Thoughts at the end of a long, hard day.

It's been a rather slow blogging day, here at Althouse. My five-week summer session, teaching constitutional law, ends tomorrow, and I've been a bit distracted. But it's not just that. It's one of those days where the news doesn't reach out and grab me and make me want to talk back. The Rove story is swamping the newsmedia, and I don't have the time to study it enough to develop an opinon. I find the pro- and anti-Rove stock opinons off-putting. People who know what side they are on are churning out a lot of material. But I'm not going to wade through all of that. Maybe later. I see the Chief Justice has been hospitalized. Much as I'd like to see more turnover on the Court, I'm sorry to see anyone ailing, and I wish him the best. Fred Barnes is providing more anti-Gonzales argumentation, raking in links -- but there's nothing engaging there, really. It's the same old story. Bush will have to nominate a Supreme Court Justice -- or two or three. And the key action really is occuring now. (Once the nominee is picked, there will be little that can be done to prevent confirmation.) But I'm not seeing any interesting writing on the topic this week. Then there are these painful stories of the London bombers: "He was a nice lad. He was really nice ... He wasn't the type of guy to do it." I don't know what to say about this, other that that I wish very much that decent Muslims would reach out to the rest of us and show that they care about defining themselves strongly and distinctly in opposition to the bombers. If there's anything but silence, it's not very much. And it should be very loud and passionate.