More playing catch-up with this week's birthdays

A very happy birthday today to zencuppa and wouldyoueva! And a belated wish for same to fleetfootmike, whose birthday was yesterday. May you all receive everything you hope for from the day.

In Memoriam: John Hughes Jr., 1950–2009

Film screenwriter and director John Hughes, responsible for helming seminal 1980s teen-coming-of-age flicks such as Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club, has died at 59 of cardiac arrest. CNN.com carries his obituary here. His films, besides giving rise to the so-called "Brat Pack" of then-young actors including Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson and Jon Cryer, helped define the adolescent temper of that generation. He also wrote and directed the first film in the lucrative Home Alone franchise, which launched the acting career of Macaulay Culkin, and gave us Ferris Bueller's Day Off (I can still hear Ben Stein as the teacher intoning, "Bueller? Bueller?") and National Lampoon's Vacation, an old favorite of mine.

My heart, thoughts and prayers go out to Hughes' wife of 39 years, Nancy; his two sons and four grandchildren; and all the rest of his family, friends and everyone who worked with him in this most difficult hour. What was your favorite Hughes film?

Sotomayor is in...but a whole lotta others are still cooling their heels

This afternoon, the U.S. Senate voted 68-31 to confirm federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic and third female to serve as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. She will be sworn in and seated when the court begins its new term on the first Monday in October.

But as FireDogLake.com's Christy Hardin Smith notes here, Sotomayor's is the current administration's only nomination to the federal judiciary to have been acted on as Congress heads home for the August recess. At least 17 other nominees for various positions have been cleared by the Judiciary Committee for votes by the full Senate, but are still waiting thanks to what Smith rightly calls "a big fat failure of leadership."

With a filibuster-proof majority for all practical purposes, Harry Reid and his Judiciary Democrat colleagues have abso-frigging-lutely no excuse for not getting these people confirmed already. The rule of law took a beating under the previous régime; it needs to be reestablished tout suite.