• Harriet Miers, the next attorney general? Kevin Shay, guest-blogging for Daniel Radosh at Radosh’s blog, says Miers’s nomination is foreordained: “I mean, it works on so many levels,” Shay, a former Web editor for McSweeney’s, writes. “A) It passes the SPM test: Can you imagine a Stupider Possible Move? I didn’t think so. That’s always been a reliable predictor of this administration’s actions. B) It’s a great way to spit in the face of the hardcore 27% of voters who still inexplicably support you. C) She’s owed.”

  • Was “The Simpsons Movie” actually a searing family drama? Ezra Klein explains:

    It was a film during which the lead female character realized her husband was a senseless brute who would always put his happiness before her own, and where her son realized the father was an abusive drunk who was continually denying him the emotional support and family environment he needed. And unlike in most [Simpsons] episodes, both characters recognized these truths fully, and abandoned Homer to begin new lives elsewhere. And shortly thereafter, both took him back, tossing away their opportunities for personal growth and fulfillment despite there being no evidence of an enduring change in their tormentor’s psyche. It was a tremendous demonstration of the self-destructive mentality of the abused, and in that, quite unsettling.

  • Annals of things you can’t make up: The American Prospect’s Garance Franke-Ruta, writing on her personal blog, TheGarance.com, digs through the case history of sexual solicitation in public restrooms. Her best discovery is the name of an Idaho decision that “ruled that (solo) masturbation within an enclosed restroom stall was constitutionally protected behavior as the individual within the stall had a reasonable expectation of privacy within the stall.” The case: State v. Limberhand.

    As commenter Matt Zeitlin observes in the post’s discussion thread, “Guys, let’s not lose sight of what’s important here, the dude’s name was Limberhand! Maybe it’s the 17 year old boy in me, but how can everyone not find this [gut-bustingly] hilarious?”