I haven’t read the New Jersey gay marriage opinion. I’ve just been too busy with other things (including finishing Michael Connelly’s excellent “Echo Park”). And I don’t comment on judicial opinions that I haven’t read. Suffice it to say that I agree with the policy, but (based on previous similar efforts by other courts) I rather doubt I’d agree with the opinion — though I can’t know for sure without reading it.

Anyway, consider this an open thread on the topic.

Someone reached this blog by searching for “Kirsten Powers + nude.”

Weirdest thing: this blog is the top result for that search.

Sorry guys. I don’t have it.

iowahawk lampoons Byron Calame’s mea culpa, including its placement under something about perfume critics. It’s funny even before you start reading it. Just the top graphic of the post is priceless.

Dahlia Lithwick is upset at Antonin Scalia and company for pointing out that legal reporting is often inaccurate. Whines Lithwick:

[I]f anything, the Supreme Court press corps is hypercautious in its attention to legal detail at the expense of sensationalism . . . [T]he claim that we are too careless to read opinions and too sloppy to report cases is gratuitous and wrong; it describes neither the reality of legal reporting nor the general legal readership.

Sorry, Ms. Lithwick, but that describes you to a “T.” To see why, browse through what I have said about you on this very blog.

Lithwick says:

And if they have specific suggestions for how legal journalists can do a better job, most of us are eager to hear them.

One word, Ms. Lithwick: honesty.

Give it a shot. For once.

A black Democrat runs for political office, and Republicans sponsor an advertisement attacking his record. Democrats assert that the commercial has racial overtones. Republicans claim that the ad makes a perfectly valid point about the candidate’s hypocrisy, as well as his devious way of answering questions.

A responsible media outlet describing such a commercial would simply report all the relevant facts, and let its readers decide which interpretation is true. (It might even link the ad on the Web version of its article!)

By contrast, an irresponsible leftist media outlet that favored the “racial overtones” explanation would present only those facts that support the assertion that the commercial is racially charged. Meanwhile, any hint that the commercial might be making a legitimate point would be excised from the story — neatly and cleanly, like a skilled surgeon removes a cancerous growth.

If the operation is successful, readers will never know there is another side to the story.

I’ll give you one guess as to which way the L.A. Times handled one such situation yesterday.

[Cue Jeopardy theme music.]

The correct answer, as you have no doubt guessed, is that the L.A. Times handled this situation with the hackery and dishonesty that you have come to expect from this newspaper.

The short version is that the paper has an entire article about how Republicans are racist for running a commercial in which a white actress says she met Ford at a “Playboy party.” Yet the article fails entirely to explain the relevance of the reference: namely, that there is an ongoing controversy in Tennessee regarding Ford’s attendance at a Playboy party, including his and his campaign’s lame attempts to implicitly deny it. Readers are left completely in the dark — as L.A. Times readers so often are.

Here are the full details:

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