New York Daily News: Richard Cohen: : "Over the weekend I went to a party, where I was asked who I thought should succeed Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. Without hesitation I boldly gave my answer: Judge Judy.
I have no idea if Judy Sheindlin is a Republican or a Democrat, and her legal ideology is a mystery to me. I only know that she gets the job done and can, in the inimitable words of the Ultimate Judge Judy Web page, 'see through BS pretty fast.' That's the judge for me. I am (mostly) serious.
Groups on the right and on the left are reportedly prepared to spend as much as $100 million to promote or block certain nominees. Indeed, the handkerchief has already been dropped and the duel begun. The E-mails seem to arrive by the nanosecond. The alarmist letters stuff the mailbox. The interest groups act as if the vacancy on the Supreme Court belongs to them. I beg to differ. It is the United States Supreme Court and belongs to all of us.
This is emphatically not how interest groups on the right see it. They consider this seat on the court their own, recompense for their support of George W. Bush. What's more - and unmentioned for the sheer bad taste of it all - is that they feel the President owes them one in restitution for his father's boneheaded appointment of David Souter. It is Souter who haunts this nominating process. Souter was not asked his views on abortion. This will not happen again.
The upshot is that even the plenty conservative Alberto Gonzales, now the attorney general and once the White House counsel, is being pummeled by religiously based right-wing groups. Based on some of his decisions when he was on the Texas Supreme Court and, more pertinent, his lack of fulsome anti-abortion rhetoric, he has been deemed unacceptable by the true leaders of this very Christian nation. It is, really, an absurdity. If he is not acceptable, then Strom Thurmond will have to be exhumed."

"Sarah Vowell, a contributor to public radio's "This American Life," is the author, most recently, of "Assassination Vacation."
E-mail: vowell@nytimes.com

Since I have been hired, temporarily, to write about the news, here's some: seeing Pat Robertson on television cheered me up. Until recently, about the nicest thing I would have said about this televangelist is that he isn't boring. Remember when he wanted to boycott the "Satanic ritual" that is Halloween? Or when he said, "The husband is the head of the wife"? Or when he warned the city of Orlando that the flying of homosexuals' upbeat rainbow flags might incite divine retribution in the form of hurricanes or "possibly a meteor"? Yep, good times.
Nevertheless, when I spotted Robertson in a lineup of celebrities including Brad Pitt, Bono, George Clooney and the also-never-boring Dennis Hopper, I was delighted to see him. He was in the One Campaign's television ad asking for help in the crusade against poverty, starvation and AIDS in Africa and elsewhere.
In the commercial, Robertson says, "Americans have an unprecedented opportunity," and then Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, of all people, finishes his sentence, concluding that "we can make history."
On a recent "Nightline," Robertson showed up with his new best friend, Clooney. When asked if his group Operation Blessing would promote "the responsible use of condoms" along with abstinence in its AIDS education program in Africa, Robertson answered, "Absolutely." Pat Robertson!
"I just don't think we can close our eyes to human nature," he continued, adding that with regard to teaching proper condom use, "you have to do that, given the magnitude." I could have hugged him."

The Huffington Post | The Blog: "I’ll take my teachable moments anyplace I can find them… even if it means jumping into the middle of the celebrity spitting match between Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields.
And thanks to Tom and Brooke, and Tom and Oprah, and Tom and Matt (“You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do!”), this is certainly a teachable moment to be grabbed by those of us who have been raising our voices for years (I’ve written 14 columns on the subject [1]) about the epidemic of mood-altering drugs being prescribed to our kids.
This is a whole different debate than the Cruise-Shields dust up over antidepressants in general -- but it’s truly an urgent one, with over a million children on Prozac and its equivalents, and more than six million on Ritalin. And record numbers of kids are put on these powerful drugs even as the FDA, increasingly wary of their side effects, has issued a “black box” warning on antidepressants after studies found that children taking them were twice as likely to have suicidal tendencies. (And, as we saw with the Vioxx case, the FDA doesn’t make these kinds of moves easily -- or quickly.) 
Although there are undoubtedly children who are properly diagnosed as clinically depressed and are legitimately prescribed antidepressants, as a country we’ve now gotten into the habit of treating childhood as a disease. Indeed, the official psychiatric diagnostic manual describes as symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder “squirms in seat,” “interrupts or intrudes on others,” and “is often on the go.” Sounds a lot like...uh, childhood -- a condition that -- when left untreated -- tends to cure itself over time."