Choice Reads

I’ve been too busy with real-life stuff this week to do much babbling on the internet, but a few items caught my eye that I simply must share with you.

First, the Supreme Court ruled against Arizona’s campaign finance laws that provided matching public funds to candidates who ran against wealthy, self-financed candidates.

It was those matching funds that produced a challenge from well-financed candidates, backed by the Goldwater Institute and other conservative interests. The candidates argued that the matching funds “chilled” their freedom of speech because they were afraid to spend more than the limit that triggered the funds.

Just try to wrap your brain around that logic.  Can we now all agree that the Roberts court is dangerously stuffed with plutocratic wingdings?

In other irritating news, this Texas billionaire managed to even die at just the right moment, during the one-year lapse in inheritance taxes built into George W. Bush’s budget chicanery. Now his heirs will get a cool $9 billion tax-free (unlike, say, the income one earns through working). On top of that, it seems they’ll inherit some stuffed polar bears too:

An avid big game hunter — Mr. Duncan has more than 500 entries in the Safari Club International record book for killing animals including polar bears, rhinoceroses, bighorn sheep, lions and elephants— he made a $1 million donation in his will to the Shikar Safari Club International Foundation.

On a somewhat lighter — though perhaps no less disturbing — note, the Stranger has an amazing cover story (NSFW!) about a strip club in Seattle called the Lusty Lady, which is closing down. It’s a long piece, but I’ll just say that the details get more eye-popping as you keep reading, and leave it at that.