Current Affairs

We all know Fred Phelps and his merry band. They are disgusting, despicable, depraved. And constitutionally protected:

The First Amendment protects hateful protests at military funerals, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in an 8-1 decision.

The erudite* Antonin Scalia can't resist the urge to show off:

Scalia even seemed to accuse his colleagues - or the reader - of having a limited vocabulary. When he referred to the majority's "dystopian" view of Detroit, he added a footnote:

"The opposite of utopian. The word was coined by John Stuart Mill as a caustic description of British policy," Scalia added.

I can't remember doing it, so please set me free now:

More than four decades after Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, his convicted murderer wants to go free for a crime he says he can't remember.

Sounds like a plan to me:

The cost-cutting battle lines are drawn in the U.S. Congress. But the fight will affect only maybe a sixth of spending, with big-ticket items like defense and Social Security getting a bipartisan pass for now. Still, tackling even that small slice would save money and reassure markets. A temporary government shutdown would be a small price to pay.

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Let's scratch him from the list of presidential candidates to root for:

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who presided over the passage of a health care overhaul nearly identical to the federal overhaul is still defending his state-based starter-version of ObamaCare.

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Fantasy:

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says 80 percent of the country would be served by high-speed rail service once a national network of lines is complete.

[. . .]

He compares high-speed rail today to where the interstate highway system was 50 years ago. After half a century, the dream of a national network of interstate highways has become a reality.

Speaking of government shutdowns, how would you like to live in Belgium?

Unable — or unwilling — to work together, bickering politicians have left unassuming Belgium without a fully functioning government for eight months, the longest for any nation in Europe since World War II.

What's in a name?

Each time Libya appears in the news, scores of newspaper editors go bananas. Once possessed of faculties that could detect a breaking story as readily as a dangling participle, these poor souls are now reduced to a jabbering stupor, as though they had gazed into the tentacled maw of Cthulhu himself.

Another judge has upheld Obamacare's individual mandate. For those keeping score, that makes three Democratic-appointed judges in favor, two Republican-appointed ones against. Philip Klein at The American Spectator zeroes in the scary part of the ruling that makes clear "how broadly one has to interpret congressional powers to find the mandate constitutional":

God, I love this business. MTV's "Skins" is getting some heat for showing its underage stars in a racy photo spread in Elle magazine. Is it appropriate for the TV show to do that? Is it appropriate for Elle to do it?