Is there a squirrel in my house?

Okay, here's what's troubling me. Two days ago, I found a cracked open shell of an acorn on the carpet over near a wall. Is there an...

"There's loads of room for judgment. The judges do judge."

Justice Breyer talks to Nina Totenberg about his new book, "Active Liberty." Totenberg does a nice job of challenging him -- afte...

"The Apprentice": Round 2.

After the second week of comparing Donald and Martha, what do you think? Last night, I took the pro-Donald position, pointing out perfect me...

Diversity Day: the elegiac mood dissolves into tears.

The Daily Cardinal -- a UW student newspaper -- reports: The day-long event, which kicked off with speeches from Chancellor John Wiley and P...

Podcast time!

Time for the big podcast! Podcast #7 , full of talk about bras and Right Wing Bob Dylan... and all my trials as I am dogged by lefty blogger...

"I would not want to call down the wrath of Althouse."

Ramesh Ponnuru makes a play for a spot in the Althouse masthead.

Eight parts sand to one part water = "Maximum angle of stability of a wet granular pile."

Scientists discover the right proportion for making a sandcastle.

When the Court will "become unpoliticized," per Scalia.

Yesterday, Scalia and Breyer debated at Harvard Law School (via How Appealing ). Much of it is more of the usual stuff about citing foreign...

78.

Great! Roberts is confirmed by a margin of 78 to 22. As to those 22 Democrats who voted no, they have openly embraced an ideological view o...

"Have you been given a gift, in a sense?"

So Harry Reid is asked in an NPR interview about who the next Supreme Court nominee ought to be. The gift in question is President Bush...

"Was I really in love or was I just pretending he was the man of my dreams?"

Nora Ephron is all out of love for Bill Clinton. It starts off with some good material about Clinton's betrayal of women and gay people...

The Althouse comments persona.

Here at Althouse, there's the Althouse of the front page posts and the Althouse of the comments. Things are a little more experimental a...

"Does the NYT have an exit strategy?"

Asks Mickey Kaus about TimesSelect, which we're all assuming has failed to bring in much money, while disastrously cutting the readersh...

"Extremely aggressive and just barely possible.”

Such was the design of the space shuttle, according to NASA chief Michael Griffin , who calls seems to consider the whole shuttle program ...

"I dreamed I [?] in my Maidenform bra."

The greatest bra ad campaign of all time was the endlessly fascinating depiction of a woman out in the world doing something amazing, brazen...

Free speech and campaign finance.

Here is Linda Greenhouse's article on yesterday's cert grants in two campaign spending cases. She speculates that the Court might b...

No more meat slurry for you.

Foods to be banned in British schools: Burgers and sausages from 'meat slurry' and 'mechanically recovered meat' ...

It actually was "impossibly small."

The iPod Nano. Apple admits to the problem with the screen. But as to all the whining about scratching: deal with it. Why isn't my pris...

"The size of a bus, with vast eyes and a querulous beak."

At long last! A giant squid seen live for the first time. If you have no feeling for how cool this is, please get Errol Morris's "...

A quick trip through prison.

For Lynndie England. At the sentencing: In a calm, deliberate voice, England recounted how her relationship with Graner, 14 years her senio...

"So what exactly did Scorsese do?"

I'm not quite getting all the fuss over the "No Direction Home" documentary about Bob Dylan. I had the same questions the rev...

Harriet Miers?

A new name surfaces in the O'Connor replacement talk: Bush on Monday hinted he might choose a woman or minority member. But some outsid...

Likable!

New York Magazine has a big article about Conan O'Brien. (Via Throwing Things .) Here's my favorite paragraph (because it's th...

"My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional."

Ousted FEMA director Michael D. Brown testifies before a House panel today and lays the blame on the governor and the mayor: Brown told the...

Anna Nicole Smith takes her case to the Supreme Court.

And they grant cert! I wonder if she will benefit -- as she tries to get to the fortune her very elderly husband left -- from the having he...

Jurisdictional metaphors.

I don't know if you follow the jurisdiction cases, but I sure do. It is an area of judicial opinion-writing where metaphors abound. The ...

Correcting the gender imbalance problem.

Yesterday, I linked to Richard Posner's discussion about the perceived problem of women in professional schools who say they plan to st...

New podcast.

It's longer -- 46 minutes -- and meaner . Here.

"Lessons from the Past."

In the email just now: 2005 Kastenmeier Lecture and the Wisconsin Union Directorate Distinguished Lecture Series present The Iraq War: Lesso...

"Mughal emperor Shahjahan's unfulfilled last wish of building a black Taj Mahal facing the white one at Agra has come true."

In black sand. (No photo yet!)

"She was a follower, she was an individual who was smitten with Graner.... She just did whatever he wanted her to do."

Said the lawyer for Lynndie England. Duly noted, and duly convicted. All you "overly compliant" folks out there: heads up. You ac...

Looking for "Creeole Ladde."

A couple weeks ago, we were talking about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, here , and a reader who called himself herself "Creeole ...

Anticipating the next nomination.

The Senate vote on John Roberts is scheduled for this Thursday. I wonder how soon thereafter Bush will announce the new nomination. Immedia...

Bork yuk.

Rejected Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork tells a joke about Alberto Gonzales and makes an observation about his own immortality.

Crusader.

Got a problem with the mascot? After four years of debate, Edgewood High School decides to keep the mascot.

"Were admission to [professional] schools based on a prediction of the social value of the education offered, fewer women would be admitted."

Judge Posner blogs about that NYT article "Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood" (which we talked about a ...

Curbing my enthusiasm.

Did you watch the premiere of the new season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" ? It got off to a fine start. (Any scene with Shelley Berma...

The end of the early post-Katrina period.

We're in the middle post-Katrina period now -- aren't we? -- where fear of greed and corruption have replaced our initial love and ...

Breyer's book.

Adam Cohen writes about Justice Breyer in the NYT: In law school, I took a yearlong administrative law course from Stephen Breyer.... At th...

"Cuisine is sacrifice. There may be joy but there is also pain."

Writes the sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann , (via A&L Daily ): "I work in the ordinary and the banal," Kaufmann says. "I...

Frida Kahlo, whose female fans have the "washed-out, slightly embittered look of British women novelists."

Or so says Anthony Daniels, in The New Criterion (via A&L Daily ): [T]here is something unhealthy, of equal intensity, about the dispro...

And Eddie Izzard will play Mr. Kite.

In a movie called "Across the Universe" : It is a romantic musical, told mainly through Beatles songs, in which a young man from L...

Can I show you my baby pictures?

Thanks to John (in the top picture) for scanning and uploading this nice set of photos, mostly taken by me, from 22 years ago. I like this ...

Doom.

Last night, as the crowd from the early evening showing of "The 40 Year Old Virgin" emptied out, one man took a turn away from the...

One Friedmanism too many.

"The tectonic plates of politics in this country have all shifted," said Thomas Friedman on "Meet the Press" today , cau...

Nina's take on the movie, with photo.

Here I am at the pre-movie dinner: Nina describes the movie here , linking my post from earlier today, and calls me out on two things that ...

Football mysteries.

I know I'm out of the loop, but I'd like to find out if the Badgers won last night's game. I got caught in the stadium traffic l...

Strange Google search...

That brought someone here. UPDATE: And then there's this .

"What? She's having sex? Bloody Luddite.'"

According to this article , lots of women who could get pregnant the old-fashioned way, are going to doctors for in vitro fertilization: Man...

Movie with a religion-sized hole in it.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie "The 40 Year Old Virgin," and this comment should not in any way be taken to mean I think it should...

I love HBO, but...

I am so mad at them for cancelling "The Comeback." I thought they were known for giving a show the chance to catch on, and "...

"Parents mourning their children in uniform lost in Iraq, and uncountable families motivated for first time to protest."

That's language found in an AP report about today's antiwar protest in Washington. How can that pass as professional journalism? Th...

"Surface"/"Invasion"/"Threshold."

Tung Yin watches all three new alien invasion TV shows. They all sound really bad. Though maybe if you get really excited about fractals, y...

Webpage design.

Have you ever stopped reading a webpage because the design changed? I used to check Memeorandum several times a day. It was my favorite pla...

"The real question - putting it baldly - is whether there is going to be a revolution."

A BBC opinionwriter muses about the American response to Hurricane Katrina: Will the American social and economic system - which creates the...

"An overly compliant personality."

The psychologist explains Lynndie England. Does that description make her seem any less responsible for her actions? I'd say being ...

"I’m like, totally in love with Rush Limbaugh right now! This is awful!”

The Anchoress has a solution for the terrible divisiveness in American politics. If only you could have a sexy dream about some political f...

"It feels like icepicks, almost."

Says FoxNews's Shepard Smith, suffering in the wind in Beaumont, Texas. Sometimes, I'm laughing at him, but I also feel awfully sorr...

An old song comes to mind.

I'm watching the news reports, talking about Hurricane Rita aiming straight at Lake Charles, Lousiana. Maybe like me, you've got thi...

How is TimesSelect doing?

The NYT now requires online readers to pay to get to the op-ed columnists, and the paper hasn't written any articles about the new progr...

Me, as interviewee.

Remember that interview I referred to back on August 12th? Well, if you do, you are a strangely intense reader of this blog! Anyway, the in...

Art, sex, and Scalia.

Antonin Scalia gives a talk about law and art at the Juilliard School. One topic: the 1990 statute -- brought on by Mapplethorpe and the ...

And now, for a new entitlement.

A reader sends this link to an article (which Eugene Volokh linked to a few days ago): Danish activists for the disabled are staunchly def...

"It's like looking at a murder... The first time is bad. After that, you numb up."

Watching the re-floodin g of New Orleans. "[A] waterfall at least 30 feet wide poured over and through a dike that had been used to pat...

"It's Armageddon."

Said Orrin Hatch , referring to the upcoming confirmation battle over whomever George Bush picks to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. But are...

Ridiculous comparison blocks entry to article I want to read.

I love "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and as I eagerly await the premiere of the new season, I jump at the chance to read an article in t...

So you want to major in video games?

You certainly can. Your parents might think it's self-indulgent compared to traditional majors, so you might have to explain economic r...

The Apprentice, the Donald.

"I'm going to divide the teams into men versus women. The reason I like doing it this way is sometimes it's hard telling you ap...

Audible Althouse.

Episode 5, the new podcast, is suddenly available and utterly new!

"I know this is a metaphor, but it is the only way I feel I can protest the unjust occupations."

Said a performance artist , Hala Faisal, who took off her clothes in public, displaying the words "Stop the War." Where's the ...

Inadvisably brusque answer to a question actually given by me today.

"Duh." Really, I'm sorry. That was so inappropriate. Yet apt.

Sentence of the Day.

The award goes to David Montgomery of the Washington Post for this juicy mass of info in the form of a sentence: Plump couches, radical boo...

"It's just your mission to mow down everything in your sight because you can."

We're getting damned sick of your SUV of a baby stroller : [M]any are beginning to suspect that the new big strollers are the latest fis...

And the Committee votes yes.

It's a 13-5 vote for John Roberts, with both Wisconsin Senators, Feingold and Kohl, doing the right thing. The noes are: Dianne Feinste...

The ultimate media experience.

Watching the TV news coverage of the malfunctioning plane on which you are a passenger as it comes in for an emergency landing.

"Radically orientated," but too stoned to do anything.

The FBI on John Lennon.

Coffee and Donuts.

I prefer the spelling "doughnuts," but I'm writing "donuts," because, officially, we call what we do at the Law Sc...

You've seen movies where the actors take off their clothes.

But would you like to see stills from famous movies where they actors have been digitally removed and only the clothes remain? This is a qu...

"Objectively disordered."

The Catholic Church is going to bar homosexuals from entering the priesthood -- even if they are celibate: Although the document has not be...

"Can we just have the corporate people over here and the creative people over here?"

Says a contestant on "Apprentice: Martha Stewart." You're watching, of course, aren't you? The group has to divide itself ...

"But what's with people putting 'a's in their names where they don't belong? "

Said Volokh Conspiracy's Kevan Choset after someone pointed out that he'd spelled Katharine Hepburn's first name wrong. Cute!

"This is all that liberals like myself can fairly expect from President Bush's nominees."

Lawprof Bruce Ackerman on John Roberts: The only way for Democrats to reverse the slow rightward drift in constitutional law is by winning e...

"In my judgment, in my experience, but especially in my conscience I find it is better to vote yes than no."

Senator Leahy does the right thing and supports John Roberts. "Judge Roberts is a man of integrity. I can only take him at his word th...

"Despite being ostensibly about gambling and gangsters, Revolver is full of obscure references to Kabbalah..."

"... with strange mentions of numbers and bizarre references to 'ego versus the light' - both Kabbalah allusions." Is Mado...

"Two Danish artists who want to get their ironic anti-war message heard by ordinary Iraqi people."

The BBC reports: The posters [pasted up in Baghdad] show elephants, mice and cats together with messages like "Trust in Propaganda...

Time to go after the pro-sex feminists again.

Here 's another article about Ariel Levy's book "Female Chauvinist Pigs." "Women had come so far," or so the thi...