Maine legal­izes same-​​​​sex mar­riage By leg­isla­tive action, no less. With­out a court telling them they had to do it. That makes Maine the sec­ond state to enact same-​​​​sex mar­riage with­out a judi­cial order to do so, and the first state to enact same-​​​​sex mar­riage with­out a judi­cial order to at least cre­ate a par­al­lel licens­ing sys­tem (as the Ver­mont Supreme Court did back before that state cre­ated its civil union sys­tem). Also, the first state to leg­isla­tively dis­pose of a prior leg­isla­tive ban (Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 19-​​​​A § 701 (2009)). My last law school exam ever starts in 10 min­utes. Woo hoo!

“Who’s there?” “Orange.” “Orange who?” “Orange you glad you didn’t vote for McCain!” I still say Stevens is due — he’ll be 89 this year. And Gins­burg has health issues. Luck­ily all three are part of the lib­eral bloc and will be replaced with lib­er­als — not likely to upset court bal­ance. I’m in the mid­dle of finals week in my last semes­ter in law school. Assum­ing I pass every­thing, I’ll grad­u­ate on May 17th, which is inci­den­tally the septen­vig­in­ten­nial of my birth.