I have not found any evidence that Martha Stewart plans to keep a weblog from prison. But if I did, here's what I might think it would look like on a typical day:

7:13 AM: After an unpleasant night's sleep that would have benefitted from a buckwheat pillow like this one I discovered on my trip to Japan, we were served breakfast on paper plates. Paper plates! I miss my yellowware.

9:27 AM: My cellmate got "married" today to the woman in the next cellblock that she has grown quite fond of over the past few weeks. We held an informal wedding in the library. I wish I could have given out personalized favor boxes to all of our friends, but instead I just wept silently and thought of memories from home, from a life before the Big House.

12:14 PM: The bread is fresh today. For that I am certainly thankful. But how I wish I had some Gruyere cheese and grainy mustard, and access to an oven, so that I could make this inventive bread and cheese meal.

2:29 PM: My shoes got dirty in the garden. Too bad boots aren't allowed. Also, Sandra threatened to bury me alive if I didn't stop correcting the way she was rolling the hose back onto the hook. She said she would "roll my hose." I don't know what she meant by that.

5:15 PM: Sunset. My favorite time of day. At least today they didn't beat me with a rake.

7:36 PM: Two things you "must-have" in prison -- (1) a springform pan for savory and sweet cakes and tarts using fresh ingredients from the garden, and (2) some striped fabric to match my jumpsuit, and make all of my accessories fit right in.

8:50 PM: Dinner is late tonight. I entertained myself in the meantime by making bunny ears. I found a rotten banana by the dumpster. I thought of this recipe. I won't be eating that anytime soon. I ate the banana. Then Sandra beat me with a rake. And the day had been going so well. I soaked my jumpsuit in cold salt water to try and get out the blood stains. It seems to be working.

11:02 PM: Time for bed. I hope I dream about baby booties again. That's such a pleasant dream. More from me tomorrow. I'm Martha Stewart. And this is jail.

(Via Southern Appeal) this cute story of teen romance and teen anguish over sex.

I don't think I have much substantive comment on the article-- and being only a few years passed teenage myself it's probably dangerous to say too much. It's definitely good that kids are getting pregnant less often, and the kids interviewed in the article seem to have their heads more or less screwed on straight. Somehow the article calls to mind the book High Fidelity, which is very, very good (and much better than the movie). A few quotes:

Women who disapprove of men-- and there's plenty to disapprove of-- should remember how we started out, and how far we have had to travel.


(Women's knickers were a terrible disappointment to me when I embarked on my cohabiting career. I never really recovered from the shock of discovering that women do what we do: they save their best pairs for the nights when they know they are going to sleep with somebody.)


I accept and understand that you can't be good at everything, and I am tragically unskilled in some very important areas. But sex is different; knowing that a successor is better in bed is impossible to take, and I don't know why.


I used to love sex, all of it, the naked parts and the clothed parts and, on a good day, with a fair wind, when I hadn't had too much to drink and I wasn't too tired and I was just at the right stage of the relationship (not too soon, when I had the first-night nerves, and not too late, when I had the not-this-routine-again blues), I was OK at it. (By which I mean what exactly? Dunno. No complaints, I guess, but then there never are in polite company, are there?)


Sex is about the only grown-up thing I know how to do; it's weird, then, that it's the only thing that can make me feel like a ten-year-old.

A month ago, Will asked when we'll stop caring about our whether our presidents are military veterans, and there was some musing about when or how the trend began.

On a tangent from there --

Once the early justices got to be the proper age (old enough to have been a soldier in the Revolutionary War but not too old to fight), Revolutionary War service seems a de facto requirement: Thomas Johnson, William Patterson, Bushrod Washington, Alfred Moore, H. Brockholst Livingston, Thomas Todd, and Gabriel Duvall.

But once you get to the veterans of the Civil War, it doesn't seem to matter if you sat it out or fought: Holmes and Harlan for the Union, White for the Confederacy, others who seem to have just kept their civil jobs straight through, and Jackson . . . :

Howell E. Jackson was born on April 8, 1832, in Paris, Tennessee. He was graduated from West Tennessee College in 1849, and studied law at the University of Virginia from 1851 to 1852 and at Cumberland College in 1856. He was admitted to the bar and began practicing law in his hometown of Paris. In 1859, he moved to Memphis and established a law practice. Although opposed to secession, Jackson served the Confederacy during the Civil War as the receiver of stolen property.

Rehnquist (Army Air Corps) and Stevens (Navy) are the only members of the current Court with military service, both WWII.

I don't know that this demonstrates one blessed thing, but I'd like to see someone before a Senate confirmation hearing now, being asked what he did in the war: "well, I didn't really agree with my neighbors, but I did fence what they stole from the US government." Ah, forgiveness, it truly is a virtue.

(from the judicial biographies at Cornell's uber-useful Legal Information Institute)

Juan Non-Volokh has quoted Rush for his Sunday Song Lyric displaying libertarian values. For songs of social commentary, the one that best explains that non-discrimination is the necessary and efficient way to survival in a Hobbesian world is Steven Sondheim's "A Little Priest" from Sweeney Todd (complete lyrics here).

Background: Sweeney Todd is the 'demon barber of Fleet Street.' He rooms with Mrs. Lovett, who makes the worst meatpies in London (and was played by Angela Lansbury on Broadway). They discover, however, that if you just use that Italian you accidently killed, you can make some wonderful tasting pies, including "shephard's pie peppered / with actual shephard / on top."

TODD sings (divorced from Lovett's commentary):

Oh what's the sound of the world out there?
Those crunching noises pervading the air?
It's man devouring man, my dear!
(BOTH) And who are we
To deny it in here?
(spoken) These are desperate times, Mrs. Lovett, and desperate measures are called for.
. . . . . . . . .
TODD: The history of the world, my love -
Is those below serving those up above!
How gratifying for once to know
BOTH: That those above will serve those down below!
. . . . . . . . .
TODD: The history of the world, my sweet -
TODD: Is who gets eaten and who gets to eat!
LOVETT: And, Mr. Todd,
Too, Mr. Todd,
Who gets to sell.
TODD: But fortunately it's also clear -
BOTH: That everybody goes down well with beer!
. . . . . . . . .
TODD: We'll take the customers that we can get.
LOVETT: High-born and low, my love.
TODD: We'll not discriminate great from small
No, we'll serve anyone -
Meaning anyone
BOTH: And to anyone
At all!

More context:

The song's title comes from this bit:
LOVETT Here we are, hot from the oven.  
[TODD peers at it.]
TODD What is that?  
LOVETT (Singing) It's priest!
Have a little priest.  
TODD (Singing) Is it really good?  
LOVETT (Singing) Sir, it's too good
At least.
Then again, they don't commit sins of the flesh,
So it's pretty fresh.  
[TODD examines it closely in approval.]
TODD (Singing) Awful lot of fat.  
LOVETT Only where it sat.  
TODD (Singing) Haven't you got poet
Or something like that?  
LOVETT (Singing)
Now you see the trouble with poet
Is how do you know it's
Deceased?
Try the priest.  
[TODD takes a few bites of the pie].  

From Tom Stoppard's Jumpers:

George: At least when I push my convictions to absurdity, I arrive at God.

The facetiously-self-titled Hot Abercrombie Girl points out some of the overzealousness that is child pornography law.

Professor Leitzel discusses the latest news in interstate wine shipments cases. Because of something vaguely resembling a conflict of interest (as well as a mild dose of rational ignorance) I won't comment on the merits of the cases, but I will say that such laws are almost all bad. Not only do they claim to accomplish bad things (limiting the access of well-behaved adults to wine), but they do so in a discriminatory and inefficient fashion. Bleh.

A reader writes:

So, Martha Stewart is going to jail (pending). Why, inquiring minds want to know, does Will Baude fail to comment on this? Did he decide to go to class today? Goodness, that guy writes a lot; just blog, blog, blog.

Amanda, I respectfully submit that when David Brooks writes an op-ed column using "we" he virtually never means to case his net so wide as to include you. I don't mean to defend his column, I can't even bring myself to finish reading it, I'm just saying that you should critique it from the point of view of an outsider.

If Jeremy Blachman's Blackmun-blogging isn't enough for you, be sure to wander over to That's News for good stuff on CHIEF Justice Rehnquist and on Judge Alex Kozinski.