Given that the Constitution in Exile movement doesn't seem to exist, some may be wondering why the editors at the New York Times commissioned Jeff Rosen to write a long and detailed cover story about it for the Sunday Times magazine. I've been mulling it over, and have come up with four possible explanations for their interest:

1) Any old newspaper can report on a real trend, but it takes the paper of record to invent one. Feeling emboldened by their successful invention of "man dates" last week, the editors wanted a greater challenge.

2) The Times editors have been reading lots of Hayek recently and have become fascinated with libertarian thought. Their library stopped subscribing to Regulation back in 1996, however, so they didn't know about more recent developments.

3) Any story that features a hot picture of Richard Epstein is going to sell a lot of newspapers. 'Nuff said.

4) Tainting future Bush judicial picks with some kind of shadowy extremism might just influence a future Senate vote. All the better if the shadowy movement doesn't actually exist: the harder it is to find the movement, the harder it is to prove that Bush's pick has no connection to it.

  I'm sure other possibilities exist, but these four seem the most plausible to me.