- No wonder Scalia and Breyer have time to take their show on the road: The SCOTUS calendar has 40% fewer cases on it this year compared to last year. Given Alito/Roberts joining Scalia/Thomas, I guess that's a good thing.
- Wow! -- Selected early Kodachrome images from the 30's and 40's. And not only that: here are some additional web sites with searchable databases of images:
- The reviews on the ISG and its report are all over the map. And/But this comment by Walter Shapiro seems to fly in the face of the conventional wisdom: that the group is devoid of anyone that is actually, you know, knowledgeable about the Middle East -- until you read the last sentence.
The significance of the Iraq Study Group has little to do with its actual recommendations, which Baker admitted were not a "magic formula that will solve the problems of Iraq." Rather its importance rests entirely with the luster of the former officials on the commission, including two secretaries of state (Baker and Lawrence Eagleburger), a secretary of defense (William Perry), an attorney general (Ed Meese) and its only woman, retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Baker jokingly described them as "a group of has-beens" -- but the reality is this is about as blue-ribbon an assemblage as you get in contemporary America aside, perhaps, from the front row at a state funeral.
Wow. I'm not sure where he's going here. Irony? Respect?
- Holy crap! Three women show up at the Kennedy Center Honors reception wearing the identical $8500 Oscar de la Renta red dress -- and that's not counting Laura Bush who was also wearing it.
- Dec. 7, 1941: The survivors of that day gather one more time.
"I'm not sure where he's going here. Irony?"
That's my take; the "are nows" being such categorical failures at everything. He can also afford to be self-effacing, having put them into such a seemingly inescapable political box.