Via Newsbusters, not just any lefty law prof either. This is Laurence Tribe, known for his treatise on constitutional law and for having taught, among others at Harvard Law, Barack Obama and John Roberts. Like Jonathan Turley, he’s a scholar, a man of the left, and someone who doubtless agrees with O on the issues more often than not but who evidently can stand only so much partisan hackery in service to the cause. For Turley, that means challenging former critics of executive power on why they’re okay with Obama behaving more unilaterally than Bush did. For Tribe, it means politely resisting MSNBC’s heavy-handed attempt to shoehorn an election-ready narrative about corporations run amok into the Hobby Lobby decision. This wasn’t really a case about corporations, Tribe explains, it was a case about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a statute championed by Ted Kennedy and which reinforced religious exercise rights for all private actors, individual or corporate (or union). I’ll leave you to judge for yourself why he feels obliged to push back. Maybe it’s the pedagogical impulse at work, maybe it’s a “know your enemy” sort of thing, or maybe it’s as simple as him not wanting to see a former pupil maligned (especially one who, as Tribe predicted, came through for liberals on ObamaCare). Or maybe, like the rest of us, he spent five minutes today on social media or on cable TV and came away wanting to barf from the sheer amount of lefty drool he ingested on the “war on women” and “corporations versus people” and other fundraiser-friendly catchphrases for the midterms.

In lieu of an exit question, go read Ace speculating on another reason the left’s so agitated by the thought of corporate rights. Do they really disagree with Mitt Romney that “corporations are people,” or do they think they’re just not the right kind of people?