There’s a report circulating Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist has re-hired a top office assistant, suggesting that he isn’t going to retire this summer, as many have speculated. Hard to know what it really means. My guess is that if Rehnquist doesn’t quit this year, he won’t quit next year, either, if only because he recognizes the difficultly of creating a vacancy during a presidential-election year. It would also be nice, at least cosmetically, if he stuck around until a second Bush term (assuming there is one), so that he can put to rest any lingering left-wing claims that he helped Bush into power in 2000 so that a Republican could fill his seat.