Today in Austin, Dubya yet again demonstrated his complete lack of understanding of the English language:

“The great thing about America is everybody should vote.”

Awesome — New York City has decided that it will sever all ties to the Boy Scout of America at the end of the current contract, given the organization’s overt discrimination against gays. (I particularly love the letter from a representative of the Boy Scouts claiming that they don’t discriminate; how else does he explain their position in front of the Supreme Court last term?) In addition, LA cut off all support of the Boy Scouts last week, which includes the police support of the Explorers.

Meanwhile, in the how-brazen-can-you-get department, the Boy Scouts are suing the Broward School Board for evicting them from the city’s schools. The Scouts claim an absolute First Amendment right of “access to open forums” — the schools themselves. They also claim that their right to expressive freedom (the right which was upheld by the Court in allowing them to exclude gays) also means that others cannot exclude them; not only are the holes in this argument big enough to drive a truck through, the Justices of the Court predicted this consequence in their questioning of the Scouts lawyer, and legitimized it by asking him if the organization was willing to fight for their rights even if it meant that governmental agencies would then have to sever their ties to the Scouts.

Remember the New Yorker article I talked about a couple of days ago? Turns out that parts of it were totally fabricated. Rothman’s mom worked at the company he “infiltrated,” he never received a free massage, and he made up interactions; my faith in the media is shot.

(By the way, now that NewsBot has become merely a search of Lycos’ news feeds, the only search engine left that specializes in news articles is Excite’s Precision Search, and it’s not all that great. Wouldn’t this be a great niche for Google to slide into?)

Neale really is a devious genius.

Finally, there’s a great reason to work for the U.S. government! Do you think that all the people who already have Iridium handsets will get to play?

Teen arrested for tossing baby out of a window in New York. Is there a better statement than this as to why the 15-year-olds that I’m seeing in adolescent clinic shouldn’t be trying to get pregnant?

From Clinton: “Tag… you’re it!”

OK, this really is the coolest Lego sculpture I’ve seen. I just don’t see how he did it without glue; I wonder how much the damn thing weighs in its entirety.

I highly recommend taking advantage of the eight days remaining in the VMware hobbyist pricing scheme. VMware is the single best way to be able to test out new software configurations and installation packages; it also can serve as a protected enclave in which to open virus-laden email, run crash-heavy apps, or use RealPlayer.

Dahlia Lithwick is the only Supreme Court reporter that will not only write about the general arguments made before the Court, but will also note the conversation the Justices had about the now-famous pre-teen arrested for eating fries in the Washington Metro. Dahlia rocks.

I told you so.