Elena Kagan, Softball Player

When I was an editor at Spy a couple of decades ago, we used to run an item called The Spy List, which was almost invariably a simple set of names that were connected by–well, that was for the reader to figure out, or to speculate upon. Basically it was a way we could print rumors about people without risking the moral or legal consequences of spreading gossip initiated by unnamed and perhaps unreliable sources. And we were able to get away with it because we operated out on the edge, at a deliberate distance from the mainstream.

The Wall Street Journal, which fancies itself a mainstream, important, powerful newspaper, veered sharply into Spy List territory the other day when it published on its front page a 17 year-old photograph of Solicitor General Elena Kagan, now a nominee to the Supreme Court, playing softball.