🗞️ Paging President Jed Bartlet for a Sorkian Disquisition on Habeas Corpus! 😂

A Tale of Paris Metro Mischief Meets AP Civics. Plus, Book Treats!

Apr 20, 2025

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Paging Jed Bartlet from a better reality! Time for an Executive Order!

Hello, Lovelies— How the hell are you? It’s rough out there. So, let’s have some fun, shall we?

The Scene: Paris, 1996.
Before the Euro.
Before Metro cards.
Before adulthood had fully landed.

We were idealistic young marrieds living in the Seizième, on a street so charming it practically sang La Vie en Rose. Gorgeous old Madeline-era mansions lined Avenue Georges Mandel, cloaked in vines and mystery.

We were classic overachievers, 99% rule followers. The other 1%? Well…

“Petty larcenists in the pettiest, most pastel way.”

Scooching Was Our Love Language
Back then, metro tickets were seven francs and about the size of a chic postage stamp. First and second class! No digital tracking! Just little pastel slips and low-slung turnstiles.

Our thrill: My then-husband would scooch in behind me through the turnstile, whispering something like, “Hubba-hubba, Betty!” I’d cackle (like a deeply suspicious American), and we’d glide into our next stop—two idiots in love.

Until we got caught.

The Gendarme and the Scooch

One night, after a subtitled cinema and maybe a glass too many, the gendarme’s whistle sliced through the air. The jig was up!

I may have said something bratty and ill-advised like:

“Dépêche-toi, Frenchy! Just write the scooching ticket and move on!”

My poor husband went white as Chamonix!

“Sweetie,” he said through gritted teeth, “there’s no habeas corpus in France.”

I must have pulled a face because he used his Montessori voice on me, “The state owns your body.”

“What?! I thought that I owned your body!”

“Ha, no, sweetie. They can arrest you for mispronouncing ‘la grenouille’.”

“The restaurant?! Wait, haven’t you been arrested before?”

“No, have you???”

“Of course! Protesting! It’s no big deal. Martin Sheen just comes and gets you out.”

Yes, in college I had been part of an organized demonstration at Nevada Test Site, and we'd all been hauled away with Martin Sheen, only to be immediately released by a very organized legal team–hence my quip.

Who Owns the Body?

Let’s pause here. Habeas corpus (Medieval Latin for “show me the body”) is the legal right to challenge your detention in front of a judge. It’s one of the bedrock ideas behind liberty, personal agency, and all the amendments you forgot from AP Gov.

“It’s the legal lovechild of ‘hands off my uterus’ and ‘no, actually, I won’t go quietly.’”

In other words, the state doesn’t own your body. YOU do.

Unless you're in the Paris Metro.

Or you are a member of a targeted group.

Or... having a seizure.

Electric Storms & Starry Skies

Years later, I had my own reckoning—with a different kind of authority figure: my brain.

My first grand mal seizure came without warning. One moment I was heading for the Television Academy, the next I was in a full-sensory Van Gogh painting.

“A jet streaming starry, starry night... phenomenal oblivion.”

Seizures begin with an aura—a kind of electrical whisper that turns into a neurological wildfire. My sense of self evaporated. No “I.” No “me.” No body to show to anyone, least of all a judge.

Just raw consciousness unraveling at the speed of electricity.

Martin Sheen Isn’t Coming This Time

Back in college, we were released with a kind of bureaucratic courtesy.

But this?

“Waking up after a seizure is like being hurled back into this plane of existence like Keanu in The Matrix.”

It might as well be live footage.

Seizures don’t grant you due process. They take your body, your agency, your grip on reality—and give you back something strange and holy.

I was afraid of my brain for years. But over time, awe replaced fear. Reverence for habeas corpus replaced resistance. And now, I understand what Dostoyevsky meant when he wrote:

“For all the joys that life may bring, I would not exchange this one.”

So Yes, Jed Bartlett, We Need You!

Please come back from imaginary bucolic New Hampshire and remind America what habeas corpus actually means. That no human—citizen, student, asylum seeker—should be detained without due process.

“Without habeas corpus, what you're doing isn’t law enforcement. It's human trafficking.”

Let’s be clear: ICE shouldn’t get to disappear people like a Nicaraguan dictator. And seizures shouldn’t get to disappear your self without you fighting back—armed with science, community, and maybe a midlife sense of gallows humor. (F*ck you, RFK, Jr., to infinity.)

My poor ex-husband was able to explain our way out of the situation. The gendarme (bless him) registered our genuine fear, and waved us on. However, members of Congress, young children, foreign students, and hard-working contributing members of society are not being afforded such grace. We must protect them.

And now… A Bunny Book Treat!

In the spirit of Easter, renewal, and doing things the mostly-legal way, I have a little gift.

We’ve been working like caffeinated elves to get the Year One catalog for Empress Editions ready—six glorious, genre-busting books written by midlife women around the globe.