Check out these opening paragraphs about the Anna Nicole Smith case:

It's difficult to imagine two more different pieces of circuitry: The Supreme Court is hard-wired to suck out the drama from even the most emotionally charged conflicts. Bush v. Gore, the partial-birth-abortion case, the enemy-combatant cases -- each was briefed and argued like, well, like a bankruptcy case. Life, death, anthrax scares: The court somehow scatters its own unique brand of boringness and uptightness over every drama it touches.

Whereas Anna Nicole Smith exists exclusively for psychodrama. If she isn't wearing something sparkly or saying something filthy, she might not exist at all. Which is why this morning's collision between the two worlds is so compelling. It's probably well worth the hundreds of millions of dollars in question for Anna to rein in the jubblies, dress in sober black, and sit still for an hour. She doesn't give interviews or sign autographs as she enters or exits the marble tomb, although some reporters are mowed flat in the scrum. In the first dispute today -- the ethos of Anna Nicole versus the ethos of the Supreme Court -- the court is the clear winner....