As a king might, scientifically  

1. Sean Carroll, with an accessible and important post on the anthropic principle as it relates to some current problems in physics. Don't miss this one.

2. Via Paul Musgrave, some legal analysis (PDF) of the possibilities for postponing an election in the case of a hypothetical terrorist attack. Richard L. Hasen discusses this possibility last in his article on weird outcomes for the election, but it could well be first: it's an outcome that might lead even to the disintegration of our union.

3. Josh Corey, on Bush, Kerry, Ahab, and Derrida:

I fear that the deadly metaphor of the "war on terror" has utterly usurped any possibility of being truly rational about the real dangers and enemies we face. Come Nov. 2 we may simply end up swapping Ahabs, for Kerry has been unable to invent his own rhetoric, his own frame of language, for the crisis of our times. It would be as if Ahab were put out of action but Starbuck, that most decent of men, still felt compelled to follow his captain's commands to the letter. "The letter killeth." Now more than ever we need the habits of complex thought that Derrida represented—habits of reading the global situation that could revise the killing letter. No one is flying to our rescue; instead we ourselves are flying, delivering death from above in the form of bombs and aerial views that obliterate the human face. We have to break free of Captain Ahab's language; Ahab-Bush, who up to now has gloated, like Richard III, at the ease of his task: "I thought to find one stubborn, at the least; but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand before me; and I their match."