Give me a fucking break.

Haul out the fainting couch, kids — the United States Supreme Court has "agreed to give the Federal Communications Commission a chance to defend its decision to start punishing broadcasters for the isolated and fleeting on-air use of expletives, an abrupt change in the commission policy that a federal appeals court last year found procedurally improper". More from the New York Times, that lefty, potty-mouthed, commie rag:

It has been almost exactly 30 years since the Supreme Court ruled in the “seven dirty words” case that the First Amendment did not bar the government from regulating the broadcasting of speech that, while “indecent,” was not actually obscene. The broadcast at issue then was a 12-minute monologue by the comedian George Carlin, titled “Filthy Words,” that deliberately challenged federal regulators by highlighting “the words you couldn’t say” on the public airwaves.

For years after that ruling, despite its victory, the F.C.C. exercised its power with a light hand, disclaiming the authority to punish fleeting words that did not reflect “deliberate and repetitive use in a patently offensive manner,” as the commission said in a public notice in 1987.

In an “industry guidance” document it issued in 2001, the commission said that in deciding whether to punish a broadcaster with fines or license revocations, it would consider “whether the material dwells on or repeats at length descriptions of sexual or excretory organs or activities.” That document said that “the full context in which the material appeared is critically important.”

The approach changed soon after that, when the NBC broadcast of the 2003 Golden Globe Awards drew complaints for the expletive that the singer Bono used as an adjective to express his delight at receiving an award for best original song. The commission overruled its own Enforcement Bureau, which had denied the complaints on the basis of the existing policy, and found that the fleeting expletive fell within the definition of indecency, because it “invariably invokes a coarse sexual image” that made its broadcast “shocking and gratuitous.”

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me but don’t you think the Supreme Court has better things to do besides policing the airwaves for the occasional fucking swear word? Like, for example, addressing the revocation of habeas corpus? Or the issue of warrantless wiretapping? Or how about the Bush Administration’s illegal invasion of a sovereign nation? Perhaps my standards are just too high ...

LuLu-snark. No doubt Aaron will be along any minute to complain about my gratuitous use of the F-word. Knock yourself out, Aaron. No, really.