In light of equal time requirements (self being unquestionably a member of the media), and since I linked to Harriet Miers's blog a few weeks ago: The Right Honorable Samuel A. Alito, Jr.

Sam Alito's 1972 Princeton yearbook entry, which says, believe it or not, that Alito "intends... eventually to warm a seat on the Supreme Court."

I'm not thrilled about the Alito nomination, obviously, but I have to admit that the 33-years-ahead-of-its-time prediction is pretty neat.

The New Yorker's Lauren Collins parses the sex scenes in Scooter Libby's titillating 1995 novel, The Apprentice:

So, how does Libby stack up against the competition? This question was put to Nancy Sladek, the editor of Britain’s Literary Review, which, each year, holds a contest for bad sex writing in fiction. (In 1998, someone nominated the Starr Report.) Sladek agreed to review a few passages from Libby. "That's a bit depraved, isn't it, this kind of thing about bears and young girls? That's particularly nasty, and the other ones are just boring," she said. "God, they’re an odd bunch, these Republicans." Unlike their American counterparts, she said, Tories haven’t taken much to sex writing. "They usually just get caught," she said.

Terrific. Highly recommended reading. (The article, not The Apprentice.)

Poor CNN. I honestly believe that they do sometimes (not always, but sometimes) try to function as a legitimate newsgathering organization, but I swear, lately, even during those limited times, their credibility is all-too-frequently sapped by vapid stupidity. Whether that stupidity is the fault of the production staff or the mind-numbing mid-day anchors (hereinafter "hairdos"), I do not know. Probably both. But it is disheartening.

To wit: Kyra Phillips, introducing a guest to talk about the Alito nomination, just asked, "Just who is Samuel Alito? Is he a conservative, as some critics contend?" Give me a break. Talk about missing the point. That's like asking, "Is he a white man, as some people have pointed out?" Of course he's conservative. It's not critics contending he's conservative, it's everyone contending he's conservative.

So what should Phillips be asking instead? "Is he qualified? Is he intelligent? Is he crazy? Has he ever rented 'A Day at the Races'? Does he know Anita Hill?"

Patridiot Watch (with the excellent headline "Trenton Makes, the Supreme Court Takes...") points out that with Alito's confirmation, fully 22% of the justices of the Supreme Court will be Trenton-born. (Via On Call.)

Think Progress has some excellent talking points. The headers:

1. Alito would overturn Roe v. Wade.
2. Alito would allow race-based discrimination.
3. Alito would allow disability-based discrimination.
4. Alito would strike down the Family and Medical Leave Act.
5. Alito supports unauthorized strip searches.
6. Alito hostile toward immigrants.

Sounds like my kind of guy.

Bush nominates Sam "Scalito" Alito. Sam Brownback succumbs to the Rapture.

Happy Halloween.

Lanny Davis makes a couple of Clinton-based suggestions for the Bush White House:

Now President Bush must do something that for him, it seems, is the most difficult task: admit a mistake. First, he must send his press secretary, Scott McClellan, into the White House press room to apologize for his misleading the American people - probably based on incomplete or inaccurate information he was given - when he denied involvement by White House officials in the disclosure that Valerie Wilson was a C.I.A. officer.

More important, President Bush should follow the ultimate rule of White House damage control: the buck stops here. He should admit that this entire mess could have been avoided had the White House, including the vice president, criticized Ambassador Joseph Wilson openly and directly, rather than whispering "on background" into the ears of certain reporters that his wife was responsible for sending him to investigate possible Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Niger.

And then, after reminding everyone that Mr. Libby is entitled to the presumption of innocence, Mr. Bush should focus on the people's business and the far more serious problems facing America.

I think one of the reasons that these suggestions seem so striking is that the first one - having Scott "I Don't Know What the Hell You're Talking About, Liberal Media" McClellan actually apologize for something - seems completely antithetical to everything this White House has ever done.

The New York Times previews the upcoming nomination fight, which can apparently be concisely summarized by the following two statements:

1. If Bush nominates anything less than a frothing-at-the-mouth conservative, the right will never support him in anything ever again.
2. If Bush nominates a frothing-at-the-mouth conservative, the left will never support him in anything ever again.

The long and short of it: somebody's going to be seriously pissed off.

Sherlock; Marlowe; Ace Ventura; me. The common thread? Great detectives, obviously.

Following an extensive Purple State investigation,* I can now exclusively reveal the true motivation for the selection of Ben Bernanke as Fed Chair: the Bush administration has always wondered how it would feel to be praised by Paul Krugman.

Obviously I'm pleased, too. Full disclosure: Mr. Bernanke was chairman of the Princeton economics department before moving to Washington, and he made the job offer that brought me to Princeton.

According to one of my investigators, Bush's first choice was Krugman's mom, but she didn't want the job.

* - Read: no investigation whatsoever.

An amusing summary of the Plame Affair (which I missed when it was published on Friday) by Post columnist Michael Kinsley. From the early bits:

You can't knock the names, though. Above all, there is the wonderfully Pynchonesque Valerie Plame. ... Then there is the aide to the vice president who answers to the call of "Snooker." Or is it Smoky? Or maybe Sunshine?