The resurrection of the Twinkie.

"It was the risk. This was a rare circumstance in history when you see a company go completely off the shelves and have no employees, have empty factories and no working capital. We saw the opposite � this was an opportunity to take a great brand and for the first time be able to reinvent it."

The magic bullet turned out to be chemistry. Metropoulos spent millions on R&D, working with food lab Corbion to tweak the formula of starches, oils and gums in Twinkies, finally arriving at an acidity level that would prevent staleness and discoloration. The singular goal: Make the Twinkie warehouse-friendly. And while none of this will make Alice Waters� heart flutter, the team succeeded in making the indestructible snack even more so � [its] shelf life was more than doubled, to 65 days. Hostess switched to a warehouse system. Delivery costs dropped to 16% from 36% of revenue, and Hostess� retail reach expanded greatly. �We now ship to all Wal-Marts, dollar stores, 100,000 convenience stores, plus vending machines and food services,� says Jhawar. �There is no reason why Hostess can�t be sold in any place that sells candy bars.�

"There are no abortion cakes."

A sentence written by Katha Pollitt. Context:

It�s no news that support for abortion rights is stagnant while gay rights become ever more popular.... I understand that same-sex marriage and reproductive rights are different: marriage is about love, and abortion is about freedom. There are no abortion cakes. But freedom is a bedrock American value, even when it�s for women.

Actually, there are abortion cakes. I could find them on line. Nothing I want to show you though.

"Why should a woman cook? So her husband can say, 'My wife makes a delicious cake,' to some hooker?"

From "61 Comedians Recall Their Favorite, First, and Life-Changing Jokes." That joke is from Joan Rivers, and the comedian who calls that her "favorite joke of all time" is Jen Kirkman. Most of the 61 comedians, by the way, don't identify a particular joke, so the headline is misleading. I chose Kirkman's joke for this post because it is a joke, it's funny, and it gives you something to think about.

You might think I chose it because CAKE! has been the subject of the week and the tendency of people to pay attention to CAKE!!! has been amply demonstrated. But I didn't. And I'm actually pretty sick of the cake-o-mania of the past week. I've got some really mixed feelings about this cake-focused exposure of the RFRA laws � laws I've studied and taught for many years. I feel as though I should explain things about which I have an overload of understanding, but I also feel hopeless about conveying that understanding. The political demagoguery will overwhelm the legal material. I'm absolutely convinced. I could do my professorly part, but why should I pour hopeless effort into the rehabilitation of RFRA laws, which I've never liked? When it's not hopeless, it's my practice to explain arguments for things I don't agree with. But it is hopeless here. The political noise is too loud.

Okay? Now, please acquire your cake somehow. Have cake and eat it and share it and stop being so obtuse about love.

 

AND: I wanted to replace that cake pic with a photograph of a cake that had "God is love" written on it. That would be a loftier ending for this post, but instead I'm going to return to the joke-y spirit I began with. Here's what Google gave me when I asked for a picture of a cake with "God is love" written on it:



What would Mitt Romney do?

Finally, some cake other than same-sex wedding cake is in the news...

... in this NYT interview with Senator Tom Cotton:

Do you have any guilty pleasures? I run a lot every morning.

That sounds neither guilty nor pleasurable. But I do it so I can indulge in the guilty pleasure of eating birthday cake.

Every day? Most days, with ice cream. Early on, when my wife and I were dating, we went to the grocery store, and I told her that sometimes I just buy birthday cakes, and I eat them. And she said: �Really? I do, too.�

IN THE COMMENTS: Ignorance is Bliss asks: "Is a cake a birthday cake if it wasn't bought for someone's birthday?"

I think the best answer to that is that Tom Cotton and his wife like to eat a kind of cake that they think of as "birthday cake." Either they like the idea of calling it "birthday cake" or they go stores where it is labeled birthday cake or has "Happy Birthday" written in the icing. What kind of people are they that they enjoy that kind of cake � light, spongy cake with thick, sugary white icing� or they get a kick out of a birthday feeling when it's not anyone's birthday?

I think of 2 things:

1. The Beatles "You say it's your birthday/It's my birthday too." When that song came out, it was generally understood � as I remember it � to refer to something other than one's actual birthday. Both Paul McCartney and John Lennon said later that they just set out to write a birthday song. Paul said it wasn't anyone's birthday, but birthday songs get played. And John said "It was a piece of garbage." If I remember correctly, we hippies of the time thought The Beatles were offering the theory that every day is your birthday or every day that you achieve heightened awareness of your existence is a birthday.

2. The idea of an "un-birthday" in the Humpty Dumpty chapter of Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass," which is combined with Carroll's Mad Hatter's Tea Party (from "Alice In Wonderland") in the Disney movie "Alice in Wonderland." In the movie, Alice arrives at the party as the Hatter and others are singing "A Very Merry Unbirthday to You." In the book, Humpty Dumpty explains that "there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents... And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!" Alice doesn't understand his use of the word "glory," which leads Humpty Dumpty to utter his most famous line (beloved of lawyers): "When I use a word... it means just what I choose it to mean � neither more nor less." (In this view, "glory" means "a nice knock-down argument.") I'm thinking that when Tom Cotton eats cake, it's birthday cake if he chooses to think of it as birthday cake.

"It would be strange indeed to give a clause that makes federal law supreme a reading that limits Congress�s power to enforce that law..."

"... by imposing mandatory private enforcement � a limitation unheard � of with regard to state legislatures," wrote Justice Scalia in an opinion called Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, issued this morning.

To say that the Supremacy Clause does not confer a right of action is not to diminish the significant role that courts play in assuring the supremacy of federal law. For once a case or controversy properly comes before a court, judges are bound by federal law....

The dissent agrees with us that the Supremacy Clause does not provide an implied right of action, and that Congress may displace the equitable relief that is traditionally available to enforce federal law. It disagrees only with our conclusion that such displacement has occurred here.

The dissenting opinion is by Justice Sotomayor, who is joined by Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Kagan.  The statute the 2 sides are interpreting is the Medicaid Act.

ADDED: In the comments, Smilin' Jack says: "WTF? Have they run out of those Easter-Bunny-Display-in-National-Park cases? At least those were funny."

Yes, let's get back to talking about cake. The important thing in America right now is cake. Why are we all hepped up to talk about RFRA (which had previously bored the bejeezus out of everyone)? Cake.