Last night at a small cocktail party I was chatting with Kate and a few others about the buzz over the news that Bush was going to appoint one of the female candidates. The consensus was that this was welcome news — considering the alternative was Gonzales — but wouldn’t it have been nice if Bush had tagged a plain old really smart white guy? Picking a woman would have been cemented the identity politics nonsense just a bit further.

This conversation came to a fairly abrupt end when Paul Johnson, Mr and Mrs John O’Sullivan and the Podhoretzes started singing show tunes. I am not making this up.