You know you've got a good debate going on a blog when the third comment reads, "I dispute every factual statement in your premise."  Oh, wait, no, that's how you know you've got a bad debate going.  But an entertaining one, nonetheless.

The comment in question came from a two line post over at Overlawyered. (http://www.overlawyered.com/2006/09/10_wacky_airline_lawsuits.html) More of a link than a post, really, pointing to an MSNBC article titled "10 Wacky Airline Lawsuits." 

Now, as a rule of thumb, the Judge doesn't normally expect any articles starting with "10," "50" or "100" to be very substantive; the second word is too likely to be "Greatest" or "Lamest" and generally we're looking at the kind of thing you read at a party when you really can't face your ex over by the bar and have drunkenly decided to annoy the hell out of the rest of the attendees by camping out in the bathroom.  Or something.  The addition of the word "wacky" only strengthens this idea by adding a note of "Reader's Digest" or possibly "I Love Lucy."

But instead of letting the article go by with a ungraceful gigglesnort, someone had to bring up tort reform and its use of goofy poster child cases.  And use three sets of unnecessary quotation marks in the first sentence.  And we're off, with a series of snarky vocabulary-ridden comments slagging off on that first commentor, to the point where they begin casting aspersions on each other's funding.

I think my favorite line, for sheer wordy understatement, is "I think we may disagree about the strength of each other's various legal analyses."