"Cécilia Sarkozy acts so American, while Hillary Clinton acts so French."

Sex, politics, women...

"Complimentary use of iPods (pre-loaded with 1,000 classic to contemporary music selections)."

A strange hotel amenity. Who doesn't have their own iPod? Who wants 1,000 songs loaded by the hotel? Maybe if you lost your iPod...

"He's fragile. Brittle."

"His skin is stretched so tight over his temples that you can practically see his thoughts." Manorexia . (Via Metafilter .)

Can state courts choose to apply new rules of federal constitutional law retroactively?

The Supreme Court hears oral argument today in Danforth v. Minnesota , which is a fascinating federalism case. Under Teague v. Lane , feder...

It is Halloween.

So let's break out the costumes. All the best lawbloggers are going with a Harry Potter theme this year.

"Well, I don't think the Republicans got the message that I'm voting and sounding like them."

Hillary Clinton said at the debate last night. "If you watched their debate last week, I seemed to be the topic of great conversation a...

The ghost....

... was a bug. "This case was solved through logic, scientific analysis and methodology."

Who can take great beauty and talent and slam it into the ground?

Old TV did this sort of thing all the time: I found that clip in my search for a clip to pay tribute to Robert Goulet. This is the most clum...

Pink.

I'm back in New York, and the morning looks rosy.

Althouse at Stanford.

Check it out. Any San Francisco readers out there? Email me. I might be able to stage a meetup on Saturday or Sunday, but I'd need a tru...

Debate tonight.

I happened to hear... via IM. Otherwise, it'd've flown right by me. I'll add some comments here I guess. I promise only to be la...

100 geniuses.

"The top 100 features not just brainiacs and boffins, but 19 musicians, two artists (Damien Hirst and the illustrator Robert Crumb) and...

What pop artist/group had best "hit average"?

One hit wonders don't count. This competition is limited to those who've had at least 20 hits. Average chart ranking for the winner(...

Naming the Madison school that will not be Vang Pao Elementary School.

You remember that Hmong hero Vang Pao was arrested — by us — for plotting to overthrow the government of Laos and that the plan to name a sc...

Impression: sunrise.

What is this inky horror we call morning? Calm down. It's not so bad...

"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness."

So said George Orwell. And if you don't think so, don't tell Rachel Toor . She might smush your face into something.

Governor Doyle does his Frankenstein routine.

Speaking of taxes, we've got a little something here in Wisconsin called the Frankenstein veto. Look what Governor Doyle just did with i...

Rangel's...

... strangle.

"I’ve always said you were our leading actress.... I am getting fat and pregnant and mean...."

Judy Garland writes to Katharine Hepburn.

"The mutilation was actually the work of animals..."

New evidence in the "Paradise Lost" case.

"Claiming physical territory was a powerful act. But the gay neighborhood is becoming a past-tense idea."

Gay rights, the real estate problem. Somehow that story reminds me of Jimmy Carter — back in 1976 — worrying about preserving the "eth...

"He doesn’t remember the names of a lot of people in his life."

The young Barack Obama. He's told the glowy version of his youth in his book "Dreamy Dreams," but what were things really like...

In Blackwater: "a potentially serious investigative misstep that could complicate efforts to prosecute."

The NYT is reporting that State Department officials investigating the Blackwater incident offered immunity — limited-use — that only the ...

Ocean blues.

Oh, shun blues...

"Dada doubts everything. Dada is an armadillo."

"Everything is Dada, too. Beware of Dada. Anti-dadaism is a disease: selfkleptomania, man’s normal condition, is Dada. But the real dad...

"Let's talk about the fact that with a 160 on the LSATs, Wurtzel was much better suited for Northeastern than Northwestern, let alone YLS...."

"... which raises serious questions as to their admissions standards." Adam Bonin seems kind of irked at all the attention Elizab...

"These self-promoting values hacks don’t speak for the American mainstream."

Okay. Frank Rich on Rudy Giuliani. Why is Rudy doing so well? People in the know used to think the rubes just didn't realize Rudy has d...

What I miss when I'm "off-blog Althouse."

I've been on my little weekend jaunt to Stuart, Florida, absorbing sun instead of my usual nourishment of on-line news, so I'm just ...

Pouring a second mug of coffee....

... at 4:06 AM.

How clean should you expect a rental car to be?

Here's how my car from Alamo looked: ( Enlarge .) ( Enlarge .)

The men and the birds know...

... that rolling in with the tide, there's food. I didn't see it when I snapped this picture: But I saw it in the closeup . I couldn...

"She had signed an agreement allowing her to appear in the movie, but she claims that she did not realise how much she would be ridiculed..."

Another in the long line of lawsuits I hope will fail. Cathy Martin, an Alabama etiquette expert, agreed to let [Sacha Baron Cohen, AKA Bor...

Gerald Ford re Bill Clinton: "He's sick — he's got an addiction. He needs treatment."

From "Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford": Ford's wife, Betty, who founde...

"I like everything about you. Your illness is part of you. It's like part of your character."

Nicoletta Mantovani quotes her husband , the late Luciano Pavarotti. This is what she says he said on learning that she had multiple scleros...

The moon is blue.

Over the bridge to Hutchinson Island. Earlier, at dusk: The sky, the dunes:

What do you think? Should I learn how to fly?

Maybe. If I had this $450,000 airplane ... ADDED: I don't actually want to own a plane, even if I had an extra $450,000 to spend. But if...

After waiting eons....

... the dune rouses itself and takes one step toward the ocean.

I'm in Stuart.

Your humble blogger is all worn out from traveling. Where am I? I'm in Stuart. Stuart , you say. Yes. I am in Stuart. (Not a guy! A plac...

Let me get my hand around a giant cup of coffee.

There is so much to do today. Get some early morning blog posts up. Reabsorb McCulloch v. Maryland ... contemplate the way it looks to a fi...

"LGBT Americans who know..." and "African American ministers and citizens who believe...."

The LGBT Americans "know that their sexual orientation is an innate and treasured part of their being." They know . That is, they ...

"Your day will come, vile one. As long as we live, you won't be safe, Jazeera."

Bin Laden fans suddenly annoyed by bad press.

"They didn't have to read Dostoevsky, they had to read critiques and deconstruction of Dostoevsky."

What's what's wrong with these kids today. Peggy Noonan looks at Scott Thomas Beauchamp and sees a whole twisted generation.

"Tabs sock Giuliani over Sox"

Muffi&Tiger , originally uploaded by Mats&Muffi . I thought Rudy had got into trouble with a couple of kitty cats — Tabs and S...

Like George Bush, Hillary Clinton "presides over an office of intense and focused workaholics, protective of their patron and wary of outsiders."

Mark Leibovich writes near the end this big NYT piece . The idea of this article seems to me to be to portray Hillary Clinton as possessing ...

Alone again... in October...

Another latte lunch with my Federal Courts book.... Looking to see if all that arcane doctrine will... ... crystallize.

"If this were a wedding, we'd be at the 'speak now or forever hold your peace' part."

"If you're a candidate hoping to get past her, the time for nuance and veiled references has passed." Weddings... veils... Thi...

Beautiful...

... night... There's very deep serenity tonight, here in New York.

"The late Gambino crime boss John Gotti was for ordering the hit [on Rudy Giuliani], and had the support of the leader of the Colombo crime family."

This was back in 1986 , back when Giuliani was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and had indicted the heads of the five fa...

"Michelle Malkin lives for this. At Hoover, Blackfive was unimpressed."

At Hoover ? Please, somebody help Andrew. Oh, I'll just sit back and wait for Uncle Jimbo to respond .

And as long was we're trashing journalists this morning...

Beauchamp! Foer! TNR!

"Look at the bright side, kid. Every guard in the U.S. Military will know EXACTLY who you are from here on out."

Wow. A reporter from Knight Ridder — Knight Ridder, I tell you! — writes a blog post disrespecting an American soldier who had never heard ...

Halloween in Brooklyn Heights.

"Giuliani and religious right meet on the road to political adulthood."

Writes Daniel Henniger in the Wall Street Journal: Call me old-fashioned, but I think governing philosophy is more important than the endle...

An intimate relationship with the internet.

A Zogby poll about Americans and the Internet: The poll found that 24% of Americans said the Internet could serve as a replacement for a sig...

For the Common Good.

Palladian photoshopped that crazy photograph from the WaPo article I was talking about earlier today. IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian writes: F...

Think you can startle Condoleezza Rice?

Think again.

"Contrast Dodd's leadership and conviction on this matter with the complete passivity and invisibility of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama."

Okay. Then contrast Dodd to Clinton and Obama on this new LA Times/Bloomberg poll ( PDF ), asking Democrats who are registered and plan to ...

"A kafuffle has broken out between Yale Constitutional Law Professor Jed Rubenfeld and self-righteous right-wing blogger 'Simon.'"

LOL. Our Simon has a quote for his banner from preening, left-wing, he's-not-Mickey blogger Stephen Kaus (who seems to be some sort of ...

Dark clouds seem to rise from the city like smoke.

This morning, at 7:15 AM.

"Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" at Berkeley.

A long report with lots of pictures and video. The Berkeley students — in contrast to the Wisconsin students I wrote about yesterday — tri...

"You can participate in the other threads and be your zany libertarian self all you want, but you cannot pimp Ron Paul."

Redstate cracks down on Ron Paul supporters. Captain Ed doesn't like it : ... I disagree with Leon's assumption that these Paul sup...

The mesmerizing Clintons and the mystifying Giuliani.

Yikes, look at the photograph of Bill and Hillary Clinton on this WaPo story about a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll. It looks like a ...

Using kids to bypass campaign finance law.

WaPo has an exposé. Including this: A supporter of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R), Susan Henken of Dover, Mass., wrote her o...

"For some families, ketchup accounts for a large part of the household vegetable intake."

So ketchup is a vegetable! In an article about "going organic," the New York Times blithely expresses the belief that has sprout...

Halloween in Brooklyn Heights — tasteful!

What did Mukasey say about the President's power to disregard statutes?

Yale lawprof Jed Rubenfeld has a NYT op-ed. Simon wields the transcript in retaliation. Decision: Simon. UPDATE: The discussion continues ...

Rudy Giuliani promises to fight off space aliens.

Have the other candidates given us equivalent assurances? ADDED: Source .

"I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will shoot him with your products."

McCain. He's tough. But reasonable: "I certainly didn't mean I would actually shoot him. I am certainly angry at him, but I w...

Back in New York, back in the work week.

Ah, remember last summer when I was flooding the blog with photographs of flowers ? Where is that summer now? Still, here in Brooklyn Height...

"I assume there are dragons and griffins and werewolves and homosexual Frankensteins throughout these novels..."

"...but I honestly don't give a shit if my assumption is true or false." Chuck Klosterman is not reading the Harry Potter nove...

Wisconsin students may hate the speaker — David Horowitz — but they gave him a respectful hearing.

I'm writing up the good news. I thought there might be disruption — and David Horowitz seems almost to want to bait the students into ca...

"The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet."

Daniel J. Solove is offering free review copies of his book "The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet...

It's a rosy morning...

Here in New York.

"Finding a $1 million painting in the garbage is very unusual."

A delightful story. ADDED: Here 's a version of the story that includes a photo of the painting. It also says that the woman who found i...

Andrew Sullivan's inane attack on me.

Let me repeat the update I added to this post of mine: Andrew Sullivan really needs to make some effort to understand my sense of humor bef...

"Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" at the University of Wisconsin.

The Badger Herald reports: Drawing concern from liberal and minority-based campus groups, conservative author David Horowitz kicks off a wee...

"It was nuclear winter. It was like Armageddon. It looked like the end of the world."

A San Diego firefighter.

"Justice Clarence Thomas is the winner of the Partisan Voting Award for the most politically skewed voting pattern."

According to Thomas J. Miles and Cass R. Sunstein. Justice John Paul Stevens is the runner-up... The Judicial Restraint Award, for the most ...