"Let's put all this in perspective," writes Adam Serwer. "There have been 110 Justices on the Supreme Court. Of those, two have been women, and two have been black. The other 106 have been white men. That means that around 96% of Supreme Court Justices have been white men." The "this" that Serwer is perspectivizin' is Mark Halperin's unfortunate decision to respond to Souter's retirement by pasting a giant 'WHITE MEN NEED NOT APPLY" headline across his blog. Classy work, Mark. As the stats show, the history of the United States Supreme Court -- an institution that is, as we speak, 88 percent male and 77 percent white male --is not exactly a history of raging anti-white dude sentiment. And I've always found it notable that the instant the conservative bloc lost its sole female member, it set about dismantling the compromise she had worked out to protect abortion. It's almost as if being a woman gives you a slightly different perspective on issues relating to female reproductive rights...

Some expected, but still dispiriting, news out of the Senate last night, where Dick Durbin's "cramdown" legislation went down to defeat . The policy was simple enough: It would allow bankruptcy judges, at their discretion, to reduce the principal and interest-payments on primary mortgages. That would make it likelier that people could keep their homes. Unsurprisingly, the banking industry wasn't hugely enamored of the bill, and protested that they'd have to raise mortgage prices to deal with the resulting uncertainty in their revenues. That's probably an accurate objection, so far as it goes. But the change in aggregate mortgage prices would be so small as to be virtually unnoticeable for homeowners. The reduction in principal, conversely, could save the homes of the directly impacted, and by keeping them in their homes, boost home prices in the area. Many observers -- including the administration -- supported the provision. The financial industry, predictably, reacted less favorably...

One of the interesting threads in the Chrysler bankruptcy was Obama's evident fury at the hedge funds and investment banks that refused the deals the government offered. The reason for their reluctance was simple enough: Bondholders don't want to lose money. But the strategy behind their intransigence proved poor: They didn't think the government would send Chrysler into bankruptcy. And that gave them leverage. Out-of-court debt restructurings generally require consensus. But they were wrong. Not only did the administration let Chrysler fall to the bankruptcy courts, but Obama called the investors out by name: While many stakeholders made sacrifices and worked constructively, I have to tell you some did not. In particular, a group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout. They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices, and they would have to make none. Some demanded twice the return that other...

You have to pity David Souter. By all accounts, he'd grown to hate his job. The Court was a grind. "An intellectual lobotomy," he called it. He was exhausted by the ideological jockeying. Dispirited by the institution's rightward turn. Shattered by the decision in Bush v. Gore . He loathed DC. "The world's worst city," he said. He thought often of quitting. As soon as each term closed, he'd fly home to New Hampshire and hike. But he held fast. Because we've built our system such that a Justice who isn't unexpectedly incapacitated has to be strategic in timing their resignation. Souter did not want to be replaced by a hardline conservative. He couldn't bear to see his work undone. And so he continued to hold a job he'd long since grown to dislike. A fixed term limit would end these perverse incentives. Give Justices 12 years of service and not a day longer. Let the political system prepare for vacancies rather than be caught by surprised. But in the absence of such a change, long-...

"Contrary to what many parents tell their children," wrote Robert Frank, "talent and hard work are neither necessary nor sufficient for economic success. It helps to be talented and hard-working, of course, yet some people enjoy spectacular success despite having neither attribute." It's not a particularly bold claim. Nor is Frank's conclusion the sort of thing that ordinarily makes headlines. Saying that "the link between success and luck is stronger than many people think" borders on the trite. Unless, of course, you're on Fox's new business channel. There, self-made anchor Stuart Varney was shocked, shocked , that Frank would suggest such a thing. The result is some extremely entertaining television. It seems more like a skit than a segment. If I were writing a parody of Fox's new business channel, I think I'd have turned in something a little less heavy-handed. "Go back to your Socialist newsroom!" for instance, wouldn't have struck me as believable. But this isn't a skit. It's an...

Give it up to Slate: Their parody Facebook feed of Obama's first 100 days is very funny. Meanwhile, in other First 100 Days commentary, Mark Schmitt is skeptical of the whole construct, but I love his conclusion: But we should take a moment to respect the miracle that these 100 days happened at all. Consider what we have come through in the last 12 years or so of conservative dominance: a politicized impeachment, an election in which the actual winner did not become president, a staggering usurpation of executive power, a long war premised on lies, a partly successful effort at one-party control, the most systematic violation of civil liberties since the Red Scare, a disgraceful and systematic embrace of barbaric behavior at the highest levels of government. Step back any distance, and you'd say we've gone through an electoral crisis, several iterations of constitutional crisis, and a crisis of legitimacy. And yet here we are, with the constitution and our electoral democracy intact,...

Steve Pearlstein spent some time last week with Mayo Shattuck, the grinning fellow pictured above. Shattuck was a high-flying financial whiz kid who looked like a genius amidst the boom but who's been tagged as a fool since the crash. Shattuck, of course, has all manner of perfectly reasonable explanations for his company's poor fortunes. But the conclusion, then, isn't just that Shattuck is being unfairly pilloried now. It's also that he was disproportionately lauded then . Quoth Pearlstein: Like many executives and directors on Wall Street, Mayo Shattuck ultimately defends his performance by noting that in business, as in life, bad things sometimes happen to good people. By the same logic, of course, good things sometimes happen to good people -- which those good people ought to remember the next time they confuse luck with skill and begin to believe they are worth $14 million a year. It serves the interests of various people to suggest that the weakness of firms operating in today'...