In her maiden Supreme Court appearance last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a provocative comment that probed the foundations of corporate law.

During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court’s majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.

But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong — and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges “created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons,” she said. “There could be an argument made that that was the court’s error to start with…[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics.”

I’ve maintained for years that decisions giving personhood to corporations have stripped the power from the people and put it in the hands of entities who just don’t care about anything but the bottom line. Backing away from that can only be a good thing. I think this may be a very wise Latina.

• How The Average U.S. Consumer Spends Their Paycheck — this is an interesting chart. We’re by no means average (we’ve never carried a car loan, for one thing, and we probably spend more on food and alcohol, even though we don’t eat out much), but the proportions seem to be generally true.

• Have you tried goofram yet? It’s a combination of google and wolfram|alpha.

• Think you’re a geek? Have you mastered the essential skills?

• The Young Republicans have elected an Aryan as their leader.

• Barney Frank visited the Daily Show last week.

• Just how rich is Fitzwilliam Darcy? (Here’s an interesting bit of trivia: Pride and Prejudice is not only my favorite novel, it’s also the first book I ever read aloud to Emmie — starting when she was about a week old.) And speaking of Jane Austen, today is the anniversary of her death.

• How’s your sense of pitch? (I scored a 26 out of 26 — which, if you’ve ever heard me sing, you know must mean that I hear pitch perfectly — I just can’t produce it that way.)

• White Men Can’t Judge.

• Local coverage of Zach Wamp’s psooper psekret christian adultery cult (read about yet another C Street philanderer here — and here!).

• You Suck at Craig’s List is pretty funny (via Joe. My. God.).

• Badass of the Week, featuring Blenda, the Viking Heroine!

• Rick Perry is apparently rethinking that whole Texas-as-a-country thing (seriously — who voted for this guy?).

• If you want to see the Great Barrier Reef, you better go soon.

• Can someone find Glenn Beck a nice small room with soft walls and a good therapist?

• … and speaking of health care (that’s what set Beck off)… Glenn doesn’t have it quite right when it comes to France’s system. The current American system is fine until you get sick, but will the next one be any better?

• This can’t be said enough times: the only thing abstinence-only “education” produces is unbelievably stupid kids.

• I loves me some Usain Bolt footage. He makes all the other best runners in the world look like my grandma.

• Understanding our economy.

• Drunk people doing yoga.

• And finally, Pat Buchanan: he really stepped in it this week — even more than usual!

• And you thought Episode I was bad? Check out an early draft of the original Star Wars.

• These two girls totally outdo Robert Loggia and Tom Hanks, but then again, they’re not supposedly improvising.

• Things disappear! Like the Aral Sea and the Amazon Rainforest — and beyond that, farms sink!

• Food from around the world: in hospitals and in schools (and speaking of school lunches, there’s this too)!

• How much do we love to defend marriage?? Oh, so much that the fun overflowed from one video into another! Also, we like to mock Pat Robertson with beautiful music videos.

• In medical and curing blindness news, this is really awesome.

• Do you like to have pictures with your data? Something to make it seem less dry and less science-y? Then you’re going to like these sites.

• Did you have a video made of your wedding? If so, it’s going to seem so incredibly lame after you watch this one.

• Watch out, all you greedy, overbearing religious cult-like groups! Scientology has Scientologists have been banned, and those awful Mormons have been taken down another notch. Ha.

• Attention Ferris Fans! Cameron’s home is for sale!

• And finally, some quotes for the week (we’ll start with the icky and work our way to the more reasonable):

Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate.

– G. Gordon Liddy, troglodyte, doing an awfully good job of making the other neanderthals of his ilk look almost human by comparison. (Update: and there’s always the problem of bears.)

Honestly folks. If we paid as much attention to the sexual activities of Catholic priests as we do to homosexuals wanting to marry, we probably could have saved a lot of children from years of guilt, shame, anger and pain.

– Helen Philpot

Did you know that Sonia Sotomayor will be the first Type 1 Diabetic to sit on the Supreme Court? Paige points us to some clarifying thoughts from Amy with regard to Sotomayor’s diabetes.

Here’s some video of the nom if you missed it (along with some other tidbits from around the web).

Are Republicans circling to hit the iceberg again?

And finally, this is yet another good thing.

• Check out the weather forecast in Crawford, TX. According to John McCain’s chief spiritual advisor, John “America is Damned” Hagee, this clearly means that God hates the Bushes.
• Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens was in Chattanooga yesterday to speak at the 68th conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. Check out the comments he made regarding the use of lethal injections: [H]e suggested that the recently-euthanized Kentucky Derby horse Eight Bells had probably experienced a more humane death than those who die on death row. “I had checked the procedure they used to kill the horse,” Justice Stevens said, expressing surprise to learn it is against the law in Kentucky to kill animals using one of the drugs in a three-drug lethal injection cocktail that many believe is cruel to humans.
• Now that he’s staring down the barrel at his reelection prospects, Chattanooga’s Mayor Littlefield apparently is having second thoughts about the drastic cuts he’s made to the curbside recycling program.
• Jesus! vs Darwin!
• You gotta love those family values republicans. It seems as though every week, another one finds his way out from under his rock…
• Would you crash this poll?
• The columnists speak of the end of the primary season: Eugene Robinson and Paul Krugman on the divisions in the Democratic party
• Cindy Lou: show me the money!

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia startled reporters in Boston just minutes after attending a mass, by flipping a middle finger to his critics.

Exhibit A: Vehemently opposed to voluntary abortion in America, but okay with forced abortion in China, where his cable investments depend on the good graces of the government.

Truly, he’s one of the most twisted and evil SOBs ever. There must be a special place in hell reserved for people like Pat, who is pissing all over Christianity in his rush to the bank.

In 2005, Robertson called on God to vacate seats in the Supreme Court (the almighty obliged, killing Rehnquist), advocated assassinating Hugo Chavez, said “judicial activists” were a more serious threat to America than terrorists, called criticism of the war treason, said John Roberts should be thankful for Hurricane Katrina, which he implied was “connected” to Roe v. Wade, attributed Ariel Sharon’s stroke to divine retribution for the Gaza pullout, said “the Antichrist is probably a Jew alive in Israel today,” and implied that God would wipe the residents of Dover, PA off the map for rejecting Creationism. Not to mention raising huge sums of cash from his zombie army, much of which is diverted from his charity operations to his business interests, including African diamond mines. Has long advocated that America simply ignore the Supreme Court. Robertson’s God is an insecure, misogynistic, homicidal fanatic — just like Pat.

What’s his story? Theocracy, ho!

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UPDATE: pink has faded to black.