Well, the U.S. Supreme Court today declined to consider reinstating Virginia's anti-spam law, which the state Supreme Court had tossed as an unconstitutional infringement on First Amendment free speech rights. The 2003 law had made it a misdemeanor to use false transmission information, such as a phony domain name, to send out unsolicited bulk e-mail -- and a felony if the junk e-mail was sent to more than 10,000 recipients in 24 hours. Loudoun County mass e-mailer Jeremy Jaynes became the nation's first spam felon in 2004 and was sentenced to nine years in prison - providing his legions of unwilling e-mail recipients a cathartic victory, but a brief one. The Virginia Supreme Court's ruling overturned the conviction. A pity, but apparently legally sound.

This is low, even for the fairly unbalanced folks over at Faux News:

In a clip introducing a segment about the new economic optimism pouring out of the Obama administration, which a Fox News anchor said summarized comments "in recent interviews," Joe Biden was shown saying, "The fundamentals of the economy are strong."

A couple of problems. The statement wasn't from a recent interview; it was from a campaign rally six months ago. And Biden wasn't declaring the fundamentals of the economy were strong, he was mocking John McCain for making that statement.

Compare the clips side-by-side at Think Progress.

Just who is the head of the Republican Party these days? Um, apparently not Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Steele took offense during a CNN appearance over the weekend when host D.L. Hughley referred to radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh as the party's de facto leader. “No he’s not," Steele said. "I’m the de factor leader of the Republican Party. Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh, the whole thing is entertainment. Yes, it’s incendiary, yes, it’s ugly.” Limbaugh fired back a salvo Monday informing Steele, “You are head of the RNC. You are not head of the Republican Party. Tens of millions of conservatives and Republicans have nothing to do with the RNC and right now they want nothing to do with it.” Whereupon Steele apologized to Limbaugh. Monday, Steele told Politico, “My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh." Just what about Limbaugh does he respect? The incendiary part? Or the ugly part? Or is it the whole darn package that's so admirable?

Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe gave the keynote address at the National Press Club for an event sponsored by Georgetown University on the transition. The event was co-sponsored by Politico - or it was until Plouffe announced that his speech would be off-limits to reporters.

That's right: Plouffe wanted to ban the press from the National Press Club.

Politico withdrew its sponsorship and tried to disassociate itself from the event. Editor-in-Chief John F. Harris stepped down as moderator of the speech, saying Politico was not “in the business of sponsoring, or co-sponsoring, an off-the-record talk with a newsworthy person.”

The Washington Post's Dana Milibank has a great piece on the controvercy called "The Audacity of Audaciousness." He handed out notebooks and pens to people going into the speech - since they weren't reporters, they were free to take notes. The speech sounded unremarkable, making the decision to close it to the press all the more baffling.

Google Earth is adding undersea exploration to its wealth of data that can take online visitors all over the planet. You can check out Google Earth 5.0 here.

Google exec John Hanke was put onto the idea almost three years ago by a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Sylvia Earle, when both were being honored by the National Geographic Society of Spain. The New York Times reports that Earle told Hanke she loved the way Google Earth allowed users to see how one thing relates to another on the planet, but added: “You’ve done a great job with the dirt. But what about the water?”

Forest lovers are forever trying to get people to experience the outdoors, because if people get out into the woods, they come to love them and will fight to protect them. Maybe seeing the wonders of the ocean online will be enough to give people an emotional stake in protecting the seas.

What are you waiting for? Today is National Buy A Newspaper Day. More than 20,000 people signed up for the Facebook event (and no more than 70 to 80 percent of them are journalists, I bet). The organizer notes that several newspapers across the country have written editorials about it, including The Richmond Times-Dispatch.

When Republicans controlled Washington, cable news shows gave conservatives more prominence. Now that Democrats are in charge, cable news shows are, of course, still giving conservatives more prominence, according to ThinkProgress.

Old habits?

In the news business, there's an acronym used to describe articles that are no longer relevant: OBE. It stands for "Overtaken By Events."

There's something else in the news biz called a preprint: A section of the paper printed in advance.

Combine the two, and you sometimes get trouble, as you'll see in tomorrow's Horizon section, a preprint that has been OBE'd. Tomorrow's editorial will urge Salem city council members Bill Jones and Lisa Garst to carefully consider whether they want to pursue a legal option that would allow their businesses to bid on city contracts. There are strict legal procedures in place to minimize the opportunity for actual conflicts of interest, but in the editorial we ask them whether the business they might get is worth the potential cost to their reputations.

Apparently, they have been having such thoughts on their own and have been hearing from citizens who question the wisdom of the move. Yesterday, hours after the Horizon section ran through our printing press, Jones and Garst announced they were pulling the proposal from Monday's agenda.

So, I guess, when you get to the second editorial on Sunday's page, as Emily Litella would say, "Never mind."

Here's an interesting story about how the best place on the Internet to get news about the billion-gallon spill of coal ash in Eastern Tennessee ended up being Twitter. Though the national media largely ignored this profound environmental disaster at first, a ton of information from journalists, scientists, environmental activists and others could be found on Twitter. And a relatively new Twitter convention, the hashtag, made the information easy to find: Just go to search.twitter.com and type in #coalash, and all of the Twitter entries marked with the tag will appear on your screen.

It's amazing how useful Twitter's simple concept - giving people the ability to broadcast 145-character messages - has turned out to be.

It's no secret that I don't share the editorial board's passionate dislike of all things tobacco. The Fredicksburg Free Lance-Star has an excellent editorial today arguing against the governor's proposed cigarette tax increase. Rather than hit up one segment of sinners, the editorial argues, every Virginian should shoulder the burden.