Keeping Secrets, Keeping Suspects.

Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick reports in on the Bush administration’s twin attempts before the Supreme Court to lock up US citizens and hide their shady energy deals indefinitely. Update: The Times and Post weigh in as well.

The “Pocket Jeremiah.”

Consistently one of the most scintillating observers of the Supreme Court, Slate correspondent Dahlia Lithwick assesses Antonin Scalia and his recent decision to recuse himself from the Pledge of Allegiance case. “He is convinced that civilization is in decline and that this banishment of religion is directly responsible. He truly believes that the coarseness and callousness of modern mores and practices have imperiled us all. And if those beliefs make him sound more Jeremiah than Judge, well, Scalia would probably welcome the comparison.

License to Incense.

Dahlia Lithwick fills us in on the legal standing of the pro-life license plates sprouting up across the South these days. Hmmm. I assume these plates afford much better protection from random police stops than would, say, a “Jah is my Co-Pilot” bumper sticker. I’m curious as to what percentage of these license plate owners also drive easy-to-flip SUV’s. If you’re so pro-life there, fella, why are you driving such a pro-death vehicle?

Hey, buddy, who asked you?

Dahlia Lithwick surveys Ken Starr‘s recent paean to the Rehnquist Court. “Starr’s ideology seeps into the book in other ways — ways that make him sound like he’s sometimes channeling Ann Coulter. He calls Justices Breyer and Ginsburg ‘Clinton appointees’ three times in three pages, as if by invoking their champion he might tar them as philandering perverts as well. So anxious is Starr about ‘liberals,’ the ‘cultural elites,’ and the ‘New York Times editorial pages,’ that the words are frequently thrown out, Coulter-fashion, to stand as self-explicating negatives.” Ok, thanks Ken…now please crawl back into your hole.