SCOTUS Monday Miscellany — On Tuesday

How can a "house spouse" have so many things to do that s/he runs behind on his/her blogging? If you don't know the answer to that, you're probably not a house spouse, and you possibly don't want to know the answer...

First, a few Supreme Court goodies (or baddies), most of them at Kos:

‘OK... Women and Blacks, go to
the back of the bus, er, I mean,
the ends of the rows!’

• ABC 13 News, Houston: Supreme Court blocks Texas from enforcing some abortion-clinic restrictions
  

  It's about damned time they did this! Regrettably, it's temporary, until the Court can research and decide whether to hear the appeal in the fall.

• Zwoof at Kos: Speaking of the SCOTUS, 3 Strikes Law Struck Down. Private Prisons Haz a Sad
  

  "Three strikes" was a terrible idea from the beginning: juries and/or judges, not legislators, should determine sentences based on circumstances; otherwise, why bother with a trial?

• Laura Clawson at Kos: Supreme Court upholds Oklahoma's use of drug that led to bloody, botched execution
  

  No, no, no: the bloodthirstiness of citizens of some states should not override the Eighth Amendment; if best evidence suggests that a method of execution is excruciatingly painful, that method should be forbidden as "cruel."

• Meteor Blades at Kos: Supreme Court rejects EPA's regulation of power plants' emissions of mercury and other toxins
  

Because obviously the toxicity of an emission simply must depend inversely on the cost of the process to remove it. [/irony] Damn it, serious decisions impacting the environment cannot be made in this way without endangering the lives and health of the Americaq public.

Next, a few items of (ahem) varying seriousness:

• Caitlin MacNeal at TPM: Texas AG: Clerks Can Refuse To Give Marriage Licenses To Gay Couples
  

  Perhaps this should have been listed with the SCOTUS posts above; then again, Texas seems never to have overcome its self‑image as a separate sovereign nation. Thank the good Dog it's not!
  
  I am happy to say that the Harris County Clerk's office, though run by a Republican, resolved the matter neatly by assigning deputy clerks who have religious objections to gay marriages to tasks other than, uh, paperwork for gay marriages. Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart has let it be known that there are only three (3) such religious recalcitrants among his clerks, so it's not a very big problem. In any case, Harris County's very large gay population are marrying each other at a steady clip, with few hitches, uh, glitches.

• Natasha Geiling at Think Progress: High Carbon Levels Can Make It Harder For Plants To Grow
  

  [/Sigh!] Another frequent conservative canard debunked, as is so often the case, by the actual science involved. No, global climate change, with its associated increase in atmospheric CO₂ levels, will NOT result in a surge in agricultural productivity. Don't you just love such damned fools? [/irony]

And last and probably least... 

• akadjian at Kos: CNN mistakes dildo flag at London pride parade for flag of ISIS
  

  What silliness! One might almost think CNN was set up by some clever London activist...