Some things that caught my eye:

• In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision on Monday, Time Magazine is going to hand over its notes regarding the Plame case:
  

  In a statement, Time said it believes ``the Supreme Court has limited press freedom in ways that will have a chilling effect on our work and that may damage the free flow of information that is so necessary in a democratic society.'' '

  But it also said that despite its concerns, it will turn over the records to the special counsel investigating the leak.

• Anthony Lewis has a fascinating article on the history of the First Amendment and how it's been interpreted over the life of our Republic, published in The New York Review of Books:
  

  A wonderful example of the interpretative process is what has been made, over the years, of the free expression guarantees of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Today those clauses, enforced by the courts, protect journalists and artists and political speakers of all stripes. But for more than a century they gave no effective protection to anyone.

  In 1798, just seven years after the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights were added to the Constitution, a Federalist Congress passed —and a Federalist president, John Adams, signed into law—a Sedition Act that made it a crime to publish false criticism of the president. The statute was never considered by the Supreme Court before it expired in 1801. But members of that court, sitting on circuit as trial judges, enforced the act, presiding at trials of editors under it and sentencing them to fines and imprisonment.

  There's much more there -- a must-read.

• CNN reports that insurgent attacks have killed more than 8,000 people in the past 6 months, which on the surface does not seem like an effective way to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis.
  

  Unofficial estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths during the Iraq war range from about 22,000 -- according to the Web site iraqbodycount.net -- to about 100,000 -- from an independent survey reported in The Washington Post. The Pentagon does not give numbers for civilian deaths in Iraq.

  What's not discussed is how many of those deaths were caused by American actions.

• David Remnick offers a Talk of the Town piece in The New Yorker on Klein's book of lesbian obsession and Hilary Clinton. Whose lesbian obsession is the question.
  

  Throughout, Klein’s obsession with the girl-on-girl theme is equal to anything in “The Well of Loneliness� or on “The Howard Stern Show.� Take a passage in which Hillary, while still a student at Wellesley, is dating a young man named David Rupert. “Their testy discussions about skiing--which might have been a substitute for an honest discussion about Hillary’s sexual frigidity--often ended with Hillary retreating into an icy silence.� Hillary, if you follow, was not much for skiing. “Skiing.� “Frigidity.� “Icy.� Say no more.

  After the Swift Boat Veterans proved that lies have the currency of truth if people want to believe them, I think we can anticipate the kinds of attacks Senator Clinton can expect should she run for president. Homophobia sells.

Oh what a lovely week!

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