No matter how pointless it is to speculate about President Obama's choice to fill Justice Souter's Supreme Court seat, Court observers will continue to place their bets until the president reveals his decision. They make assumptions about the characteristics Obama will find attractive in a Supreme Court candidate and they speculate about the strength of the connections Obama formed during his Chicago years. None of it helps us know what's really in Obama's head.

Maybe (let's hope) he'll pick one of the highly qualified women who are certain to appear on his short list, but maybe factors like gender balance and Chicago loyalty will ultimately be overcome by personal impressions that Obama will keep to himself. Maybe Obama will hand the robe to Harold Koh, the Yale Law School Dean who was an assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration and who now serves the Obama administration as a legal adviser to the State Department. But Obama would have to fight charges that Koh is too liberal, and he may prefer a consensus nominee who will easily hold the votes of Senate Democrats while drawing the support of some Republicans.

So many factors, so many names, so much uncertainty. It's all just a pointless guessing game. Let's play. [more ...]

I hope reinstating the military tribunals at Guantanamo is an idea the Obama Administration quickly discards, but I'm not optimistic:

The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees...Officials said the first public moves could come as soon as next week, perhaps in filings to military judges at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, outlining an administration plan to amend the Bush administration’s system to provide more legal protections for terrorism suspects.

According to the article, Obama may revise and reinstate them for the top terror detainees.

Memo to President Obama: [More...]

Loyal readers of this site know that I have been following the the NBA playoff series between the Boston Celtics and the Chicago Bulls rather closely. I have no real positive rooting interest (though Joakim Noah is a Gator) in this series. I do have a negative rooting interest as I have always hated the Celtics (I also hate Notre Dame football and Duke basketball and have come to hate the Red Sox of late, before 2004, it was mainly just contempt and pity). But sometimes a sporting event becomes compelling on its own terms. The Bull-Celtics series has become that this year. I am obsessed with it and can't wait for tonight's Game 7.

The great Bill Simmons, the greatest sportswriter alive( On second thought, it is still Mark Kram (correction, Kram passed away in 2002) and probably the most entertaining writer alive, writes:

Think of all the crap we deal with as fans. "Bulls-Celtics 2009" explains why we put up with every story about Clemens and Bonds and Michael Vick and Terrell Owens and everyone else who conspires to make sports less fun.

Yes it does. For JThomas:

Speaking for me only

Speaking of Joe the Plumber ... the conservative faithful continue to manufacture evidence to support a charge once aggressively advanced by the McCain campaign: that liberal Democrats and NBC News have an elitist's disdain for ordinary people like Joe.

Next to pictures of Joe the P, Miss California, and a couple of teabaggers, Fox Nation yesterday asked the front page question: "Why Does NBC News Attack Average Americans?" The question linked to a short post that links to a muddled Newsbusters rant -- parsed nicely by News Hounds -- accusing David Schuster of advancing an "attack campaign" against Carrie Prejean, the "average American" who recently expressed her support of "opposite marriage" to Miss USA judges and a broadcast audience.

John Hawkins at Pajamas Media similarly complains of the "intrusive, public scrutiny" given to Joe the Plumber, "a private citizen who merely asked an inconvenient question to Barack Obama." Ordinary Joe and Average Carrie: icons of the real America who are unfairly attacked by liberals. Come again? [more ...]

Maybe the economy would benefit from a few more national holidays. Nobody frets when the economy is slow-moving on a holiday. Nobody worries that most workers are unproductive on a holiday. The stock market isn't open and therefore doesn't go down on holidays. Holidays are a time for the economy to take a deep breath and for the employed and unemployed alike to relax. Making Election Day a holiday would have the added benefit of increasing voter participation. Everyone wins with a bunch of new holidays. (Feel free to suggest your own new holiday in the comments.)

A proposed holiday that will find no support here is advocated by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an organization "open to all male descendants of any veteran who served honorably in the Confederate armed forces." The Sons' mission is to vindicate the cause for which Confederate soldiers fought. The Sons "preserv[e] the history and legacy of these heroes, so future generations can understand the motives that animated the Southern Cause." The organization's website offers no obvious definition of the "Southern Cause," much less an explanation of the motives that animated it. [More ...]

In response to reporting like this post from TPM's Zachary Roth on the "Gosslings," Porter Goss' political hacks brought with him to the CIA, who many of us speculate are behind the smear campaigns against Jane Harman and Nancy Pelosi., CQ's unofficial "Gossling," Jeff Stein, is outraged:

I've been buried with work today and simply have not had a second for any blogging.

I do want to mention that I just got in the mail a copy of Eric Boehlert's new book, "bloggers on the bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press" (Free Press, a Simon and Schuster imprint.) The book will be available for purchase on Amazon. Eric is not only a terrific reporter, but a good friend of TalkLeft. I'll provide a review of the book as soon as I have a chance to read it.

Speaking for me only

Sarah Palin's winks and delegates' chants of "drill baby drill" were about all the McCain campaign could muster to excite voters. Today the Republican vision of oil rigs drilling offshore, in the Alaskan wilderness, in national parks, and maybe even in your backyard seems a bit myopic.

The number of rigs actively exploring for oil and natural gas in the United States fell by 10 this week to 945, down nearly half from a year ago. ... A year ago, the rig count stood at 1,839. The U.S. count is down 53 percent since the end of August as weak energy demand has hampered oilfield activity.

It may be time for the GOP's overpriced go-to-guy, Joe the Plumber, to come up with a catchy phrase to replace "drill, baby, drill." What will it be? "God, baby, God"?

The promised troop withdrawal and the distraction of a sucky economy should not prevent us from pausing to remember that members of our military continue to die in Iraq.

Two American Marines and a sailor were killed during a military operation in Anbar ... on Thursday “while conducting combat operations against enemy forces,” the [military command] statement said. ... The deaths brought the total for American troops in April to 18, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, making it the deadliest month for American forces in Iraq since September.

Total U.S. military deaths to date: 4,281 according to the Coalition Casualty Count.

Contra the racially tinged views championed by Andrew "Fifth Column/Bell Curve" Sullivan, Charles Murray and other racialists, David Brooks trots out the old "How do you get to Carnegie Hall joke? Practice, practice, practice." Brooks writes:

What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had — the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills. Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age, so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built from there. The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical view of the world. The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.

[MORE . . .]

It's unfortunate that the Obama administration was unable (and apparently unmotivated) to win Senate approval of a proposal to allow bankruptcy courts to modify the terms of mortgage notes.

In recent weeks, major banks and bank trade associations worked closely with Senate Republicans to stop the measure. Twelve Democrats joined all the Republicans in voting against it.

Relief for troubled financial institutions: no problem. Relief for financially troubled homeowners: can't do it. Way to go, Dems.

Soon we'll learn whether the financial industry has enough Senate clout to kill another bill favored by the Obama administration (and about which the administration has been more vocal). The bill, passed yesterday by the House and popular with just about everyone who carries a credit card, would limit credit card interest rates and fees while "requiring banks to apply consumers’ payments to balances with the highest interest rates first." [more ...]

The New Hampshire Senate passed a medical marijuana bill this week. All but one Democrat voted in favor of compassionate relief for the seriously ill, while all but one Republican voted in favor of continued suffering.

The measure applies only to patients afflicted by certain illnesses, such as cancer, or certain symptoms, such as wasting syndrome. If a doctor prescribes marijuana for such a patient, the individual could obtain a card allowing them to legally possess six plants or 2 ounces.

Law enforcement officials opposed the bill and Gov. John Lynch has concerns about it because patients would have to grow or buy the marijuana, and that would somehow make the enforcement of marijuana laws against non-patients more difficult. The easy solution to that dubious dilemma -- legalizing marijuana -- apparently isn't on the table.