Read These Four Stories

Don't miss today's finer stories:

Dana Milbank ably charts Justice David Souter's final day on the SCOTUS:

Because of Souter's quiet ways (he uttered all of 200 words in his farewell yesterday), it's easy to forget how different the country would be today if this unmarried recluse from the North hadn't decamped long ago to join the court's liberal wing. Had he remained the conservative that President George H.W. Bush thought he was getting when he nominated Souter in 1990, there's every possibility that abortion would be illegal in the United States today, that the Ten Commandments would be displayed throughout schools and courthouses, and that the law of the land on any number of issues -- guns, terrorism, race -- would be different.

Members of Sen. John McCain's '08 team lament the selection of Sarah Palin as his runningmate, reported by VF's Todd Purdum:

As Palin has piled misstep on top of misstep, the senior members of McCain's campaign team have undergone a painful odyssey of their own. In recent rounds of long conversations, most made it clear that they suffer a kind of survivor's guilt: they can't quite believe that for two frantic months last fall, caught in a Bermuda Triangle of a campaign, they worked their tails off to try to elect as vice president of the United States someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job, and might never be. They quietly ponder the nightmare they lived through. Do they ever ask, What were we thinking? "Oh, yeah, oh, yeah," one longtime McCain friend told me with a rueful chuckle. "You nailed it." Another key McCain aide summed up his attitude this way: "I guess it's sort of shifted," he said. "I always wanted to tell myself the best-case story about her." Even now, he said, "I don't want to get too negative." Then he added, "I think, as I've evaluated it, I think some of my worst fears ... the after-election events have confirmed that her more negative aspects may have been there ... " His voice trailed off. "I saw her as a raw talent. Raw, but a talent. I hoped she could become better."

The AP writes that Gov. Mark Sanford's paramour is private and no pushover:

Maria Belen Chapur has successfully eluded the news media since South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford revealed their yearlong affair last week. Friends and family have enfolded her and her boys in a protective cocoon, and the only image of her is a grainy, 8-year-old video from her brief moment in front of the cameras as a television reporter in New York.

Other than a 200-word statement denouncing a hacker's "evil act" of leaking her passionate e-mail correspondence with Sanford, Chapur has maintained her silence.

"I won't speak about my private life as it just belongs to me," she wrote to a former television colleague. "It has already been made too public during these last days, bringing to me even more pain."

And The State, in an opinion piece, suggests SC LG Andre Bauer should stay in his job and not, despite his efforts to push Sanford out of office, ascend to gov:

Nor is it responsible to overlook what we know about Mr. Bauer as a person. Mr. Sanford acted in a grossly irresponsible way for one week. Mr. Bauer's fits of irresponsibility and self-dealing have been a hallmark of his tenure: He intimidated the Transportation Department into paying him more than double its original offer for a sliver of land to widen a highway, and then "forgot" to report that sale as required by law. He barreled down Columbia's Assembly Street at speeds up to 60 mph, running two red lights and so startling a police officer that he felt the need to pull a gun on Mr. Bauer. He used a police radio to try to call off troopers when he was driving 101 mph on his way home from a political event in a state car and, when that failed, escaped without even a warning by making the trooper think he was a high-ranking law enforcement officer. Even before he was elected, he sent out campaign flyers designed to make it look like all the GOP gubernatorial candidates had endorsed him (they had not), and then bragged about his trickery.