Elena Kagan has shown herself to be worthy of the Supreme Court. The Senate should confirm her nomination.
Through three days of questioning last week, Kagan, currently the U.S. solicitor general, showed a temperament that will serve her well on the bench. She has a first-rate intellect and a sharp sense of humor.
The spectacle of an old man trying to look young inspires pity and revulsion. The same could be said of Pennsylvania's obsolete Liquor Control Board, which is engaged in the bureaucratic equivalent of a comb-over.
Karen Heller's column "Pennsylvania: A state where folks stick" on Wednesday drew unmerited conclusions from the data presented. Those born in Pennsylvania, she says, tend to remain here.
It is distressing and a little scary to read about the dispute between the city administration and federal immigration authorities over the continuation of an agreement that provides access to Philadelphia police arrest reports for use by federal law enforcement and immigration personnel ("Phila. to end immigration deal with feds," Monday).
Lorianne Updike Toler
is cofounder and counsel for The Constitutional Sources Project
Hannah sat by the bedside of her newly married husband, 32 years her senior. She wrote that he appeared "gaunt, listless, his clothes ragged and stained." He stared "interminably out the windows," raving deliriously about "arrest, bad debts, and bankruptcy." His western land creditors waited in the wings while he had recovered from malaria. Then a stroke overcame him.
Grant Calder
teaches at Friends' Central School in Wynnewood
'It is a well known fact, that black people, upon certain days of publick jubilee, dare not be seen after twelve o'clock in the day . . . I allude particularly to the Fourth of July!"
I'm always looking for crumbs of good news from the Middle East.
So I was pleased that senior Israeli and Turkish officials held "secret" talks last week to defuse the crisis over the Gaza flotilla that has breached Jerusalem's relations with its onetime closest Muslim ally.
Sally Schwartz Friedman
is a freelance writer from Moorestown
On the day I finally stopped waffling and sent in my check for my 50th reunion at the University of Pennsylvania, I felt something akin to panic, not soaring elation.
We can all agree that this Fourth of July holiday is not particularly festive, given the grim tidings on all fronts. But perhaps the unhappiest Americans these days are the antiwar liberal Democrats who voted with enthusiasm for Barack Obama, only to find him tethered to a protracted war in a remote region that for two millennia has foiled virtually every foreign invader. Even Alexander the Great had to flee with an arrow in his leg.
I have been away for several weeks visiting wife No. 3 in the Middle East where she works, a reunification that I think went rather well once I produced two pictures of the dog (she cried) and a private report from the therapist on my progress (she also cried).
A former employee calls Justice hostile to race-neutral, equal enforcement of the law.
For more than a year, Attorney General Eric Holder has failed to adequately explain why his Justice Department dropped a slam-dunk voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.
As Tiger Woods hits the links at Aronimink, I'm hoping President Obama also gets in a round or two this holiday weekend. I want him to golf. Or play hoops. Or whatever else he needs to do to maintain his mental edge. After all, as Mark Knoller, the White House correspondent for CBS News, told me, "the president is president wherever he is."
