The Dish

Dahlia Lithwick reminds me how effortlessly she brings legal and constitutional writing to vivid, insightful life:

When you’re sitting close enough to see that Supreme Court justices actually wear socks, their differences are stark. From the moment he takes the stage, Justice Breyer looks outward. He shifts in his seat constantly to catch the eye of the moderator, ABC’s Jan Crawford Greenburg, and then to make eye contact with individual audience members. When Scalia speaks, Breyer nods and bobs. Justice Scalia turns inward, folding up his arms and gazing raptly into the middle distance. As Breyer speaks, Scalia first smirks, then giggles, then sort of erupts with a rebuttal, usually aimed right at the tips of his shoes. Where Breyer is ever striving to connect to the world, Scalia is happiest in his head. Throughout the debate, Breyer continues to measure, aloud, whether he and Scalia are "making progress." Scalia laughs that Breyer’s hopes for the evening are too high.

Scalia is charming and‚Äîas ever‚Äîriotously funny. For each time Breyer says his own constitutional approach is "complicated" or "hard," Scalia retorts that his is "easy as pie" and a "piece of cake." And if this debate mirrors a marketplace of ideas, Breyer will make the sale through the earnest personal connection of a Wal-Mart greeter, while Scalia opts for the aloof certainty of the Tiffany’s salesman: "Sure, you can buy some other, cheaper constitutional theory, but really. Ew."

A reader writes:

Robert Knight describes Mary Cheney’s child as being conceived "With the express purpose of denying it a father"?

MARY CHENEY:  So would you like to have a child?

HEATHER POE:  No, not really.

MC:  Neither would I.

They continue watching Seinfeld. Mary’s Partner frowns.

HP:  Wait, I just thought of something.

MC:  What?

HP:  If we did have a child, we could deny it a father.

MC:  Wow, I never thought of it that way before. What should we name it?

A reader writes:

She’s probably the most literate film critic out there. I don’t agree with her much of the time, but at least she is willing to see films as an art form, as a form of literature, and not as a disposable product.

Think about it. If you are a film critic, what the f*** are you supposed to write when reviewing dreck like "Happy Feet"? So a David Lynch movie comes along – pretentious, self-indulgent, natch – and she’s now able show off her years of film knowledge, her ideas and theories, while, perhaps, overwriting and extending metaphors here and there. So f***ing what. If you read her regularly, you’ll learn that she will tackle almost any movie in any genre and, for the most part, review ’em on their own terms. She appreciates both David Lynch and George Romero.

And talk about overwrought. You might be the most melodramatic queen east of the Mississippi. Look in the mirror. So go back to your sermonizing and hand wringing, but, from now on, back off Dargis, punk.

This quote is a classic:

"We felt it was extraordinarily important to try and keep this process out of politics if we could."

Because politics is not about how to fight and win wars? Or because the people are not be trusted to make such decisions? And Baker is.

One wants to admire Victor Davis Hanson. And then he says something like this:

They’re talking about a country that once fought Italy, Japan and Germany all at once, defeated them, and then turned around and started the Cold War … I mean, the Cold War resistance of the Soviet Union, and they’re saying that this same country, now twice the size, with much more material and military wealth, can’t fight in Afghanistan and Iraq at once. That’s sort of the poverty of their imagination, that we’ve taken our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, got bogged down in Iraq, and now we’re helpless. We need Jim Baker to come in, we need Syria to come in, we need Iran to come in to help us. It’s absurd, but it seems to be the prevailing opinion now.

An obvious point: all those wars cited by VDH were classic armed combat, not intractable insurgencies. The most recent such insurgency dealt with by American military – Vietnam – was also a failure. Another obvious point: the Cold War was won in part by containment, not pre-emption. But the larger issue is this: Does VDH seriously believe that the problem in Iraq is insufficient support from the American public? This president got all he wanted and more – for a longer period than World War II. He assumed total power and control, by-passed even the Republican Congress when he felt like it, ripped up the Geneva Conventions, got to decide everything in Iraq for three and a half years … and it’s now the public’s fault and the press’s fault that almost every sane analysis concludes it has been botched beyond belief?

I might add that continuing bromides by VDH in which no serious criticism of the Bush administration was entertained did indeed contribute to the failure. He enabled failure rather than confronting it. If there are any members of the American public who bear responsibility for the debacle in Iraq it is those of us who passionately supported the war in the first place – and above all, those who refused to criticize its conduct once the failures became manifest. About a month after the invasion.

"In all my time in Washington I’ve never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority. Self-congratulatory. Full of itself. Horrible," – Bill Bennett on the ISG report, with little apparent self-awareness.

This is Tony Snow’s response to the dearth of Arabic-speaking military in Iraq and elsewhere:

"You don’t snap your fingers and have the Arabic speakers you need overnight."

How about after five years’ notice that we desperately need better intelligence in the Arab world?

A reader writes:

I do agree that this child will do just fine when it comes to male role models. My sister is recently divorced with a 5 year old son. My grandfather, who lives a few blocks away, plays a major role in his life. Regardless of what you think of VP Cheney, he does seem to truly love his daughter and to fully accept her lesbian relationship. I have a feeling he’ll be a great grandfather.

As an evangelical who believes that fatherless homes are a very serious matter that’s killing our country, I do believe that Mary Cheney and her partner will make much better parents than most of the heterosexual couples in today‚Äôs America.

Britney Spears or Mary Cheney? Who would you want watching your child?

Just one tardy thought. The former president broke down speaking of his son Jeb’s maintenance of "honor" in his political life. I don’t think that was an accidental trigger. A reader comments perceptively:

First a few words about Jose Padilla. Without a doubt, the methods used on him are torture. They are not physically harming him, instead they seem bent on psychically damaging him. A mind can be broken using just sleep deprivation, alternating bright lights and total darkness, control of diet, and plain old boredom – especially over a three year period, with no assurance that this couldn’t continue for ever.

I saw pictures of Padilla’s treatment right after I watched the video of Bush 41 breaking down while speaking about Jeb Bush in Florida. I then imagined for a moment that it was my own son, instead of Bush 43, who had tortured Padilla. I think I know now why Bush 41 broke down.

(Photo: Alberto Pozzoli/Getty.)

Conservative Judaism will now allow congregations, seminaries and synagogues to have gay rabbis – or not.