A Supreme shake-up in the cards?

A very subdued yet successful holiday weekend on our end - hope the same can be said of your side of the national parade route. Maya's sleeping like a champ (11-hour stretches each of the last two nights) and we survived a full 24-hour at the hospital call day on Sarah's part with lots of walking and tummy time and Wimbledon via TiVo. I'm very happy for Venus Williams and I respect Roger Federer's complete game. But Andy Roddick's got the best press presence since John McEnroe, so I hope he gets more moments in the full-blown media glare in years to come. Maya's helping out around the house more lately, which for a 4-month old means she's conking out for a few naps that allow us to get through the occasional pile of bills or newspapers. Generally not in that order. Speaking of which, a few stories from this morning's mix really caught my eye.

The Pentagon's apparently considering a major shift in their preparedness. Up until now (believe it or not) our military was supposedly operating with a basic planning structure that would allow them to fight two simultaneous wars. Cause just fighting one's for pussies. Well, now that Iraq has turned into the incredibly messy shit sandwich that most of us know it to be, Rummy and his chums are planning to drop that whole "two wars if we're really in a pinch" silliness. The underlying drive stems from Rummy's oft-articulated master plan to up the technological ante on our fighting forces and create in the process a much leaner operative capability. Ya know - more smart bombs, less dumb soldiers - that sorta thang. But it actually makes a lot of sense when you can't get people to enlist and have a Congress that will seemingly rubber-stamp just about any military appropriations bill that Dubya sends up the Hill. It doesn't make an iota of sense at any other time, but for now - what me worry?

For those of you that just can't get enough political journalism the Washington Post Sunday Magazine ran the sort of extensive profile piece on Howard Dean that if you closed your eyes and skipped the first section you'd swear was written at the height of his quixotic run for the nomination. Very strong background on Ho-Ho. Very much what has always been run about him (lousy dresser, blunt, Judith's a smarter doc, yada yada yada). But it still was a very fair piece to counter all the attack flack aimed at him since he became DNC Chair. Well worth a looksie.

For anyone who wonders where all the fuss about the departure of Sandra Day O'Connor from Supreme Court comes from, just take a gander at the cases that they've slated to hear starting with the beginning of the session on October 3rd. Abortion, right-to-die, gay rights - all the heavy hitters on the cultural war footing are represented. My early prediction is complete and total stalemate for whomever Bush picks. O'Connor stays on into the next session. Rehnquist dies. Thomas gets hit by a street sweeper, wakes up with amnesia and disappears to the Deep South to search for his roots. Scalia comes out of the closet and quits the Court to open a B&B in Provincetown, MA. Karl Rove runs out of palatable ideas after the first Senate stalemate and loses his will to win. Convinces Bush to nominate Judge Judy, plus Simon, Paula and the other guy from "American Idol" to fill the slots. The Senate capitulates. The American public's attention shifts to the next celebrity trial - my bet is on Vince Vaughn killing a hooker within the next few months. And this whole period seems like a bad dream from far, far in the past.

It could happen. Look it up. Rock on.