Last night, Rachel Maddow told Jon Stewart that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was merely trying to be shocking when he said the Voting Rights Act embodied a "perpetuation of racial entitlement" in America. "Being there in person you can see, ‘Oh, actually, he’s a troll,’" she said. "He’s saying this for effect. He knows it’s offensive and he knows it’s going to get a gasp from the courtroom, and he loves it. He’s like the guy on your blog comment thread using the n-word." I'd just point out the fact that someone's trolling doesn't mean they aren't really a racist. In fact, if you say a racist thing and you mean it to be racist, you're a racist. You're not pretending to be a racist by running up to a random person on the street and calling them the n-word -- if you do that, you literally are a racist. To put it plainly as possible, doing racist things is racist. Duh.
Antonin Scalia is a racist. It's plain as day.
Kansas adds legal protections for a doctor to lie to a pregnant woman about the health of a fetus, if the doctor believes the truth might lead the woman to abort. I wish I were kidding.
Here's a palate cleanser after that last one: a Planned Parenthood clinic in Denver is dealing with anti-choice nuts protesting the place with a novel fundraising idea. You can adopt a protester. For every pledge the Stapleton health center receives, they'll hang a ribbon outside the clinic, so the protesters can see just how much money they're helping Planned Parenthood raise. If you're going to troll someone, that's how you do it.
The long John Doe investigation of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker closes without the governor being charged. Interestingly, the prosecutor does not say Scooter is innocent of any crime, only that the investigation "failed to uncover sufficient evidence of additional wrongdoing beyond the six people charged." So, either Walker was in on what his staff was doing on his behalf or he was a clueless dope who had no idea what was happening right under his own nose. Keep in mind, Walker wants you to believe the latter. So he -- and his supporters, for that matter -- shouldn't take offense when you call the governor a freakin' idiot. It is, after all, his defense.
Finally, Kevin Drum would very much like to remind everyone that the sequester can only last for the remainder of this fiscal year -- so seven months. Not forever.
[cartoon via McClatchy Newspapers]
