T at the Italian Market

Taken at Italian Market

I'm against intervening in Libya

You can take the boy out of the Mennonite Church, but you can't always take the Mennonite Church out of the boy: It's been nearly a decade since I walked away from my faith, but the pacifist foundation I acquired during those days still largely shapes my outlook.

Largely, but not completely. I believe the United States was right to topple the Taliban and go after Al Qaeda sanctuaries in Afghanistan following 9/11: I think nations have the right to self-defense. But I was against the Iraq invasion—I'm against defense so pre-emptive we don't even know if any threat is actually going to emerge—and I'm against President Obama's decision to instigate a limited war in Libya.

Why?

Well, it's not because I love Col. Qaddafi. I think he's a bad man who does bad things, and I'll be happy when his reign comes to an end. I'm rooting for the Libyans rebelling against him.

I just haven't heard a clear and convincing reason why the United States should get involved.

Now, I'm not a national security expert of any sort. It does seem to me reasonable, though, to ask a series of questions before jumping into a military commitment abroad:

A: Does the party against whom the United States is considering military action threaten U.S. security? If the answer is "no," the conversation should almost always stop here. There is an alternative question that permits progress, in my mind, even if U.S. security isn't directly threatened:

B: Is the party against whom the United States is considering action committing genocidal-levels of violence, such that even by the standards of war or civil war the conscience is shocked? This is probably a little more nebulous and requires more debate, and lots of people are going to draw the lines differently here.

C: If the answer to (A) is "yes," are there non-military means that could effectively mitigate the threat? Also difficult to answer, in part (I think) because it's harder to see cause-and-effect working together with non-military methods. It takes longer, it's more frustrating in some respects.

D: If the answer to (C) is "yes," do that. If the answer to (C) is "no," then: What is the desired end state of U.S. military action? A return to a previous status quo? Regime change? What? (Put another way: What does "victory" look like?If a clear answer to this question isn't forthcoming, it should be.

E: What is the worst-case scenario that could develop from U.S. military intervention? Is the scenario more or less threatening to U.S. security than the current threat? If the answer is "more," then you might want to refrain from military action.

F: Does the United States have the military and financial resources to bear the burdens of that worst-case scenario? See the action recommended in "E."

With regard to Libya, my answers are thus:

A: No. Some advocates talk about the security of the oil markets, but even if one makes a moral defense of deadly force to preserve cheap gasoline—difficult, I think—I'm not certain that Libya is creating that much instability, on its own. (Lots of other stuff going on in the Middle East might be affecting those prices, too.)

B. No. Qaddafi is a bad guy. But there isn't, from what I see, ethnic cleansing. He is trying to defeat the people who are trying to depose him. I think that's deplorable, but I don't see that it's hugely different from many civil wars that the United States doesn't involve itself in.

C. Actually, no. Qaddafi spent a generation living under sanctions and diplomatic isolation. The renewal of those conditions won't force him from power. If you believe that Qaddafi must be removed military action by the U.S. is your best bet.

D. I assume the desired end result is the end of the Qaddafi regime. Roger Cohen lays out why the proposed no-fly zone is unlikely to bring that end state about. Furthermore, I'd assume "victory" includes his replacement by some more democratic form of government unlikely to (say) support terror attacks aganst American and allied targets at some point in the forseeable future.

E. Two worst-case scenarios: Qaddafi remains in power, and the U.S. and its allies will have spent blood, treasure and prestige fruitlessly. Or Qaddafi is toppled, and (reminiscent of Cold War Afghanistan) replaced by a radical group that either supports or gives refuge to Al Qaeda or some similar group. Bad scenarios; not sure if they're so bad (or so likely) as to inhibit military action.

F. Apparently we don't have money for NPR these days. So...no.

You'll notice that some answers seem to offer qualified support for a military intervention. But the answers to the first two questions are the critical, foundational ones. Just because Col. Qaddafi is a bad man doing bad, evil things, does not make it wise for the U.S. to intervene.

Of course, the burden is never on those who support an intervention, really. It's usually on those who would refrain. That's too bad. At least during the Cold War, we believed that our interventions had a place in a larger struggle against totalitarian Communism. These days, we go around intervening ... mostly because we can, it seems. I think that approach invites blowback, and is ultimately unsustainable. Even if Libya ends up being "successful" in some respect, I'm not sure the United States can or should bear the burden of the accumulated Libyas. I haven't seen a compelling reason to intervene. I must oppose this action.

First cookie of spring.

Taken at Almaz Cafe

Time to end nuclear power?

Events are still unfolding in Japan; Ben Boychuk and I discuss the future of the domestic nuclear power industry in this week's Scripps Howard column. My take:

It's not time to put the kibosh on nuclear power in the United States.

It's also not time to make it a lot easier to build a plant.

And understand: Building a nuclear power plant in the United States is very difficult. It costs lots of money and takes many years of moving through an excruciatingly slow permitting process. Advocates of nuclear power have spent recent years urging that the process be streamlined -- and some environmentalists, seeing nuclear power as an alternative to carbon-belching fossil fuels, have even started to support that view.

They're wrong. The bar to building a nuclear plant should be almost prohibitively high. The permitting process should be slow -- giving engineers and government officials a chance to consider and address all the ways disaster could afflict a plant -- and construction itself remain expensive, in large part because of all the safety measures that must be put in place.

Why? The vast majority of the time, nuclear plants run smoothly. But as Josh Freed, a nuclear power advocate, told the Washington Post: "When nuclear goes wrong, it goes wrong big." The area around the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine, for example, is a virtual no man's land more than 20 years after the disaster there -- and cancer rates for hundreds of miles outside that zone remain precipitously high.

Cheap, mass-produced energy has probably lifted more people out of poverty than any other force. That fact must be acknowledged. But it also comes with a cost -- no matter what form it takes. The health and safety costs that come with nuclear power can be more extreme than most. The disaster in Japan is a warning against the hubristic idea we can ever make it perfectly safe.

Ben's a bit more sanguine about nukes than I am. Read the whole column for his take.

Looking forward to the day Philadelphia residents write for the Philadelphia Daily News*

If there's a trend to Larry Platt's columnist hires at the Philadelphia Daily News—aside from the fact that his "new"voices are familiar faces—it's that many of them seem not to bother being in Philadelphia that much.

Buzz Bissinger lives at least part-time in the Pacific Northwest. Ombudsman Richard Aregood is planted in North Dakota. And Marc Lamont Hill's main professional gig these days is at Columbia University ... in New York. Ed Rendell apparently still lives in Pennsylvania, at least, but he's writing about sports—and despite the former governor's enthusiasm, I actually don't care at all what he thinks about the topic. (I've tried reading his sports columns. They're boring, and would be utterly unremarkable were it not for the fact that Big Ed was writing them.)

Now, these guys all have far deeper roots in Philadelphia than I do, admittedly, so my grounds for criticism are maybe pretty thin. But the great thing about the Daily News has been its relentless focus on the city; filling up the pages with celebrities who have one foot out the door seems like a departure from that mission.

*Part of my ongoing series to ensure I never work for a Philadelphia newspaper, apparently.

About Virgil Peck, Southeast Kansas, and state legislatures

A friend, knowing that I was born in Southeast Kansas and spent a couple of years working there, asks me about Virgil Peck. He's the state legislator who advocated shooting illegal immigrants like feral swine, then semi-apologized for it by saying: “I was just speaking like a southeast Kansas person."

Is that the way a Southeast Kansas person talks?

Yes. No. Kind of.

Southeast Kansas isn't really what most people think of when they think "Kansas." (I assume most people think flat, full of wheat fields, etc.) It's hilly country, with more trees than the rest of the state, and lots of abandoned mines that flourished a half-century or more ago. It is relatively poor, relatively uneducated, and a fairly depressing place to be. (At least, that's how I saw it during the two years I worked at the Parsons Sun, right after college.) In some ways, it has more in common with Arkansas and the Ozarks—which are relatively nearby—than with any other conception of "Kansas" I've ever held.

There are good people there. There are also a fair number of hillbillies. And there are more than a few people—the ones who remain—who have seen their livelihoods in the mining and railroad industries crumble (almost literally in some cases) from beneath them. And yes, I've heard the occasional suggestion that illegal immigrants be slaughtered by sharpshooters.

I've also heard it outside Southeast Kansas, for that matter. I had one relationship end, in part, because of a similar comment. (It wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back, but it was one of them.) So Virgil Peck wasn't really speaking "like a southeast Kansas person"—he was speaking like a hick. Hicks are everywhere. In Kansas, a lot of them get elected to the Legislature.



This, I gather, is a problem with state legislatures everywhere. There's a certain type of gregarious backslapping dummy who has no real viable skill except to get himself (it's usually men) elected to a low-level job that most locals don't really pay close attention to. They know they hate the "legislature" but they're pretty sure they like Virgil Peck. And the Pecks of the world, despite their all-pervading mediocrity, are convinced they're the smartest people in the world. It's an ugly mix, made more visible by the fact that there's often a reporter or two on the statehouse beat to publicize the more egregious gaffes.

In defense of Planned Parenthood

Federal funding for Planned Parenthood is this week's topic of my Scripps column with Ben Boychuk. I suspect my pro-choice friends will not think me vigorous enough in defending the right to abortion, but my mindset was to persuade pro-lifers—to the extent they can be convinced—that Planned Parenthood is worthy of federal support. My take:

For many years now, pro-choice liberals have accused pro-life conservatives of being more concerned about the lives of the unborn than they are of living, breathing human beings. Often, that charge is a bit over-the-top and unfair. In the case of the Planned Parenthood debate, it's not.

In the course of a single year, Planned Parenthood carries out nearly 1 million screenings for cervical cancers. More than 800,000 breast exams. It provides contraception to nearly 2.5 million women. And it performs roughly 4 million tests for sexually transmitted diseases.

Planned Parenthood, in other words, helps keep a great many women healthy. The agency's efforts in this regard are for the unmitigated good.

The agency also provides more than 300,000 abortions a year. Federal funding does not directly subsidize those abortions, but let's be honest: If Planned Parenthood crumbles because it loses its federal funding, it can't carry out those abortions. But neither can it do all the other good stuff it does.

Which is why thoughtful abortion opponents should carefully consider their support for the effort to defund Planned Parenthood. Maybe they succeed in putting a dent in the number of abortions -- but they do so at the cost of condemning many women to late detection of (and death from) cervical cancer, breast cancer, HIV and more. Is that trade-off worth it?

Other conservatives will argue that, in a time of belt-tightening, the federal government can't afford to subsidize every good thing. Perhaps that's true, and we should set priorities. Public health, it seems, should be among the highest priorities -- a society can't function if it's sick and dying. Women's health is a huge part of public health.

And Planned Parenthood is perhaps the most reliable provider of women's health services. The funding should stay.

Ben has a different take, obviously. Click the link to read his side.

A quick note about James O'Keefe and 'undercover journalism'

James O'Keefe has a couple of NPR scalps on his belt, and good for him I guess. Jonah Goldberg tweets, "I remember when undercover stings are what made '60 Minutes' America's greatest journalistic enterprise," presumably hitting at hypocrite liberals who are irritated by O'Keefe's stings.

But O'Keefe's brand of journalism owes more to "Borat" than to "60 Minutes." In Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen's M.O. was to walk into situations and be the biggest, most annoying jerk he could. Sometimes people were irritated, in which case the comedy came from their consternation, or they remained polite—in which case the comedy came from them accommodating a huge jerk in their midst.

O'Keefe, I don't think, has ever unconvered real malfeasance at the organization he targets. Instead, he's mostly taken advantage of humankind's natural tendency to avoid confrontation or to be a little too solicitous. He's the kind of guy who'd videotape you listening to your grandfather's racist grumblings with a strained smile on your face, then release it to Fox News as an exposé of your own racism.

Most people aren't inclined to loudly confront wrongheaded people they've just met. As long as that impulse exists, James O'Keefe will have plenty more exposes he can release.

In the New York Times: Blaming the 11-year-old victim of a gang rape?

An awful story this morning from Texas, where 18 young men and teen boys are under suspicion for gang-raping an 11-year-old girl—under threat of being beaten if she didn't comply. The story includes this paragraph:

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands — known as the Quarters — said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

I try to avoid using this language in public, mostly, but I think it might be appropriate here: Fuck. That. Shit.

This paragraph doesn't explicitly say that the 11-year-old girl brought a gang rape under threat of beating upon herself, but it certainly implies it. And it does so, as far as I can tell, without any pushback from a responsible person who might say, quite reasonably: "No matter how an 11-year-old girl dresses, there is never a reason or an excuse or any kind of mitigation for threatening to beat a woman and then raping her. Ever."

Instead, the story we're treated to is one in which we exclusively from people who feel some level of sympathy for the rapists:

The case has rocked this East Texas community to its core and left many residents in the working-class neighborhood where the attack took place with unanswered questions. Among them is, if the allegations are proved, how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?

“It’s just destroyed our community,” said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.”

The Times, I gather, didn't make contact with the girl or her mother. Still, it would've been nice to have this story feature the voice of somebody saying, essentially, "This girl will have to live with this the rest of her life." We never do. Instead, we're treated to a version of adolescent slut-shaming. The Times can and should do much better than this.

NYT: Nation better prepared for rising gas prices

I, too, am better prepared for the rising cost of gasoline this time around. I live in the city and don't have a car!

It's true that some of my costs will still go up, in the form of rising prices on food and goods that have been shipped to Philadelphia, where I live. But not having and using a car provides a rather substantial cushion against the shock of an oil-price spike. I guess this lifestyle isn't for everybody, but—despite the overall higher costs of living in a city than living in Kansas—it's probably better-suited to my pocketbook.

Today in inequality reading: CAP and employee compensation

One of the things that has struck me as unjust about growing income inequality in the United States is that American workers have vastly increased their productivity over the last three decades—and yet have seen almost no income growth as a result. Today, the Center for American Progress offers a suggestion to solve that issue—suggesting, in essence, that all employees (and not just top executives) share in a firm's growing wealth:

The reform encourages firms to develop broad-based incentive compensation systems that link employee earnings to the performance of the firm. This reform would give employees access to the capital-related earnings of their companies comparable to that of the senior executives who run these firms.

Specifically, our plan would give favorable tax treatment to compensation systems that link incentive pay to company performance if all of the company’s full-time employees participated in them and if the value expended on the top 5 percent of employees by salary was also expended on the bottom 80 percent of employees by salary.

I've not read through the details of the report, and I don't really know what arguments exist against encouraging firms to spread performance-based compensation down the food chain. But I do suspect that publicly traded firms have rewarded CEOs based on quarterly reports and how they affect a company's stock price—encouraging top leaders to focus on short-term tricks rather than the long-term value of their company. If this suggestion would exacerbate that problem, I'd be hesitant. Republicans, I suspect, will cry "socialism" over the matter—but if it's a choice between better-compensating employees in order to get a tax break or having taxes taken and redistributed to support the safety net, I imagine they could be convinced to support the former.

Fan mail: Charlie Sheen

Ed Spondike, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite correspondents, writes in response to this week's Scripps column about Charlie Sheen. An excerpt:

I must comment on one statement that was in your column. "Too much wealth and privilege can be corrosive in the wrong hands. And there's nothing Americans love more than watching the rich and powerful crash and burn." Unfortunately, I have to disagree this statement. Entertainers, including actors, singers, and sports stars, constantly are given multiple chances to redeem themselves from crime and bad behavior. Most of the people who idolize them seem to be quite willing to forgive their transgressions, and in some cases, actually excuse their behavior.

My response: I do think we like to see the rich and powerful crash and burn. But we're all human: We also like to see a good redemption story. If Charlie Sheen can pull himself out of the crazy spiral and come back in five years to earn an Oscar nomination, Americans will eat it up—particularly if he gives some contrite, wrly self-deprecating interviews on TV. There are plenty of second acts in American life. That doesn't mean we don't also enjoy watching train wrecks.

Solving the library e-book problem

HarperCollins has announced that it will allow libraries to lend e-books 26 times before demanding those libraries pay, essentially, a replacement fee:

Its sales president, Josh Marwell, believes that's only fair: 26, he claims, is the average number of loans a print book would survive before having to be replaced. ... Clearly, printed books last a lot longer than 26 loans," says Philip Bradley, vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.

I'm also skeptical that a print book only lasts 26 checkouts. And I'm interested in the topic since I finished reading an e-book edition of Neil Sheehan's "A Fiery Peace in a Cold War" that was "borrowed" from the Philadelphia Free Library. What's frustrating about HarperCollins' idea is that it tries to force a print-book scarcity business model upon e-books. That's unnecessary, and probably dumb. Why not come up with a new model that fits the new medium?

Here's what I suggest:

• Instead of forcing libraries to "purchase" e-books and then purchase replacement copies, publishers should set up a subscription-type licensing service. Charge the libraries (say) a $50 annual fee to make 100 e-books available. (I'm throwing out a number, here, for the sake of argument.) That gives the publishers the renewable source of income they need to continue operating without imposing silly rules.

• The libraries would be bound by somewhat similar rules as they are now. If they wanted to have, say, 10 copies of a "Harry Potter" book as part of their 100 licensed books, they could, but each book could only be checked out one at a time: If 10 people were already reading "Harry Potter" then subsequent readers would have to wait until a copy was free. That would prevent people from bypassing paid e-books entirely—lots of people want their copy of a book now, or they want access to their copy in something like perpetuity—leaving libraries in something like the same role they fulfill now. And libraries could revise their stock at any time, discarding five Harry Potter licenses when the book becomes less popular in favor of other selections.

Full-disclosure: This idea is inspired by my Macworld colleague Lex Friedman, who has written about wanting to see a "Netflix for e-books."

In any case, it's clearly silly to make a library purchase a "new" e-book when the "old" e-book hasn't (and can't) degrade in the same way as a print book. Rather than force libraries to live by a model that doesn't fit the digital medium, make a new model. HarperCollins' solution is short-sighted and doesn't actually serve its customers all that well.

The only thing I plan to write about Charlie Sheen

Believe it or not, that's what this week's Scripps column is about. It started out as a response to S.T. Karnick's blog post at The American Culture asserting that Sheen's recent Tour of Self-Destruction signified some deeper illness in American society—an illness due to "moral relativism."

My take:

Is there a larger societal lesson to be learned from Charlie Sheen? Not really.

If Sheen has taught us anything, it's stuff we've known for a long time: Too much wealth and privilege can be corrosive in the wrong hands. And there's nothing Americans love more than watching the rich and powerful crash and burn.

But nobody's really endorsing Sheen's behavior or making excuses for him. Where's the relativism? Who is looking at Sheen and offering him up as an example for our youth? Who is endorsing the idea that it is OK to go on cocaine binges, abuse your wife and flake out on your job ... if that's what you really want to do? Nobody, except perhaps for the straw men who exist in the imaginations of moral scolds among us.

If there's hay to be made here, perhaps it's in the fact that so many Americans have made sport of Sheen's erratic and bizarre media appearances. Who hasn't made or heard a Charlie Sheen joke in recent weeks? The man appears to be destroying his career and many of his relationships, yet we treat the whole matter like it's another, somewhat diverting episode of his sitcom. It's ugly and sordid: Pass the popcorn.

Even then, it's hard to get worked up: Such impulses are as old as gladiator fights, the bearded lady at the circus, and rubbernecking at car crashes. Humans rarely turn their eyes away from disasters and mayhem. Sheen seems to be providing plenty of both.

What's he getting for his efforts? A lost job, apparently. The mockery of an entire nation. Perhaps a lawsuit or two. Charlie Sheen is nobody's hero. If that's moral relativism, heaven help us when America finds its moral rectitude again.

Quick note: "Moral scolds," in retrospect, is a kind of easy name-calling I wish I'd avoided.

On Westboro, Sarah Palin and the First Amendment

Sarah Palin doesn't like the Westboro decision:

Common sense & decency absent as wacko "church" allowed hate msgs spewed@ soldiers' funerals but we can't invoke God's name in public square

So let me just point out: Today's decision further guarantees the right of Palin to march her family and her church down to a public square and talk about God all they want! By protecting Fred Phelps' right to speech, Palin's rights have been preserved, too!

Of course, Palin isn't talking about the right of individuals to proclaim their views and faith in public. She's talking about the right of government to essentially subsidize and sponsor religious expressions in the public square. And ... that's not what government is supposed to do. It's prohibited. And for good reason.

Either Palin doesn't understand the distinction, or she's demagoguing it. Either way, shame on her for trying to make her fellow Americans dumber about the issues at stake.

Samuel Alito's weird dissent in the Westboro case

Samuel Alito offered the only dissent to today's Supreme Court ruling affirming the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to mount its anti-gay pickets at military funerals. If I read the dissent correctly, he claims the First Amendment didn't protect Westboro's picket of Matthew Snyder's funeral because some of picketing material might've implied that Snyder himself—a private individual—was gay:

Other signs would most naturally have been understood
as suggesting—falsely—that Matthew was gay. Homosexuality was the theme of many of the signs. There were
signs reading “God Hates Fags,” “Semper Fi Fags,” “Fags
Doom Nations,” and “Fag Troops.” Id., at 3781–3787.
Another placard depicted two men engaging in anal intercourse. A reasonable bystander seeing those signs would
have likely concluded that they were meant to suggest
that the deceased was a homosexual.

And later:

In light of this evidence, it is abundantly clear that
respondents, going far beyond commentary on matters of
public concern, specifically attacked Matthew Snyder
because (1) he was a Catholic and (2) he was a member of
the United States military. Both Matthew and petitioner
were private figures,16
and this attack was not speech on a
matter of public concern. While commentary on the Catholic Church or the United States military constitutes
speech on matters of public concern, speech regarding
Matthew Snyder’s purely private conduct does not.

Even if Westboro has the right to demonstrate against Catholicism and the U.S. military, in other words, the church doesn't have a right to cast a false light on a private individual's behavior. Which: So far so good. That's true. But Alito brings his point home in a way that I find confusing:

I fail to see why actionable
speech should be immunized simply because it is interspersed with speech that is protected. The First Amendment allows recovery for defamatory statements that are
interspersed with nondefamatory statements on matters
of public concern, and there is no good reason why respondents’ attack on Matthew Snyder and his family should be
treated differently.

There's one potential problem with this: As I understand it, you can't libel the dead—and you can't defame the dead either. "As a rule, you cannot defame the dead. Under the law, the right to not be defamed is a personal right – only the person in question can sue for defamation. Therefore, a family member cannot bring a claim against you." And Matthew Snyder is, of course, dead.

Is there some sort of right to privacy that private figures retain in death that public figures don't? Because on the face of it, Alito's dissent stretches for a pretty iffy reading of the law in order to justify trampling Westboro's First Amendment rights. What am I missing?

Chief Justice Roberts: Protecting Westboro's hate speech makes America great

And I agree:

Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move
them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—
inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react
to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we
have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful
speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle
public debate. That choice requires that we shield Westboro from tort liability for its picketing in this case.

More quotes from the SCOTUS ruling on Westboro Baptist Church

I find this section interesting:

Westboro’s choice to convey its views in conjunction with
Matthew Snyder’s funeral made the expression of those
views particularly hurtful to many, especially to Matthew’s father. The record makes clear that the applicable
legal term—“emotional distress”—fails to capture fully the
anguish Westboro’s choice added to Mr. Snyder’s already
incalculable grief. But Westboro conducted its picketing
peacefully on matters of public concern at a public place
adjacent to a public street. Such space occupies a “special
position in terms of First Amendment protection.”

(Snip)

Simply put, the church members had the right to be
where they were. Westboro alerted local authorities to its
funeral protest and fully complied with police guidance on
where the picketing could be staged. The picketing was
conducted under police supervision some 1,000 feet from
the church, out of the sight of those at the church. The
protest was not unruly; there was no shouting, profanity,
or violence.

The record confirms that any distress occasioned by
Westboro’s picketing turned on the content and viewpoint
of the message conveyed, rather than any interference
with the funeral itself. A group of parishioners standing
at the very spot where Westboro stood, holding signs that
said “God Bless America” and “God Loves You,” would not
have been subjected to liability. It was what Westboro
said that exposed it to tort damages.

Westboro Baptist Church wins in the Supreme Court. Good.

Still reading the SCOTUS ruling, but here's a key part early:

Westboro addressed matters of public import on public property, in a peaceful manner, in full compliance with the guidance of local officials. It did not disrupt Mathew Snyder’s funeral, and its choice to picket at that time and place did not alter the nature of its
speech. Because this Nation has chosen to protect even hurtful
speech on public issues to ensure that public debate is not stifled,
Westboro must be shielded from tort liability for its picketing in this
case.

I think this is the right decision. As I wrote in the Scripps column last October:

The case has been broadly portrayed as the church causing offense by inflicting itself upon a grieving family at the funeral of Snyder's son. The facts are somewhat different. Westboro members did indeed set up a picket -- but as required by law, they were 1,000 feet away from the funeral when it occurred. Snyder's family only encountered Phelps' vile words through after-the-fact news reports and a visit to Westboro's website.

Fred Phelps didn't inflict himself on Albert Snyder, in other words; Snyder subjected himself to Phelps' message. It's thus difficult to see how any exception to the First Amendment, however narrow, would fit this case. Under these circumstances, a court ruling against Phelps could only be seen as punishment for having and expressing the wrong beliefs. As repugnant as those beliefs are, that's not supposed to happen in America.

About that NYT poll on unions

It would be nice if the Times' poll focused on the feelings of Wisconsin residents. But since the assault on unions transcends Wisconsin, the poll is still valuable. Here's what it finds:

Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions by a margin of nearly two to one: 60 percent to 33 percent. While a slim majority of Republicans favored taking away some bargaining rights, they were outnumbered by large majorities of Democrats and independents who said they opposed weakening them.

Now: If I remember my health care debate correctly, Republicans believe that polls showing this level of opposition to a policy makes that policy democratically illegitimate. I'm sure they'll follow through on their rhetoric and cease their union-busting activities immediately.