By Steve Clemons

Note to TWN Readers: I’m not a funny guy, and I tell jokes badly.

These almost sound like John Grisham titles — but they are respectively the new London Review of Books article ‘title’ on the future of the Supreme Court I recommended a few days ago — and mention of the author, Bruce Ackerman. It’s a very instructive and important article. Here is the link.

$720 billion for that drug benefit through 2015? The cost was already too high at $400 billion.

I like this thoughtful, long expose by Marty Sieff on what Dean’s takeover of the Democratic Party helm means for Hillary Clinton’s political life. I’m much more of a believer in Dean than most of my friends on both sides of the aisle (and even those in the middle).

The London Review of Books will soon publish one of the best pieces I have read on the politics of the next Supreme Court appointments. Bruce Ackerman basically takes a subtle, game-theoretic approach to thinking through the likely set of choices Bush might make and considers how Democrats and progressives should respond.

When Senators Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and Representatives Harold Ford (D-Tn.), Thomas Petri (R-Wis.), Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), and Phil English (R-Pa.) are all on the same bill in this humorless Congress where bipartisanship is rare, we should probably see what’s drawing them together.

Chris Nelson’s Nelson Report is just too good not post in its near entirety. (I will not italicize for easier reading) He gives Condi credit on her quick action on the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, but then slams her on Iran and the administration’s absence of strategy regarding nuclear non-proliferation. Chris Nelson hits all the buttons: ***2….

Christopher Hitchens is clearly controversial and elicits either the deepest adoration from or seething hatred in people. We have enjoyed discussing big thoughts when we ran across each other at various birthday parties that went too late in Adams Morgan and Kalorama-ish homes in Washington.

About eighteen months ago, I was invited to a small dinner at the home of the German Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington, Peter Gottwald, who is a very good guy by the way but not someone who seems to enjoy debate around his dinner table.

I told you I knew nothing of football. I went to high school in Japan. Sumo we can discuss.