For me, it has something to do with expectations of particular posters. You are well known around here not only as a lawyer, but as someone who is well versed in constitutional issues, who often responds to non-legal arguments with legal answers, and who is perfectly happy to bring the hammer down on people who post opinions about the law without familiarizing themselves with the law in question. For all these reasons, i expect more from you in a law-related hypothetical than i do of many other people.
Is that fair? Maybe; maybe not. But tough shit, because that’s how it is.
In the thread about Presidential authority, after a bunch of people had responded to the thread, and after John Mace had asked you to weigh in with your own opinion, you wrote this:
To be honest, if you (and especially you) are going to start a thread like this, i expect that you’ve at least taken a look yourself to see what is and is not authorized by the laws relevant to your question. If you haven’t looked, and someone calls you on it, then your hypothetical appears like little more than a politically-motivated gotcha. And if you have looked, and intentionally withheld the information in your OP, then it looks suspiciously like trolling.Either way, as xenophon41 suggests, it smacks of december’s tactics.
As i said, it might not seem fair to hold you up to a higher standard than other people, but i do that with many people on this board. I expect that, in a thread about baseball statistics, RickJay and Munch (for example) will come better prepared than many other people. In a thread about the coal industry, i would hold Una Persson up to higher standards of knowledge than some unnamed schmoe. In tax law, i would expect Rand Rover to know what the hells he’s talking about. And in law threads, especially the ones that you actually start, i expect that you’ve done your homework before you start throwing political mudpies.