Quick Hits

• The quote of the moment (or longer) comes from Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who was explaining to the American Bar Association why there aren't particularly going to be any prosecutions against anyone in the U.S. Attorney scandal who forced the Justice Department to become a political bludgeon: "Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime." I think we all knew that this was the ruling philosophy of the Bush administration, but it's nice for someone to actually come out and say it. I suppose that this theory of law enforcement is most convenient if you get to identify after the fact which violations of the law aren't crimes.

• As my four-year-old nephew would say, this is very weird. It turns out that Jay McInerney based his character Allison Poole, the focus of his third novel, The Story of My Life, on Rielle Hunter, John Edwards's partner in adultery. The New York Post had this last week, before Edwards came clean on Nightline on Friday. What's strange to me is that McInerney's novel came out twenty years ago (when Hunter still went by Lisa Druck), so Hunter had one brush with fame and then came back for another (unless this time it's a brush with infamy) in an entirely unrelated context. I didn't see this story until today, so I assumed that McInerney was making the claim based on current events and was trying to cash in, but it turns out that he identified Hunter as his inspiration at least three years ago. I read Bright Lights, Big City back in the day and enjoyed it, and I probably bought Random, as well, but I never read it. I may have Story of My Life around here somewhere if I found it cheap on a remainder table, but I'm not sure. If I do find it in the house, I'm still not sure I'll read it.

• Matt Yglesias, late of the Atlantic brand of blogging goodness has moved his base of operations to Think Progress. He took a week off between gigs but was chomping at the bit to be back blogging by the time the new position started this week; by my count, he's put up 44 posts in three days.