…and frankly, my daughter Shayna is miffed. She’s been up — all — night, and why? Teething, you speculate. A fever, you theorize. Wrong. Even though she is 13 months old, she has been waiting breathlessly for news of the Rhenquist retirement. “Go, go,” she says. I try to explain that with the London bombing, maybe he had to delay his announcement. This does not appease her. “GO!” she demands. “GO!”

Listen, I told her not to listen to Robert Novak, but you know kids.

By the way, she’s hoping for a quick nomination and confirmation process for Barney the Purple Dinosaur. He would make an excellent chief justice because he’s very good at helping kids cooperate and learn how to play together. Plus, being an exctinct creature, he’s probably an originalist, if you know what I mean.

(P.S. All actual words inside quotation marks from Shayna guaranteed accurate.)