This, from Peace Kills:

(Why do political bien-pensants roll "dispossed," "poor," and "disenfranchised" together, as if they have a natural correlation-- like "ice," "cold," and "beer"? The Dalai Lama id dispossessed. Your parish priest is poor. And Alan Greenspan, as a resident of the District of Columbia, is ineligible to vote in congressional elections.)

(Via Southern Appeal), this article about Dave Winer's "blog-murder" features a typical I'm-addicted-to-my-blog quote at the end:

"I just have my fingers crossed that my girlfriend gets her blog back," said software programmer Tom Gortell. "She feels like someone just sucked out her brains. I don't get it, it's just an online journal, right? But she feels like her entire life has been stolen."

There's no chance I'll be able to blog in response to all of the response-worthy posts in my RSS feed that I've missed for the past week. But thanks to Anthony Rickey for directing me to this P.J. O'Rourke piece in the Atlantic Monthly. I've barely started it, and I'm already laughing:

I am a little to the right of ... Why is the Attila comparison used? Fifth-century Hunnish depredations on the Roman Empire were the work of an overpowerful executive pursuing a policy of economic redistribution in an atmosphere of permissive social mores. I am a little to the right of Rush Limbaugh. I'm so conservative that I approve of San Francisco City Hall marriages, adoption by same-sex couples, and New Hampshire's recently ordained Episcopal bishop. Gays want to get married, have children, and go to church. Next they'll be advocating school vouchers, boycotting HBO, and voting Republican.

From the oral argument transcript in ACLU v. Ashcroft:

QUESTION: It has to be an image or whatever image they are that appeal to the prurient interest. Now, that to me is material that does not communicate.

MS. BEESON: Yes.

QUESTION: It is material that is looking for a kind of emotional response, period. No communication and trying to elicit a certain emotion response, all right?

When I saw the first two words of this article on Lawrence Solum's blog, I thought, "Oh, cool! 'Architectural Censorship.'! I've always wanted to know when it should be Constitutionally permissible to regulate arguably-expressive activities that are entirely non-verbal (and therefore 'speech' only in an attenuated sense), and it could be interesting to see if we have the same answers for architecture as for modern art as for nude dancing".

Then I read more carefully and realized, no, this is some boring ol' piece about the structure of media corporations or something. Sigh. That means I'll have to look elsewhere for intelligent commentary about whether there's a First Amendment right to paint one's house puce (absent, or perhaps despite, a covenant to the contrary).

16 cases remain to be decided this term by the U.S. Supreme Court. In a confused and internet-less haze I had thought that one of them was Roper v. Simmons, which will resolve the constitutionality of the juvenile death penalty, but that is not until next term.

These include of course the "sexy" terrorism cases-- like Padilla and Hamdi and Rasul-- but also Ashcroft v. ACLU, which is "sexy" in a much different way. [Query: Will the Supreme Court grow so tired of hearing these porn cases that they're ready to uphold nearly anything colorably Constitutional just to keep the procession of attorneys general from coming back again and again?]

And then there are the two much-more-ado-than-clearly-warranted cases: Cheney and Hiibel. The former will at least give us a chance to test Bruce Ackerman's firm prediction that whatever the decision is, it will not involve Scalia as a member of a 5-Justice majority. With Amanda in Kazakhstan and presumably a bit removed from up-to-date American legal commentary, it might turn out to be my job to comment upon the latter.

Anyway, should be interesting.

Thanks to the valiant password-obtaining efforts of my roommate Laura Deeb, I now have an internet connection away from the always-frantic TNR offices. This should dramatically increase the pace of blogging (although this weekend, on a bet with Sudeep, I'm going to be abstaining entirely from blogging and email for 24 hours).

In further good news, there is a grocery store not far from my summer abode, a kite-flying picnic planned for this weekend, and I beat Amber in Scrabble yesterday afternoon despite a very frightening last-minute rally on her part.

On the other hand, my cab driver last night explained to me that the prophesies of Mohammed make it quite clear that any day now 99 our of every 100 people in Iraq is going to be slain by some earthborne cataclysm, so maybe bad times are still to come.