Today’s edition of quick hits:
* RBG: “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg returned to the Supreme Court bench on Tuesday, about two months after cancer surgery…. Tuesday’s argument was a technical one, considering whether the federal government may challenge patents in a specialized court. Justice Ginsburg asked crisp and clear questions of both sides, and she seemed to express skepticism of one aspect of the government’s argument.”
* Speaking of SCOTUS: “For the second time in as many weeks, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has sided with liberal Supreme Court justices to disagree with how lower courts have interpreted Supreme Court precedent.”
* Quite a story: “Whistleblowers from within President Donald Trump’s National Security Council have told a congressional committee that efforts by former national security adviser Michael Flynn to transfer sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia may have violated the law, and investigators fear Trump is still considering it, according to a new report obtained by NBC News.”
* This op-ed, written by Meredith Watson, serves as a reminder that the crisis in Virginia is not over: “When I came forward to report that Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax raped me when we were both Duke University students in 2000, I did so to support another victim of sexual assault and to remove that man from a position of national prominence.”
* Climate crisis: “High-tide flooding, which can wash water over roads and inundate homes and businesses, is an event that happens once in a great while in coastal areas. But its frequency has rapidly increased in recent years because of sea-level rise. Not just during storms but increasingly on sunny days, too.” * Polk Award winners are always deserving, but this year’s honorees struck me as especially notable. * A terribly disappointing story out of Alabama: Two decades ago, the editor of the tiny Democrat-Reporter newspaper in Linden, Ala., was being talked about as a potential contender for the Pulitzer Prize…. Now, Goodloe Sutton is back in the news again — this time because he recently called for mass lynchings and suggested that the Ku Klux Klan should return to ‘clean out’ Washington.” Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
