TENNESSEE’S SUPREME COURT is now majority-female. According to the News-Sentinel, this makes Tennessee the first state with a majority of women on its highest court.

TV’S BACK. DOES ANYONE CARE? “We have a small data set so far, but it makes one wonder whether the writer’s strike has done serious long-term damage to traditional network programming.” I’ve only got a few shows that I watch regularly, and I usually record ’em and watch them at my convenience. I suspect that as more people watch this way, subscription-based online services will be real competition for the networks. I’m already meeting more and more people who watch TV this way.

ED CONE ON Obama’s ground game.

HMM: EU energy chief backs Arctic drilling. I had missed this last week. But if environmentalists want to get the Europeans to back off, they should try to get President Bush to endorse it . . . .

BETTER DNA TESTS FOR CANCER, with nanotechnology.

INTERESTING TENNESSEE POLL: “A quarter of Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary said they will now vote for McCain, according to the poll. 56% of Clinton supporters say they will vote for Obama and the rest remain undecided.”

CNN ON JOE BIDEN’S OWN “BRIDGE TO NOWHERE.” (Via Contentions). Note the Katrina-relief angle, too.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

It took a “Special Investigations Unit” to dig that up? I wonder if they have special SIU jackets for these special journalists. I’d say they probably just sit around reading blogs, but judging by how little they pick up on Ayers and other stories, I guess not.

They’d probably do better if they did. But hey, give ’em credit for more reporting than most media are doing here.

CAN I HAVE ONE? An electric Porsche Cayman from Ruf.

A LOOK AT THE REVAMPED Audi A8?

IN THE MAIL: Michael Tucker’s Peaceful Endings: The NOPOSAM Project.

INSTA-POLL:

MORE ON the ongoing Rangel scandals.

STANLEY FISH says that we’ll like George W. Bush a lot more in a few years. “How will he occupy his time? Roving ambassador? Baseball commissioner? University president? (Don’t groan; he’d probably be good at it.)”

IS BIG BROTHER riding shotgun? “When the Germans — who, after the Gestapo and the Stasi, know a little something about surveillance and the loss of privacy — ban these devices, why should we let them into our daily lives?”

VOIP TECHNOLOGY AND TROOP MORALE: “With high speed connections, troops can make voice, or even video, calls to back home, at no (or very little, like a penny or two a minute) additional cost. This has proved to be a big boost to morale.”

SO HERE’S YOUR PROBLEM: CO₂ emissions are up, but the increase is coming from poor countries. That’s why, if you really care about carbon emissions, you can’t follow the two-sided Kyoto approach. U.S. emissions will probably fall over the coming years, but it won’t matter because of much greater increases from China, India, and Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, Europeans are now talking about abandoning their carbon-emission limits in the face of economic problems.

SO WHICH WILL TURN OUT TO BE A BIGGER DEAL IN THE LONG TERM? China’s first space walk, or SpaceX’s successful commercial launch test? I’m guessing number two, but I’m happy for both of ’em.

MOST OF THE PRESS RELEASES I GET ARE KIND OF LAME, but this one on European space particle physics comes with some cool photos.

LARRY SUMMERS: Bailout is no reason to abandon big government. “A time when confidence is lagging in the consumer, financial and business sectors is not a time for government to step back.” Confidence in the government is even lower, though. And with even more reason.

“WE DO NOT HAVE A CRISIS AT FREDDIE MAC, AND PARTICULARLY AT FANNIE MAE.” Because of the “outstanding leadership” of Franklin Raines. And check out Bill Clinton at the end.

ANDREW MALCOLM:

But here’s a really silly idea for this gotcha society:

If a candidate’s family is not being arrested or not out on the campaign trail inviting news coverage as McCain’s 96-year-old mother, Roberta, does, why don’t we just leave them alone?

The way the U.S. media has so conscientiously managed to deny itself virtually any inquisitions of Barack Obama’s poor half-brother in Africa and his half-sister in Hawaii and Joe Biden’s mother and Michelle’s family.

The conscientiousness about family privacy seems rather selective.

NEW YORK POST: DOCS DETAIL BARACK TIES TO RADICAL.

While Barack Obama has long downplayed his connection to Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the violent Weather Underground radical group, new documents show the two worked much more closely together in starting an educational foundation than has been previously known.

The press has been trying to avoid covering this for months. Will they be able to keep it up until November? If not, it won’t be for lack of trying . . . .

UPDATE: Much more here. “Radicalism disguised by a claim to be postideological.”

TAX COMPETITION:

With the economy struggling, at least some people are urging a pro-growth tax cut. Too bad they live in Stockholm. As a recent headline in Agence France-Presse put it: “Sweden Announces Income Tax Cuts to Boost Jobs.” The government is planning to cut business taxes and the personal income and payroll tax. . . .

Now, however, Sweden is discovering that it must cut taxes to compete with Ireland, Eastern Europe and fast-growing Asia. Three years ago Sweden eliminated its inheritance tax.

I wonder if this will percolate into the U.S. debate? Is it a global tax revolution?

MICKEY KAUS on L.A.’s “unshrinkable” education bureaucracy:

Also “2,400 administrators … earn more than $100,000 annually.” Want to fire some of the less useful ones? Ah, they have “‘bumping’ rights to displace other workers.”

Good grief.

I HOPE THEY NEVER LEARN THE DIFFERENCE FIRSTHAND: There’s The Optimistic American Spirit: 33% Think We’re Already in a Depression. It’s as if the press coverage had been overwhelmingly negative for years.

Don’t worry — if Obama’s elected, everything will be rosy even with 15% unemployment.

UPDATE: “I think they confuse the economic term with the clinical psychological term.”