Naomi Schaeffer Riley, the Journal’s deputy Taste editor, calls up someone at the Hoover Institute so they can provide a quote about how “Stanley Fish reveals himself to be a colossal hypocrite.” Apparently, one cannot simultaneously believe that professors should focus on teaching and research, and also think that Bill Ayers is good at his job. This despite the fact that Ayers was in the vanguard of the small schools movement that has gone a long way to improving discipline and reducing behavior problems in urban schools. Yeah, clearly Ayers doesn’t really do anything worthwhile in his field of education; he’s just there to push “politics,” which is what encouraging critical thinking among students is called now.

Steven Calabresi didn’t get the memo from the rest of the Federalist Society: Republican presidents have been very effective in changing the federal courts. Republican-appointed judges, most conservatives, now make up 61 percent of the bench, up from 50 percent when Mr. Bush took office. They control 10 of the 13 circuits, while Democrat-appointed judges have a dwindling majority on just one circuit.

David M. McIntosh, a co-founder and vice-chairman of the Federalist Society, said the nation’s appeals courts are now more in line with a conservative judicial ideology than at any other time in memory.

Meanwhile, Calabresi begins his piece with “One of the great unappreciated stories of the past eight years is how thoroughly Senate Democrats thwarted efforts by President Bush to appoint judges to the lower federal courts.” He also doesn’t seem to know geography: “Circuit majorities are likely at stake in this presidential election for the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeal. That includes the federal appeals courts for New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and virtually every other major center of finance in the country.”

Um, Los Angeles is in the NINTH Circuit. This is just sloppy.

I think conservatives as a group are losing it a bit, faced with the prospect of a Democratic president. I just hope that it’s a temporary condition and that they’ll pull their mental health socks up once they have to acknowledge that Obama is indeed president. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long 4 (8?) years.

Naaaaaaah!