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States cannot ban the sale or rental of ultraviolent video games to children, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, rejecting such limits as a violation of young people's First Amendment rights and leaving it up to parents and the multibillion-dollar gaming industry to decide what kids can buy.

The high court, on a 7-2 vote, threw out California's 2005 law covering games sold or rented to those under 18, calling it an unconstitutional violation of free-speech rights. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia, said, "Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply."

Scalia, who pointed out the violence in a number of children's fairy tales, said that while states have legitimate power to protect children from harm, "that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."

Justices Stephen Breyer and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision, with Breyer saying it makes no sense to legally block children's access to pornography yet allow them to buy or rent brutally violent video games.

One of my earliest memories of revulsion against war came from seeing a photograph from the First World War when I was a teenager. It was nothing gory. Just a picture of a military officer, in an impressive uniform, talking to a puzzled and forlorn-looking old peasant woman with a cloth wrapped around her head.

He said simply: "Don't you understand, madam? The village is not there any more."

To many such people of that era, the village was the only world they knew. And to say that it had been destroyed in the carnage of war was to say that there was no way for them to go back home, that their whole world was gone.

Recently that image came back, in a wholly different context, while seeing pictures of American seniors carrying signs that read "Hands off my Social Security" and "Hands off my Medicare."

They want their Social Security and their Medicare to stay the way they are -- and their anger is directed against those who want to change the financial arrangements that pay for these benefits.

Their anger should be directed instead against those politicians who were irresponsible enough to set up these costly programs without putting aside enough money to pay for the promises that were made -- promises that now cannot be kept, regardless of which political party controls the government.

Someone needs to say to those who want Social Security and Medicare to continue on unchanged: "Don't you understand? The money is not there any more.

With just two weeks left until the start of the fiscal year, California's budget plans stalled Thursday after Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a spending proposal by Democratic legislators, saying it was inadequate, and insisted that Republicans compromise on taxes.

"California is facing a fiscal crisis, and very strong medicine must be taken," Brown said while rejecting the budget that Democratic legislators passed Wednesday as an alternative to his plan. "I don't want to see more billions of borrowing, legal maneuvers that are questionable and a budget that will not stand the test of time."

Brown blamed Republican lawmakers for "obstructing" a vote by Californians on his plan to extend and raise taxes to balance the budget and prevent deeper cuts to education and courts. But it was Democratic legislative leaders who reacted angrily to Brown's action, saying they were "deeply dismayed."

The leaders, who spent most of the year taking direction on a budget strategy from the governor, appeared blindsided by the governor's veto, which marked the first time in California history that a governor had taken such action.

"His decision is apparently part of some elaborate strategy to force a confrontation," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, adding that Brown's continual push for his budget plan "ring(s) hollow if he is unable to deliver Republican votes."

One of the strangest aspects of the #Weinergate story is that they are three people that are fairly central to the story that nobody seems to be able to locate. Neither the prescient Weiner-obsessed whistleblower PatriotUSA76, nor the two high school girls named “Betty and Veronica” in Tommy Christopher’s original piece reporting on the two.

I’ve discussed the situation with Patriot a number of times, so the update is – still, nobody seems to have ever spoken to them on the phone. Nobody knows who they are and there are contradictions in their story.

I had reporters calling me all weekend to try and find Betty and Veronica. These are people from major press organizations with big resources behind them. No sign of Betty or Veronica. Tommy Christopher says he spoke to Betty’s Mom on the phone and did other things to confirm their identities and it would be a fatal career move to just lie about that, so it’s hard to believe that that’s what happened. On the other hand, nobody else has seen this proof as far as I know (perhaps Colby Hall, the managing editor?) and Tommy has been very belligerently defensive about his reporting. And again, reporters have put dozens of hours into searching records and knocking on door with no trace.

Significantly, Betty seems to be connected at least four people central to Weinergate – Weiner followed her, she talked on Twitter with stripper @GingerLee, Betty contacted the 17 year old girl in Delaware, and she had some interactions with PatriotUSA76. It also seems like @GennetteC knew about her.

It’s weird and it’s weird in a way that’s not normal, either. When else has this happened? I can’t remember another story with 3 (or more, really) phantom people. The fact that Weiner is guilty of doing what Patriot long suspected him of doing makes it more weird, not less weird.

If she were to take her shot, she'd run on an economic package reminiscent of Jack Kemp, the late congressman who championed supply-side economics and was the GOP vice presidential nominee in 1996. "In my perfect world," she explains, "we'd take the 35% corporate tax rate down to nine so that we're the most competitive in the industrialized world. Zero out capital gains. Zero out the alternative minimum tax. Zero out the death tax."

The 3.8 million-word U.S. tax code may be irreparable, she says, a view she's held since working as a tax attorney at the IRS 20 years ago. "I love the FAIR tax. If we were starting over from scratch, I would favor a national sales tax." But she's not a sponsor of the FAIR tax bill because she fears that enacting it won't end the income tax, and "we would end up with a dual tax, a national sales tax and an income tax."

Her main goal is to get tax rates down with a broad-based income tax that everyone pays and that "gets rid of all the deductions." A system in which 47% of Americans don't pay any tax is ruinous for a democracy, she says, "because there is no tie to the government benefits that people demand. I think everyone should have to pay something."

On the stump she emphasizes an "America-centered energy policy" based on "drilling and mining for our rich resources here." And she believes that repealing ObamaCare is a precondition to restoring a prosperous economy. "You cannot have a pro-growth economy and advise, simultaneously, socialized medicine."

Her big challenge is whether the country is ready to support deep spending cuts. On this issue, she carries a sharper blade than everyone except Ron Paul. She voted for the Paul Ryan budget—but "with an asterisk." Why? "The asterisk is that we've got a huge messaging problem [on Medicare]. It needs to be called the 55-and-Under Plan. I can't tell you the number of 78-year-old women who think we're going to pull the rug out from under them."

Retiring doctors, low Medi-Cal reimbursement rates, and the federal health care reform law are exacerbating California's shortage of primary care physicians, Bay Area health care providers and medical associations say.

Already, only a quarter of California's counties meet the recommended ratio of 60 to 80 primary care doctors for every 100,000 residents, according to the California Medical Association. (In the Bay Area, there are 78 primary care physicians for every 100,000 residents.)

“We are very much worried about the shortage in general,” said Callie Langton, health care workforce policy expert at the California Academy of Family Physicians. “Twenty years ago, a lot more physicians were going into primary care, and the replacement rate is not high.”

Nearly a third of doctors are 60 or older and are close to retirement, but only 42 percent of medical students are going into primary care. According to the California Medical Association and the California Healthcare Foundation, the number of young doctors pursuing primary care decreased over the past decade because the it's one of the lowest paid medical specialties.

Family practitioners earn an average of $143,000, while anesthesiologists and surgeons can earn well over $200,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While the number of primary care doctors is shrinking, the demand for the care they provide is about to soar, thanks to the federal health care reform law.

Under the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, as many as 6 million more Californians will be able to obtain health insurance coverage, with nearly half eligible for coverage under Medi-Cal. Many of the newly insured will try to seek treatment from primary care physicians and family practice doctors, who provide the kind of cradle-to-grave, coordinated care that emphasizes preventive medicine, which can help reduce health care costs.

But fewer physicians than ever — just 57 percent — say they are now willing to accept new Medi-Cal patients, according to the California Healthcare Foundation. Many doctors say the reimbursement rate — that is, the amount of money the state pays them for treating patients — is too low. California sets the rate, which is the fourth lowest among all 50 states, according to the California Medical Association.

As you may have heard by now, San Francisco will be voting this November on whether or not to ban circumcision in the city.

Defenders of the measure say it’s all about “human rights” and “protecting babies” from unnecessary procedures.

But critics suspected there was something vaguely anti-Semitic about the whole proposal, since among Jews (and Muslims, as well) circumcising male babies is a religious duty, not just a mistaken medical procedure.

Ban proponents insisted their proposal had nothing to do with Jews — really, it’s all about the rights of children.

Well, any doubt that they were lying have now been dispelled, with the publication of new campaign literature for the upcoming circumcision ban. The campaign comic book, called “Foreskin Man,” after its baby-saving superhero, features a litany of evil Jews doing battle with blond Nordic saviors.

Yes, really.

(Oh, and did I mention the artist’s last name is Hess? A relative of Rudolph, perhaps?)

On June 1, 2009, General Motors filed for bankruptcy, backed by $30 billion in support from the federal government. The same day, in the same New York courthouse, a judge approved Chrysler’s plan to forge an alliance with Fiat and emerge from bankruptcy as a restructured business with an uncertain future.

Two years later, all three American automakers have returned to profitability, the industry has added new shifts and 115,000 jobs, and GM and Chrysler have returned more than 50 percent of the government’s investment. The industry is mounting one of the most improbable turnarounds in recent history.

There is a lot to this point, but it’s not really so simple. You can’t compare all of these net tax receipts (or more broadly, economic activity) to what would happen in “the world as it is today, minus GM.”

First, in the event of a bankruptcy, you don’t burn down the factories, erase all the source code on all the hard disks, make it illegal to use the brand name Chevrolet, and execute all of the employees. Others take ownership of the assets, and the employees go on with their lives. Some of these assets will be put to use generating revenues, profits, and taxes, and some of these former employees will get jobs or start businesses, and generate revenues, profits, and taxes. In order to measure the effect of the bailout over, say, five or ten years, you have to compare the actual taxes collected to what would happened over this same period in the counterfactual case where the bankruptcy was allowed to proceed. What owners would have bought the factories and IP assets, and what would they have done with them? What businesses would the former employees have started? Who would have moved to Arizona and retired? What new industry clusters will evolve in Arizona because of this transfer of people?

Second, some of the profit GM makes today would have been made by other companies that picked up some of the slack if the company lost market share after a bankruptcy. They would pay taxes on these profits, and as far as government receipts are concerned, money is money. How would auto industry structure evolve over time given whatever changes happened to the assets currently owned by the legal entity GM, or the employees currently paid by it?

Anybody who tells you they can answer all of these questions reliably is full of it.

And that doesn’t even start to get to the really long-run considerations of what effects this has on rule of law and moral hazard (or if you want to make the case for the bailout, social solidarity and degradation of the working class).