SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:41 P.M. ET: 

AN ENDORSEMENT? – FROM THE HILL:   President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch is “very easy to get along with,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Thursday, according to the Associated Press.  “I’ve worked with him and I think he’s very easy to get along with,” she said during an appearance at George Washington University. “He writes very well.”  Ginsburg, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton and assumed her seat on the court in 1993, said she met Gorsuch during a trip to the United Kingdom years ago.  Gorsuch, a conservative federal judge on the Colorado-based Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, was tapped by Trump earlier this month to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death last year.  I don't know if that's an endorsement or just a passing compliment.  Judge Gorsuch, assuming confirmation, will take Justice Scalia's place.  Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburg were close friends, despite their deep philosophical differences.  Maybe there's another friendship brewing.

MAYBE SWEDEN IS IN TROUBLE AFTER ALL – FROM FOX:   Now this is what you call workplace innovation.  A Swedish politician is pushing to give employees an hour-long paid break to go home and have sex.  Per Erik Muskos, a member of the Swedish Social Democrat party, made the proposal during a council meeting in the northern city of Overtornea.  Mr Muskos said he’s backing the measure because he believes midweek sex breaks will improve wellness and boost childbirth in the northern region he represents.  “Childbirth should be encouraged,” he told the Stockholm-based newspaper Aftonbladet.  “When sex is also an excellent form of exercise with documented positive effects on wellbeing, the municipality should kill two birds with one stone and encourage employees to use their fitness hour to go home and have sex with their partner.”  When President Trump suggested last week that Sweden had a serious crime problem because of its immigration policies, he was mightily criticized.  Then came a major riot in a Swedish suburb, and now this, uh, proposal.  Sweden used to be the land of technical innovation and Ingrid Bergman.  Standards have slipped. 

THEY'RE NUTS – FROM THE HILL:   A group of voters in France is urging former President Obama to run in the French presidential election this spring.  “At a time when France is about to vote massively for the extreme right, we can still give a lesson of democracy to the planet by electing a French President, a foreigner,” the French website for “OBAMA17” reads, ABC News first reported on Thursday.  "[It’s] because he has the best resume in the world,” the site, which is not connected with Obama, continues.  ABC said OBAMA17 posters have been spotted across Paris, and the group’s website has a petition begging Obama to enter the race.  The group is jockeying for 1 million signatures, even though Obama is not French and France requires its presidential candidates to be natives.  Just what Obama needs, another birther issue.  Just what France needs, another screwup president.  Can't we all get along?

February 23, 2017