Jim Jack Ryan has been defeated by the sex scandal in Illinois, it seems. I have nothing else substantive to say about the other candidates for Senate except that Barack Obama seems like a very nice and very sharp guy, and since he's from the U of C I'm strongly biased in his favor. Jim Oberweis, who is on the short list to take the Republican nomination, runs a dairy that makes darn good milk. I can't see how that would help him be a Senator though.

Apropos of yesterday's quoting from Supreme Court opinions, Toby Stern emails to let me know that he prefers this bit from Scalia's concurence in Ring v. Arizona:

I add one further point, lest the holding of today’s decision be confused by the separate concurrence. Justice Breyer, who refuses to accept Apprendi ... nonetheless concurs in today’s judgment because he “believe[s] that jury sentencing in capital cases is mandated by the Eighth Amendment.” While I am, as always, pleased to travel in Justice Breyer’s company, the unfortunate fact is that today’s judgment has nothing to do with jury sentencing.... There is really no way in which Justice Breyer can travel with the happy band that reaches today’s result unless he says yes to Apprendi. Concisely put, Justice Breyer is on the wrong flight; he should either get off before the doors close, or buy a ticket to Apprendi-land.

If you missed them yesterday, go back and read Peter's and Greg's post on the Supreme Court Forecasting Project. Fascinating stuff, and there will be more to watch in the future.

Timothy Noah liked the World War II Memorial. I've been wondering for almost a month whether I would, too.

Yesterday, I finally visited it for myself. A few assorted thoughts:

1: There are little funny pillar-like things with the names of states (and Guam, and the District of Columbia, and American Samoa, and so on) on them ringing the big pool. I don't really know why-- I had thought that in World War II (unlike, say, the Civil War) there wasn't any particular state-based organization of the armed forces. It's almost as if somebody decided that pillars would look nice and then said, "What do we have about four dozen of that the pillars could represent?"

2: The pillars themselves are weird-- they look remarkably like arrowslits that have been stripped from some old castle wall and dropped there.

3: The big pool of water is nice enough-- I like big pools of water-- but it lacks the subtle power of the Lincoln Memorial's reflecting pool, and the fountains in the pool are a little funny-looking. There's no attempt to decorate or hide the little industrial-looking nozzles that are spraying the water.

4: It's nice that they let people put their feet in the water; that's very refreshing on a summery day when you've been traipsing about for a while. But maybe they ought to work harder to keep people from letting their diapered infants charging hip-deep into the water. That's just icky.

5: But, the pool does have ducks. Two of them-- rather persistent little creatures, too, who kept swimming over and contemplating my toes.

6: For that matter, what will happen to the big fountain-thing in winter time? The whole memorial will look even more antiseptic and Coruscantian if they turn off the fountain and let the basin gain a frosty sheen, which I assume they will. If the nozzles weren't sticking up quite so baldly and boldly (see #3) they could at least turn the center into a tiny ice-skating and -sliding rink.

7: Noah is wrong that:

The quotations carved in marble are mostly stirring; the only misstep is a fairly bland quotation from the writer Walter Lord ... about the Battle of Midway.

It's possible to imagine that, once the crowds die down, young lovers will smooch here—a venerable war-memorial indiscretion that no one would dare attempt at the infinitely more solemn Vietnam and Korean war memorials at the opposite end of the Reflecting Pool.