17 September—As noted in the sidebar, today is Constitution Day. Not that it matters, but the great day had been known as Citizenship Day as well as I Am an American Day and celebrated in May (don’t ask why) until 2004, when octogenarian West Virginia Democrat Senator Robert Byrd stuck an amendment on an omnibus spending bill (typically passed without having been read).

So now it’s officially Constitution Day and Citizenship Day. But not Constitution and Citizenship Day and comes along with mandates regarding educational programming about the history of the Constitution.

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There’s a new book out about Donald Trump. Its title is “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.” It’s bound to be a delightful read and deserves to be a best-seller. It should not be confused with “The Case of the Lucky Loser: A Perry Mason Mystery.”

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Back in 2016, the American Bar Association commissioned First Amendment attorney Susan Seager to research a report that came to be titled “Donald J. Trump is a Libel Bully but also a Libel Loser.” The report’s presumed intent was to mock Trump’s notorious (or celebrated) history of suing anyone and everyone for anything and everything but losing libel suits.

Since Trump is the best thing that’s happened to litigating attorneys since lying, you wonder why the ABA would even have considered being critical of him. But, ironically (?), the ABA initially was afraid to publish the report for fear of being sued by Trump. Just initially. Here’s a link to it: https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/communications_lawyer/fall2016/cl32-3.pdf

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On the subject of lawyers, if Ryan Routh, the man who allegedly was out to assassinate Trump, has a good criminal defense attorney, he should be able to get off with a slap on the wrist. There are the firearms charges, of course, which he should be able to beat on Second Amendment grounds.

(Digression. Have you ever noticed that there are two assess in assassinate? And two asses, the first-person pronoun, and a country in assassination?)

As for the alleged assassination attempt, his lawyer could make the case that Routh was in fact a sportsman interested only in the challenge and thrill of hunting a powerful person and that he never really intended to pull the trigger, just to get Trump in his sights.

That’s the plot of Geoffrey Household’s 1939 novel “Rogue Male.” In the novel, the unnamed protagonist is caught while taking aim at an unnamed dictator by the dictator’s secret police. Although Household didn’t name the dictator, Stalin or more likely Hitler were the prime suspects.

When “Rogue Male” was made into “Man Hunt,” a 1941 Hollywood movie, everybody had a name, including the dictator, Adolf Hitler.

It all comes down to Routh’s mens rea. And Trump’s, for that matter . . .