Some Things Not To Be Missed ...

What We Do: Adam Kotsko's"How Much Do You Forgive?," The Weblog, 4 April, asks why we do what we do and is there a better way. Kotsko's post has provoked a lot of discussion at his site, elsewhere on the net, and beyond.

Chesnutt: Sean McCann's"An Historical Chesnutt" The Valve, 5 April. McCann uses the Kelley-Hawkins flap as a springboard to consider why Charles W. Chesnutt, a real African American and a much better novelist of the period, has not had greater attention.

Bellow: Saul Bellow has died. The Nobel Prize winning novelist called himself a"historian of society.""I cannot exceed what I see," Bellow said."I am bound, in other words, as the historian is bound by the period he writes about, by the situation I live in." I am intrigued when the author of fiction says something like this. I don't doubt that it is true, so far as it goes, but surely we are bound in ways that a novelist is not.

DeLay Watch: Sure, Matt Drudge is a vulture, but he's got a good instinct for carrion. The stench on this is just so strong it can't be ignored. See the New York Times and Washington Post. And this comes a week after the Wall Street Journal editorial. Waiting ... for ... the ... White ... House ... to ... pull ... this ... plug ....

Judicial bashing: Yesterday, on the floor of the Senate, John Cornyn (R, Texas) said:

I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news and I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in - engage in violence.

It was initially flagged by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, but there has rightly been a huge bi-partisan critical reaction to it on the net and in thepress. Cornyn has, of course, now gone into denial. But it is one more signal of how poorly we understand an independent judiciary and how embittered the battle over judicial confirmations has become. Will someone please turn down the rhetoric?

In Rome: Robert Mendick and Jeremy Charles,"Two Billion Set To See Funeral," This Is London, 5 April. We are only beginning to grasp the massive spectacle that is taking place in Rome. There are reports of between 500,000 and 2,000,000 pilgrims on their way from Poland alone to be in Rome on Friday. At No Loss for Words, Danny Loss recalls a leisurely stroll in a nearly empty Piazza San Pietro only last week.