Specialty of the House

So special, indeed, when it's on the menu cooked up by this particular House.

Here's Tbogg, quoting Rep. Renee Elmers on the meme of the moment: Obamacare makes men pay for maternity benefits "they" don't "need," because "they can't give birth!"

And in another venue—

There's a reason why the Republicans blocked the president's attempts to fill vacancies on the federal Court of Appeals for the DC circuit. They have made it a decades-long project to salt the federal courts with people like Janice Rogers Brown, and they are disinclined to allow anything as trivial as two presidential elections to stand in the way.

Referring to the healthcare reform law as "the behemoth known as the Affordable Care Act," the court said the case was not about the law's "constitutional authority." "Instead, we must determine whether the contraceptive mandate imposed by the Act trammels the right of free exercise -- a right that lies at the core of our constitutional liberties -- as protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. We conclude it does." The appeals court, widely regarded as the second-most powerful U.S. court after the Supreme Court, found the mandate was burdensome to business owners even if it does not require them to pay for contraception directly. "The burden on religious exercise does not occur at the point of contraceptive purchase," wrote Judge Janice Rogers Brown, an appointee of former President George W. Bush. "It occurs when a company's owners fill the basket of goods and services that constitute a healthcare plan."

(Judge Brown is one of the lasting gifts to the Republic of former president C-Plus Augustus, and her record is a chewy blob of wingnut goodness. Nakedly ideological and utterly heedless of precedents that she doesn't like, Brown believes the New Deal to have been "a socialist revolution," and has called the federal government a "leviathan" -- which, like "behemoth," which she used in her opinion today, is a term for a biblical monster....

When conservative politicians tell you that the DC circuit has enough judges to do the work in front of it, this is what they mean. This ruling is preposterous on its face -- Companies do not have a right to freedom of religion. People do. -- and intemperate in its language. ... This has been a long march for these people, and they believe that only their victories are permanent ones. ...

Before the end of the day, a TSA agent was killed at LAX, where Charles Pierce happened to be in transit—

Well, that was certainly a strange way to end the week. We would be remiss, however, if we didn't point out how well the local police handled the mass exodus of tourists wandering down Century Boulevard on foot. It looked like the last scene in Fiddler On The Roof, except with rollerboards and cellphones. We also would be remiss if we didn't point out that the TSA agents who were the targets of this latest impromptu exercise of Second Amendment rights probably were working without pay a couple of weeks ago because Tailgunner Ted Cruz is the single biggest jackass to hit American politics since the voters of Long Island sent John LeBoutillier into early retirement. This was (again) a day to celebrate the singular courage of public employees....

Later: the shooter was found to be carrying "anti-government material."

About which, more may become known, eventually. Or maybe not, assuming it's the usual right-winger: a loner, influenced by no one, and so, a non-story.