OH WON’T YOU STAY JUST ALITO BIT LONGER (…sorry): David Wagner on Aaaaaaaaaaalito: “If the legislature is sane, the court should refrain!” And Balkinization has a very interesting post: If successful, Alito’s nomination will make Anthony Kennedy the median or swing Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. In the past, Sandra Day O’Connor had held that powerful position, only occasionally displaced by Kennedy. Now it is largely Kennedy’s, with occasional displacements by Breyer. Put another way, to understand what Alito’s... Read more

GOOD NEWS: 1. Alito, yay! Am excited. 2. The final version of my short story, “Now and at the Hour,” is available in the current issue of Doublethink magazine. This version is better than the one you might at some point have seen on my fiction website; moreover, I took that version down, so if you want it, Doublethink is the only place to get it. Summary: “Welcome to a future where the drugs make you think you’re in West... Read more

Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow,Turn this stupid blogwatch yellow! … Amy Welborn: “Welborn’s Rule #1: When a person begins a sentence ‘I’m a Catholic,’ you know you have trouble on the way. When they begin a sentence ‘I’m a devout Catholic,’ you have disaster, guaranteed.” (could not be more true.) Cacciaguida: More on the Shakespeare Theatre’s excellent Othello. The Discernment Dilemma: “Maybe humor, definitely Faith, and hopefully Reason from the depressed mind of a suburban Catholic teen.” Brings the Cacciaguida family... Read more

Generalship is bad for people. As anyone intimate with military society knows only too well, the most reasonable of men suffuse with pomposity when stars touch their shoulders. Because ‘general’ is a word which literature uses to include in the same stable Alexander the Great and the dimmest Pentagon paper-pusher, perfectly well-balanced colonels begin to demand the deference due to the Diadochi when promoption carries them to the next step in rank.–John Keegan, The Mask of Command Read more

And Lorca the blogwatch poet they left ’til last… Camassia: “But does the body have a vote on reality, as the mind does? In other words, if somebody insists that he’s actually female and his body says otherwise, who do we listen to?” (more) Jeremiads: The fourth chapter of my book will wrestle with hypocrisy in Hollywood. I’m looking for two kinds of information: 1) Quotes by celebs condemning hypocrites or hypocrisy. If you send these in, please identify the... Read more

America, it has been said, is a country dominated by the dimension not of time–as is Europe, trammelled by its history–but of space.–John Keegan, The Mask of Command If anyone has any thoughts a’tall on how this quotation might relate to the differences between Death in Venice and Lolita, please email me, as it’s something I’m working on right now. Read more

YALE’S FINEST PUBLICATION has a new and exciting website. Read more

As [Wellington] pressed on closer to the retreating enemy, one of his staff urged him not to take any more risks. ‘Never mind,’ he answered. ‘Let them fire away. The battle’s gained. My life’s of no consequence now.’ About 10 his progress across the battlefield brought him close to La Belle Alliance. There Blucher, reeking of gin and liniment, was waiting to throw an embrace round him. ‘Mein lieber Kamerad,’ he exclaimed, ‘quelle affaire.’ The old Prussian’s few words of... Read more

IT MIGHT BE WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS… BUT IS IT REALLY WORTH $16.95?: Comics reviews. Finder: The Rescuers. The latest installment of the “aboriginal science fiction” series; two interlocking plotlines, plus one backstory (and a twist revealed at the end), all centering on children in jeopardy. One plotline mirrors the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, with all the attendant upstairs-downstairs drama and suspicion. One plotline concerns an aboriginal woman who has, in a development her tribe would consider disastrous if they knew,... Read more

JUS IN BELLO: Via Andrew Sullivan, how people die in U.S. custody: An Iraqi detainee (also described as a white male) died on January 9, 2004, in Al Asad, Iraq, while being interrogated by “OGA.” [= “other government agency,” often, I think, CIA –Eve] He was standing, shackled to the top of a door frame with a gag in his mouth at the time he died. The cause of death was asphyxia and blunt force injuries. Notes summarizing the autopsies... Read more