Jim Edmonds as a Duck

Tonight’s Daguerreotype of the Evening required alarmingly little deliberation on my part. After this sentence concludes, I think you’ll understand why …

The fact that the framers were fond of drawing celebrities of the day as ducks — every time Hamilton droned on and on about this or that, Jefferson would doodle Vivaldi as a giggling mallard, for instance — to this day informs originalist interpretations of the Constitution. So in some ways, a bewinged and bebilled Jim Edmonds fulfills Madison’s fondest hopes. Stated another way, if Jim Edmonds had never been rendered as a duck, then you’d be quartering soldiers in your home under threat of the hoosegow.

But all of this is obvious, of course.