It's hard to blame her. Running for governor, she would have to take a position on Quinn's proposed income tax increase--something she has steadfastly avoided so far--and thus alienate millions of voters no matter which way she came out. If she decided to oppose it, she'd then have to come up with a way to balance the state budget, creating more animosity. And assuming she managed to get elected, she'd face a third dirt sandwich: trying to get her program enacted.

Running for the Senate, and being a senator, would have been a lot easier. But Madigan is one of those people who love executive responsibilities. As attorney general, she gets to make a lot of important decisions. As a freshman senator, she'd be just one member of a 100-person committee.

Instead of being able to stay home, she'd be obliged to travel back and forth to Washington week after week. She says she wants to be able to spend time with her children while they're growing up, which would be a lot harder in the endlessly demanding job of senator or governor. And being young herself, she can afford to wait to pursue any higher ambitions until the kids are older.

Madigan gains a lot from staying put. And anything she's giving up that she values will probably still be out there when she's ready to make a move.

The centerpiece of his $787 billion package is a lot of new federal spending to try to pump up total demand for goods and services. But even though it became law in February, most of the funds are still sitting in the vault.

Only about 11 percent of the direct outlays had actually been made as of mid-June, and most of them won't be spent this year. You can hardly expect money that hasn't been spent to have a favorable effect on the economy.

So Democrats can still hope the program will work in time. But what good is an anti-recession engine that takes so long to kick into gear? The downturn, remember, began in December of 2007, and really got bad last fall. By the time all the federal money finds its way into the pockets of workers and companies, the recession is likely to be over.

Any good the stimulus plan will do, it turns out, probably won't be done until it's no longer needed. And the spending may not have any significant impact at all. Except, of course, in creating a lot of government bills that we as taxpayers will have to cover.

It's amazing that he would say middle-school administrators are free to inspect an adolescent girl's breasts on the thinnest of suspicions. More amazing yet is that Thomas would clearly let them go even further. "Because the school officials searched in a location where the pills could have been hidden," he wrote, "the search was reasonable in scope." By that logic, they could also have forced her to take off her underwear and submit to a full probe of her body cavities.

Thomas insists that school principals and teachers properly act under the doctrine of in loco parentis--giving them the same rights over students as their parents have. "There can be no doubt that a parent would have had the authority to conduct the search," he noted, correctly. And when they send their children off to a public school, he says, they delegate that authority to those in charge.

If he believes what he is saying, Thomas would let principals conduct the most intrusive searches not only when they have grounds to think they'll find contraband, but even when they don't. A parent doesn't need any evidence to force a child to strip to prove she isn't carrying drugs. So the implication of Thomas' argument is that school officials wouldn't need evidence either.

Thomas thinks the Constitution affords public school students no protection from the most shocking invasions of privacy. If parents don't like their kids being strip-searched, or worse, he says, "they can seek redress in school boards or legislatures; they can send their children to private schools or home school them; or they can simply move."

In a previous case, the impeccably conservative Justice Samuel Alito rejected Thomas' bizarre view. "The public schools are invaluable and beneficent institutions, but they are, after all, organs of the State," wrote Alito. "When public school authorities regulate student speech, they act as agents of the State; they do not stand in the shoes of the students’ parents. It is a dangerous fiction to pretend that parents simply delegate their authority—including their authority to determine what their children may say and hear—to public school authorities. . . . Most parents, realistically, have no choice but to send their children to a public school and little ability to influence what occurs in the school."

That's the voice of sanity, something you won't find in Thomas' dissent.

At least Jenny Sanford didn't stand beside him showing her support in his time of trial. She let him take his medicine without her, which seems fair since he had the fling without her.

In all fairness to the governor, the trouble in his marriage may not be his fault.He may have been a long-suffering model husband until this lapse. The only two people who know anything about a relationship are the two people in it--and sometimes even they don't.

But if the problems in that relationship may not be his fault, his response certainly is. This is 2009, not 1909. If you're miserable with your choice of spouses, you can get a divorce. And then, if you are one of those people who can't suppress his or her sexual desires, you can pursue them to your heart's content without betraying your obligations to your spouse and your children.

I realize that politicians are prone to selfishness and narcissism and may often face sexual temptation. But those who can't practice restraint really shouldn't be married.  

Should this sort of failure disqualify someone from future office? I'm willing to make allowances for exceptional leaders with something special to offer the country. But Mark Sanford, John Ensign, John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer? Them, I think I can manage without.

After he was appointed to Barack Obama's vacated seat, but before he was admitted to the Senate, Burris filed a sworn affidavit saying he had no contact with Gov. Blagojevich or his representatives about the job. He said the same thing when he appeared before a state House special investigative committee. Shortly after, he was sworn in to his new seat. Only then did he file an amended statement with the committee admitting he had talked with the governor's brother about the appointment, in a conversation that was taped by the FBI. In that discussion, Burris told Rob Blagojevich he would try to raise money for the governor.

The reason he won't be prosecuted, as the prosecutor explained, is that "an individual does not commit perjury if he corrects the known falsity before the adjournment of the tribunal." So it's pretty simple. Burris lied when it was in his interest to lie. Then he told the truth in time to get himself off the perjury hook.

Burris said today that the decision confirms that he "came to this seat in an honest and legal way." Legal? Apparently. But honest? Don't make me laugh.

I hope that will put an end to the demands for his resignation. Letterman is a comedian, and one of the occupational hazards of being a comedian is occasionally going too far or leaving a terribly wrong impression. Any comic who never oversteps the line of acceptability is probably not very funny.

The joke was inexcusable, and Letterman deserves credit for acknowledging as much. Palin apparently has accepted the apology. And his critics--which includes me--ought to be satisfied with what he did last night. Firing him would serve no purpose but to compound one wrong with another.

But I suspect some activists and interest groups will continue to demand his head. They gain from controversy. And letting this one subside will only deprive them of attention.

The argument for the public option is that the government is more efficient than the private sector, which will come as news to anyone who has ever dealt with the bureaucracy. Supposedly government health programs have lower administrative overhead. But there's plenty of evidence to suggest those efficiencies are mythical or exaggerated. Such savings will be even harder to attain if the public provider has to compete for customers, as Medicare and Medicaid don't.

If the public option isn't cheaper, it will face serious problems. Take high-risk patients. If it accepts them on more generous terms than private insurers, while getting the same premiums as other patients pay, it will lose money. So the government would have to choose between letting the public provider fail and bailing it it out.

The latter would tilt the playing field and thus defeat the purpose of promoting fair competition. But if the public provider avoids high-risk patients-- as private insurers do--what is the point of a public option?

In the end, there's good reason to fear that a public option will get special subsidies, allowing it to outcompete private companies that lack a key to the Treasury. Obama said that's a false fear. But he did nothing to dispel it.

But Bristol wasn't on the trip. Confusing Bristol with Willow is about as understandable as confusing Bristol with one of her brothers--or confusing Letterman with Leno.

So Palin and anyone else paying attention had every reason to think he was talking about Willow. And making a joke like that about her is inexcusable. In the first place, she's 14. In the second place, she bears no responsibility for her sister's behavior--or what her mother had done.

For that matter, it's hard to see what Bristol has done to deserve the ridicule. It's not her fault her mother is a national political figure. Dealing with her situation is hard enough without being under a media spotlight.

Instead of acting as though he's the victim of someone else's misunderstanding, as he did last night, Letterman ought to simply admit he blew it, big time, and personally apologize to the Palins and his viewers. 

He also should to keep in mind that if you're going to ridicule someone's sex life, you might pick on someone your own size. And  make very sure you have the right person.

 UPDATE: http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/steve_chapman/2009/06/lettermans-apology-.html#more

A shame Americans were not so brave. The Uighurs, we now know, were never part of the Taliban or Al Qaeda, were never trying to kill Americans, and posed no threat to us. Yet they were held at Gitmo for seven years after being falsely designated as enemy combatants.

They had fled China to escape oppression and torture by the government. Their mistake was going to Afghanistan, where some of them reputedly got training from Al Qaeda for their fight against the Beijing government. When the U.S. invasion began, they fled again, this time to Pakistan.

They were captured and sent to Guantanamo, where they have languished since. The Pentagon soon admitted they posed no danger, but no country would take them--except China, where they could have expected to go to prison at best.

Congress has blanched at the idea of relocating them here, despite the lack of evidence that they are dangerous. Lucky for the Uighurs, the people of Palau (all 20,000 of them) don't scare so easily. And as tropic isles go, this one sure beats Guantanamo.