This is one of those cases when people are making me feel like I must be a rocket scientist. If I’m a journalist and I hear from a political prisoner and sworn enemy of my country a story that includes physically impossible information, I’m pretty sure I’d decide it wasn’t true. All by myself without checking experts, I would decide that. I know — I’m so smart sometimes it’s just crazy.

(Kidding aside: does anybody think that the guys at Newsweek and all their legacy news-buddies have the slightest idea of the damage they caused? Do the riots that killed 15 people — let alone the enormous hostility throughout the Muslim world, which now refuses to believe that the story was false — mean anything to them? I haven’t seen anything to indicate that it does. Which is disgusting, actually.)

But I’ll be fair: it’s not the filibuster, of course. It’s that Democrats don’t want to vote on the judges because … well, because they can’t think of much else to do to throw their bantam weight around, I guess. So they’ve picked a fight over this and now they have to add all the usual “We’re good, they’re bad, this is important,” stuff to justify it. It’s still just about power, and the funny part of that is that the Congressional Republicans seem like they’ll do anything for this minority except spit-shine their shoes.

And to be fair (again — that’s twice now!), the inanity isn’t all on one side. Since I mention when I’m getting tired of obvious talking point stuff, I’ll be the first to say I’m getting tired of the new expression “an up-or-down vote.” A what? Up or down? Who comes up with this? What other kind of vote is there — side to side? Come to think of it though, maybe we should institute one of those. I think it might solve the whole problem. The Democrats obviously want to vote on whether these guys are right or left. I think we let anybody who wants to vote side to side, and the grown-ups can vote up or down.