Dispatches from the Hearings

I enjoy a good bit of snarkiness and/or irreverence now and then; if you do too, I'd recommend Dahlia Lithwick's "Confirmation Report," an ongoing series of notes from the Roberts confirmation hearings. After yesterday's hearing, she notes that the senators pretty much spent the whole day talking about themselves, and she offers up an "index of what worries the 18 senators of the Judiciary Committee most about Roberts, the judiciary, and the constitutional process." Here's a sampling from that:

- Senators acknowledging that Roberts is really, really smart: 18
- Republican senators exhorting Roberts not to answer any questions more complicated than Roberts' choice of hair-care products: 6
- Senators referring to God and/or angels: 5 (Three of them Democrats)
- Senators offering grim estimates of John Roberts' extraordinary life expectancy: 4 (ranging from 25 to 40 years)
- Senators fretting about the constitutionality of microscopic tags that can be implanted in a person's body to track his every movement: 1 (Joe Biden, D-Del.)

It's not Linda Greenhouse (whose analysis I recommended last night and is here), but it's amusing in its own way.