I CAN'T BELIEVE I MISSED THIS!

Jonah Goldberg was live yesterday on Ace's internet radio show.

D'oh!

One of the pre-positioned questions was whether Cosmo the wunder dog was now, or has ever been, a member of the Federalist Society, stemming from the whole kerfuffle as to whether John Roberts was ever in the Federalist Society.

I'm in the weird and unique position of probably being the only person who has ever been intentionally to a meeting of both the Federalist Society and the Communist Party USA.

The Federalist Society meeting was at the beginning of grad school up at the UVA law school. It was pretty funny, with plenty of liquor and some very good looking women---frat girls with their distinctive blonde pony tails and boots masking their 1500 SATs. I even went to a meeting up in Dee-Cee and had my picture taken with Ken Starr and everything. Why didn't I stick with it? Well, mainly because they were law school folks, and therefore the most part a box of tools, if you get my drift. The big beef I had though was more aethetic: on their ties they had their logo, which was the profile of James Madison. Why for the life of me I could never figure it out----Madison? The author of the Virginia Resolution of 1798? Madison, the intellectual equivalent of Thomas Jefferson's jailhouse bride, who Hamilton traded back to TJ for a carton of Luckies? I mean, for goodness sakes, he wasn't even a Free Mason! What about John Marshall, or Hamilton himself? I never could understand, and obviously I had too many questions.

The CPUSA event was a little different. My roomate in college was in a "Peace Studies" class which was required for his major: he was majoring in history, with a concentration in "European Imperialism in the Third World." His senior thesis of course was entitled "A How To Guide." People didn't realize he was quite serious----that's the fun thing about overly earnest college age liberals. (He now works for a major health care company managing a group of "skinners" and if you know anything about the lingo of the bidness, yes, be appalled.) Anyhoo, on a Tuesday night in my senior year, Tom finds me during dinner and says "hey, butthead, want to go to NYC tonight?" Silly question, Rabbit: Tricks are for Kids! Chucking all work responsibilities aside, I of course sign on. Tom's class was going, and he was driving the van, and I was shotgun. Tom of course waited until we were actually in the City before he let me know where we were going. I fell out of my seat, laughing, and when the humorless instructor sitting two rows back wanted to know what was so funny, Tom turns around and said "I was just telling Steve the joke about the Commissar, the earnest proletarian, and the goat walk into a bar...."

We arrived there, and of course we signed in as "J. Edgar Hoover" (Tom) and "Freidrich Hayek" (Me). There was a cash bar---but of course---and four women from Vassar in the back. The drinks were watered down---I mean, what type of Commie cuts the vodka like that? Talk about the scales falling from your eyes! The Vassar girls? Distinctly preppy-bohemian, black jeans and Peruvian vest types, dark hair, rings, but dad's Gold Card in the purse for sure. One of us--okay, it was me---actually led with something along the lines of "Hey, I've got an etching of the Theses on Feurbach back in the van." The all thought my "Haig for President" button was an ironic commentary on the creeping emergence of neo-fascism in Reagan's police state. I didn't disabuse them of the notion, even though I thought the General would have made a damn fine president. We all left after about five minutes as it was too loud to get acquainted, what with the members of the middle-age and balding communists league cackling as the stock market having just crashed, it being late October 1987 and all. We went to a bar around the corner, where the quite enraged professor finally found us around midnight. A good time was had by all.

Such is the extent of my experience with the extremes of Amerikan politics: Federalist Society, open bar with strong drinks, cute n' perky UVA sorority girls a little too into it; CPUSA, cash bar with watered-down drinks, cute Vassar bohemian girls not really in on the joke.

You make the call.