I see that W. has nominated Chris Cox, the conservative Southern California congressman, to be chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. You talk about your six degrees of separation -- Cox and I are at the first degree, having been fellow summer clerks at a big bucks L.A. law firm in 1976.

We both got offers -- he bit, I didn't. Chris was an Orange County right-wing true believer even then, but it was a much softer time, and he was a good colleague. No doubt he was in on some of our all-clerk treks to Chavez Ravine to catch Garvey, Cey and the Dodgers. At the end of the summer, the clerks decided to spoof the firm in a musical revue, whose parody lyrics are somewhat memorable to this day:

Cox, a Harvard JD-MBA, went on to clerk for Judge Choy on the Ninth Circuit in Honolulu -- a great gig -- and proceeded on to work in the Reagan White House. By the late '80s he was in Congress. Been there ever since. He's a liberal's nightmare, and I doubt I'll agree with much he does over at the SEC. But he's championed the tax-free internet, among other worthwhile things, and from what I remember he's a decent guy.