Get a Pic! Do a Blog! Heroes Are Over With!

Joss says Dr. Horrible 2 could film as early as this summer.

Wednesday Night Links

* Net Neutrality hit a wall yesterday with a court decision ruling that the FCC can’t regulate broadband Internet in this way. More on what happens next from Boing Boing, MetaFilter, and Daily Kos.

* Obama has slightly tweaked national nuclear weapons policy. This is, of course, high treason.

* The Mississippi no-lesbians-at-prom debacle gets more atrocious every day.

* U.S. downgraded from “free” to “mostly free.” I’m assuming these categories work the way they do in The Princess Bride.

* Dr. Horrible as 8-bit video game.

* Just when we thought we were out: Another new Harry Potter book in ten years or so?

* Timewaster of the night: Tiny Castle.

* Josh Marshall: I’m curious whether under international law a diplomat can be expelled from a host country simply for being a raging c@#k.

* And your attention please: Slavery officially no longer relevant.

Select Links While I’m Away (Part 2)

* You know your discipline is in crisis when a 28% drop in job listings in a single year is good news.

* Bullying in higher ed.

* If you want to know why your bracket’s already busted (Georgetown!), my friends at The March to Indy is the source.

* Democrats giddy with CBO score. More Americans getting behind health care reform. Democratic Health Care Skeptics Fall Into Line For Reform. Lynch: Obama Told Me He Might Try To Get Public Option Next Year. Reid: I’ll Try Again For A Public Option This Year.

* What’s not debatable is that this process highlighted — and worsened — the virtually complete powerlessness of the Left and progressives generally in Washington. If you were in Washington negotiating a bill, would you take seriously the threats of progressive House members in the future that they will withhold support for a Party-endorsed bill if their demands for improvements are not met? Of course not. No rational person would. More here.

* Will the Supreme Court strike down health care reform? Probably not.

Jon Chait, however, points to another reason to worry: “nobody who recalls Bush v. Gore could completely rule out five Republican justices deciding on a wildly activist ruling on a high-stakes political fight.” This is true insofar as it proves that it wouldn’t be fear of being logically inconsistent that makes it unlikely that Scalia and Kennedy would stay their hand.There is a big difference, though. Bush v. Gore was decided from a position of great political strength: the only two legislative bodies in a position to do anything about the ruling strongly supported the Court’s actions. In this case, however, the White House and very possibly at least one house of Congress will be controlled by people who would be infuriated by an adverse decision, and unlike with an election, Congress would still be in a position to retaliate if it returned to unified Democratic control. It would be shocking if the Supreme Court were to announce a major doctrinal innovation in those circumstances.

* Teabaggers still don’t know what they’re so angry about.

* What’s happening with cap and trade?

* Kuwait says peak oil by 2014.

* No one could have predicted that randomly taking FlashForward off the air for six months would go badly. I recall kind of liking the last aired episode, but haven’t really missed this show at all, and won’t be watching.

* Action Comics #1 to reclaim its top spot as most expensive comic book next week.

* How will Warner Brothers make money after Harry Potter’s over? A DC Comics superhero blockbuster every summer.

* If Dr. Horrible 2 is feature-length, I hope they do bring Penny back. I really don’t see a film working without her.

* The ten most important gay moments in comic book history.

* Zombie apocalypse survival flowchart.

* And the Iraq War is seven today. They grow up so fast…

Monday Night

Monday night.

* Nathan Fillion says Dr. Horrible 2 is moving ahead.

* The History News Network has your first JFK post of the season.

What McHugh claimed to have witnessed next was shocking. “I walked in the toilet, in the powder room, and there he was hiding, with the curtain closed,” McHugh recalled. He claimed that LBJ was crying, “They’re going to get us all. It’s a plot. It’s a plot. It’s going to get us all.'” According to the General, Johnson “was hysterical, sitting down on the john there alone in this thing.”

Of course, opinions on LBJ differ.

* And speaking of the Kennedy assassination: how great was last night’s Mad Men? Knowing they would eventually have to do an assassination episode, I worried they wouldn’t find the right approach—but I think they pretty much nailed it. I like too that it came an episode early; like most people I was thinking it would be next week. Pandagon and Ta-Nehisi Coates have their usual Mad Men posts up, if you’re interested; I usually read the Television without Pity forums too.

* Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC): Everywhere I go in my district, people tell me they are frightened. … I share that fear, and I believe they should be fearful. And I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room — this very room — and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill. I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.

* And Steve Benen has your chart of the day: filibusters since the 1960s. That last spike is since Democrats recovered control of Congress in 2007.

Whedonmania

Interesting news from the Whedonverse: …Whedon is shopping a digital studio proposal around Hollywood, including to the major studios, looking to raise investment in the $5 million range, according to sources. The unnamed Whedon studio will apparently look to produce four original web series a year, two of which will be directed by Whedon himself. One of those two will be the above mentioned Dr. Horrible sequel. Keeping my fingers crossed for Capt. Reynolds’s Shoot-Along Facebook Feed.

Attention: TV Is Dead

Attention: TV is dead.

Geekfight

Geekfight: Whedon vs. Abrams. It’s true, Abrams has had the better year.