Blawgletter has now — just now – posted 2012 times. Which means that the number of posts matches the count of years since B.C. switched to A.D. Woo-hoo!

The milestone makes us a bit giddy.  We feel so giddy in fact that the latest ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court inspired us to re-think the outcome in terms of a kids' song, the one about Bingo. You know it. It goes like this:

There was a farmer

Had a dog

And Bingo was his name-o

B-I-N-G-O

B-I-N-G-O

B-I-N-G-O

And Bingo was his name-o

Freeman v. Quicken Loans, Inc., No. 10-1042 (U.S. May 24, 2012), involved no canines, but it did concern the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. The Court ruled, nine to zip, that RESPA didn't bar real estate lenders from charging bazillions of dollars for services the lenders didn't "actually perform[]". Which inspires us to say:

There was a lender

Ignored a law

And RESPA was its name-o

R-E-S-P-A

R-E-S-P-A

R-E-S-P-A

And RESPA was its name-o

We don't contest that Their Unanimous Honors got the result right. Yet we do marvel at the audacity of lenders that tacked on thousands of dollars time after time in the guise of a "loan origination fee", a "processing fee", "discount fees", and the like while the question of whether RESPA barred the charges pended in the courts. The whole thing turned on whether (per the statute) taking 100 percent of the fake fee counted as taking a "percentage" of it.

Better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission, we suppose. And even better to get away with it.