The nuns are giving the Democrats cover. As Bob Casey, an abortion opponent who helped negotiate the abortion language in the Senate bill, observed, quoting Scripture: ‘They care for ‘the least, the last and the lost.’ And they know health care.

—Let’s hope those nuns are better at recognizing scripture than New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

On another occasion, a student complained that I “discriminated” against her because she did not offer sexual favors. When the department ombudswoman—a sensible lady of impeccable radical credentials—investigated, it emerged that the complainant resented not being invited to join my seminar: she assumed that women who took part must be getting (and offering) favorable treatment. I explained that it was because they were smarter. The young woman was flabbergasted: the only form of discrimination she could imagine was sexual. It had never occurred to her that I might just be an elitist.

—Tony Judt on his experience as a chairman of the History Department at New York University.

All this talk about rules. We make them up as we go along.

—Congressman and impeached judge Alcee Hastings defending the Democrats’ health care approach by telling us what we already knew.

Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate “relationship” involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. During their understandably temporary association, the “married” couple will typically consume a large quantity of merchandise and a large portion of each other.

—Wendell Berry on the current state of marriage.

An ex-felon I interviewed yesterday described how the prison in Forth Worth where he served time was so crowded that even when he was in solitary confinement, he had two cell mates.

—The Economist blogger Lexington on prison overcrowding.

Additional sources: The American Conservative, The Browser