Inside the Supreme Court chamber, it's business as usual as the Big Nine snuggle down with the same racial redistricting case they have been hearing and re-hearing for eight years. In the hallways it's nuts, as cafeteria ladies, security guards, and flacks gear up for the media tidal wave slowly working its way up from Florida and scheduled to hit the High Court on Friday.

There are subtle common themes between today's redistricting case and Bush v. Palm Beach County. For instance, nobody can figure out why the court has agreed to hear either case.

This morning, everyone is talking about the C-SPAN (and impending CNN) request to televise Friday's proceedings. Someone speculates that maybe the justices will agree to being televised if their faces are blurred (like the belligerent drunk wife-beaters on COPS), or maybe they'll relent and allow radio coverage without images (like it's 1939 and this is a fireside chat), or maybe they'll allow an animated cartoon special of themselves ...

Some of us Supreme Court beat reporters and sketch artists are sweating. Might Friday spell the demise of this last bastion of inner-sanctimony? Will Greta Van Susteren and her band of merry men roll the cameras in right over our twitching, un-telegenic corpses?

But before we embark on today's case, let's pause for a quiz. It's called: What is this yellow thing? Is it:

a) The forked tongue of the North Carolina state legislature?

b) A naked woman diving backward out of Congressional District 9 into Congressional District 6?

c) The largest McDonald's franchise ever constructed? Or:

d) The 12^th District of North Carolina's 1997 congressional redistricting plan?

If you answered d) it's probably because you, like me, can't quite shake the feeling that you already read this case in law school. Take comfort. Probably even Justice Stevens feels that way. You have seen the case before. Today it's called Hunt v. Cromartie, but you may remember it from one of its earlier incarnations as Shaw v. Reno (1993), Shaw v. Hunt (1996), or Hunt v. Cromartie Part 1 (1999).