Messina and Axelrod only disagreed because Rosen made these comments in public.

Rick Santorum had a heck of a run.  He has done the right thing, for the right reasons, by stepping aside and allowing Republicans to focus on the most important goal in 2012 – saving the country from a “more flexible” second term Obama.

Yes, I’ve been harping on how this race was over for more than two months, and I’ve expressed frustration with Santorum on occasion, but at the end of the day he has made Mitt Romney a better candidate and better prepared to face Obama in November.

While maybe that isn’t enough to provide Santorum with sainthood, he has been an important part of the debate.

Can’t say the same for Newt Gingrich.

An item in the April 9 Yellow Sheet Report caught my attention.  Greg Patterson, one of the trailblazers of political blogging in Arizona, said that that his blog, espressopundit.com, may go dark as a result of his confirmation to the Arizona Board of Regents.

That’s sad.  Greg is an insightful, smart and witty commentator who has been on the cutting edge of political, social and cultural thought for nearly a decade.

To see espressopundit go dark would be a travesty.

In true Patterson form, his latest blog post about this issue is pretty funny.  The metaphor of putting the espresso machine in the attic is classic.

I think the Regents position is similar in stature to a Judiciary appointment.  I don’t think I can serve as a sitting Regent and blog the way I have blogged in the past.  So I’m going to put the espresso machine in the attic for a while.

I’ll probably end with a few more “wrap up” posts and then sign off for a while.  If I return, it will be in a reinvented format that I haven’t thought of yet. (Of course, writing is an obsession, so I will have to find some type of outlet or I will explode into a zillion little over-caffeinated pieces.)

Greg, I hope you re-think your decision – or at least figure out a way to continue to entertain and inform a thirsty audience.

These remarks by commentator Charles Krauthammer are too good to not share. He said this:

“Here’s the president talking about respect for the law and implying there’s partisanship if the law is overturned. We all were witnesses to the oral hearings in which Obama’s case for the constitutionality of the law was utterly demolished to the point where one liberal observer called it a ‘train wreck.

“It’s perfectly natural for a majority of the Court to side with the side that actually won the argument intellectually. That’s not partisanship, that’s logic. What is partisanship is when the four liberal justices are in such lockstep with the administration that they end up supporting the case that’s been utterly destroyed in an open argument and be humiliated.

“Second, the president talks about the deal as unprecedented. What’ he talking about? Since 1803, our system has been one in which the Supreme Court in the end, judges, whether the law is constitutional or not. And in this case, he talked about the law passing by majority. He had a strong majority, with 75 Democrats outnumbering Republicans in the House. Obamacare passed by seven votes. It was a very narrow majority. It wasn’t a broad of a majority that he implied.

“On every count he doesn’t have an argument. This is liberals in shock over watching their side being demolished in oral argument and trying to bully the Supreme Court into ending up on their side in a case which they clearly lost intellectually and logically.”

Candidate Obama campaigned as Mr. Everyman – the down-to-earth affable guy who could relate to real people.

President Obama is an arrogant elitist who believes – really believes – that he is a force of nature to which everyone must respond.  Take his remarks regarding the Supreme Court’s oral arguments of the health care law.

“I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

Seriously?  This from a man who was a constitutional law professor?  There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of laws passed by Congress and state legislatures that have been overturned by the Supreme Court and even lower courts.  This is a doctrine of legislative review established more than 200 years ago in a case called Marbury v. Madison.

Obama’s assertion that the law “was passed by a strong majority” is revisionist history.  It ultimately passed the U.S. House on a 219-212 vote – in which all Republicans and 39 Democrats voted no.

Let’s review how it got to that point, because it’s a story that belies this notion that it was “passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

The first real floor action on health care reform happened in November of 2009 when the Democrats in the House passed their version that included a “public option” which was essentially a full government takeover of health care.  That vote was 220-215 with one Republican (Joseph Cao of New Orleans, who won the seat of Democrat William Jefferson after Jefferson was caught stuffing his freezer with cash from bribes) voting yes and 39 Democrats voting no.

Because at least eight Senate Democrats were on record opposing a public option, the Senate drafted it’s own bill and used the Christmas holiday as the leverage point to get it passed.

It passed the Senate with the 60 votes (the minimum required to end debate on legislation) on Christmas Eve 2009 after some rather outrageous giveaways were promised to Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska – “Cornhusker Kickback” – and Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the Capitol – so to speak.  Outrage at how the Senate had managed the passage of the health care bill manifested itself in the special election in Massachusetts to fill the Senate seat left vacant as a result of the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy. In what must be one of the most shocking political upsets of all time, Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley, thus becoming “41” – that is, the 41^st Republican in the Senate, and breaking the 60-vote supermajority of the Democrats.

At that point, passage of Obama’s health care bill looked doomed.  But then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided that they would force the House to vote on the Senate-passed bill by a legislative trick called “reconciliation.”

I won’t bore you with the reconciliation process, but suffice it to say, the House took what was essentially a draft bill (remember, the Senate pushed through their bill on Christmas Eve with deals being cut hours before, and what officially passed the Senate was language that included handwritten edits, notations and references) and passed it into law, because under reconciliation no language could be changed.

This is why Nancy Pelosi was being honest when she said, “We have to pass the bill so that we can find out what is in it.”  The Senate version (which was never intended to become the final law) left huge swaths of decisions to the Secretary of Health and Human Services because they hadn’t come to agreement on most of the implementation points.

Most damaging in the long run to Obama’s law was that the Senate version did not include a “severability clause” which is routine in bigger pieces of legislation.  Severability is normally included so that if some portion of a bill is found to be unconstitutional, it doesn’t take the entire bill down.

The severability issue brings us back to Obama’s claim that it would be unprecedented for the Supreme Court to overturn a law.  If it had never been done, why would Congress ever put a severability clause into legislation?

I am astounded at the blatant disregard for the truth that the President of the United States employs.  Does he really think that “warning” the Supreme Court is smart, let alone appropriate?  For him to equate overturning this horrific law to “judicial activism” is to turn the world upside down.  Striking down a law because it violates the constitution is not legislating from the bench.

Obviously, Obama is very worried about what might happen to his signature accomplishment.  But his outrage is misguided and he isn’t handling this in a very Presidential way.

The Maryland primary has already been called for Mitt Romney.  D.C. is expected to go with Romney, as will Wisconsin.

Rick Santorum is out of reasons to stay in this race.  Gingrich isn’t even worth wasting time on.

[UPADTE]

Romney has won huge in D.C. and will have a strong win in Wisconsin.  The fat lady continues to sing.

[UPDATE]

We now have the biggest break in the primary election season – the next elections aren’t until April 24, and full three weeks.  Yes, Santorum leads in Pennsylvania, but what’s the point?  Assuming Santorum can maintain his lead there, which is a big assumption, Romney will win Connecticut, Delaware, New York and Rhode Island.

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu is under investigation for tampering with public records in the fall-out of allegations that he threatened his former boyfriend with deportation if their relationship became public.

As the Arizona Republic reports, emails that were requested by the paper related to Babeu were deleted. When questioned about the emails, the Pinal County Sheriff’s office claimed that it was a routine clean up of old emails and that they had been properly archived.

However, when the archives were searched it was discovered that more than 7,000 emails had been deleted.

While IT staff was conducting research before March 7, Behring’s e-mail says, they found a file on a drive that contained 7,220 documents, mostly e-mails. When they went back on March 7, that same file contained only 818 documents.

So, the emails in question were apparently deleted twice.

As we learned from Watergate, it’s usually not the initial act that causes political death, it’s the cover-up.

For a law enforcement officer to engage in his kind of cover-up is not only a violation of law, it’s a violation of he public trust.

Paul Babeu can’t be trusted to be a Congressman.

Obama’s health care law may be on life support.  After three days of oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the challenge to the health care bill signed into law two years ago, the future of the law is very uncertain.

It’s clear that supporters of the law were rocked by how aggressive the questioning was by Justices Kennedy and Breyer – two justices that are key to which way the decision goes.  The Left is also very unhappy with Obama’s Solicitor General.  Mother Jones wrote, “If the law is upheld, it will be in spite of Verrilli’s performance, not because of it.”

I was struck my Kennedy’s first question right out of the box, “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?”  That is how a Supreme Court Justice “gets up in your grill.”

Justices Scalia, Alito and Chief Justice Roberts also asked withering questions.  Justice Thomas was typically silent – he hasn’t asked a question in the last six years.  It is assumed that those four are near-certain to support striking down the individual mandate and based on Kennedy’s questioning, he could be the fifth vote.

What has alarmed the Left more than anything is the discussion in the final day of arguments when the Court discussed whether it was more reasonable to overturn the entire law if they agree that the individual mandate is struck down.

While I strongly believe that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, and have been cautiously optimistic that the Court would so rule, I have been very pessimistic about the Court overturning the entire law.  That would be a nice gift to the American people if it were to happen.

Transcripts of the three days of arguments are here:

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday here and here