The Supremes could surprise me, of course -- they've certainly done so in the past, on many occasions. It's a lot tougher to pick outcomes on the Supreme Court than it is to, say, pick who is likely to win an election. Only nine people get to vote, after all, and they don't answer public opinion polls in the meantime. But I have a strong suspicion that the Supreme Court is going to try to kick the political can down the road a bit.

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Every so often as I sit down to write these Friday columns, the spirit of the rant overtakes me. Instead of our usual Talking Points section this week, I offer up such a rant, on the death of the Fourth Amendment. You have all been warned. I did consider calling this rant an "Ode To Dianne Feinstein," but then I thought that was too limiting -- she certainly isn't the only one out there singing from the same hymnbook. And I certainly wouldn't want to have anyone feel left out.

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Mister Attorney General, the reason I have such a problem with issuing warrants or subpoenas for news reporters is because I am aware of the history of the laws being used to do so. I have a hard time believing that you or your boss (a former constitutional professor) are completely unaware of these precedents in American history, but I haven't heard anyone else mentioning them, so I thought it fell to me to bring them up.

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On a lonely hill outside the small town of Cobh, Ireland (pronounced: "cove"), is a mass grave marked by three somber headstones. As mass graves go, it's a fairly small one; holding not tens of thousands or even thousands, but merely a few hundred bodies. But the relative size of the grave on the scale of human misery is beside the point -- because while few, their deaths had monumental consequences for America. The dead were civilians, not soldiers (more on them in a minute). But their deaths deserve memorializing today just as much as those we remember who wore the uniform of our country. Because this is the final resting place of the people onboard the Lusitania.

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Things have gotten so bad in Washington that both pundits and Republicans are beginning to use the "N-word" to describe the president. No, no... not that N-word! Instead, Obama is now actively being compared to Nixon. This comparison is patently...

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There are several metaphors to describe the week President Obama is having. Firefighting. Damage control. Playing defense. Today, however, I went with "weathering the storms" because of the unfortunate optics of Obama giving an outdoor press conference today under an umbrella, as the skies dripped down. Into each president's life some rain must fall, in other words.

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Being a student of the political lexicon, I would like to propose a new definition for an old term -- a term we've all used since roughly the second grade. I refer, of course, to the "wedgie." For those who are astoundingly unaware of what this term literally means, I would refer you to your local second-grader (pick any boy age 7 or 8 and ask him... and after he rolls around the floor screaming with laughter for awhile, he'll explain and even demonstrate the "wedgie" for you, I'm sure). Ahem.

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No matter the definitions used, the United States of America has not been directly attacked by an enemy's military very often throughout its history. The biggest attack wasn't even on a state, since Hawai'i was only a territory at the time of Pearl Harbor. There's an even shorter list of times and places where American soil has been occupied by a foreign army. Roughly 200 years ago, the British held parts of the New England coastline in the War of 1812 and they burned down Washington, DC. Closer in time -- exactly 70 years ago this month -- American forces fought a mostly-forgotten battle to retake two of the Aleutian Islands from the Japanese. Starting on May 11, 1943 and lasting more than two weeks, the Battle of Attu Island was successfully fought on what is now the westernmost point of the United States. Though not often mentioned in the list of famous World War II battles in the Pacific, it was indeed an important strategic victory for America and deserves to be remembered.

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Welcome back once again to our monthly examination of President Barack Obama's job approval polling numbers. In April, Obama's numbers returned to a normal level, after experiencing a very short post-election "honeymoon period" with the public which bounced his numbers up to a peak, and then bounced them right back down again. You can plainly see this effect in this month's chart:

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Since I spent yesterday on the subject of Syria, I thought I'd follow up with today's movement and signals from the White House. Don't have any real analysis today, just passing along the recent developments, that's all.

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