CNN Politics:  “The Virginia couple accused of crashing President Obama’s first White House state dinner on Tuesday are named in at least 16 different civil suits in Fauquier County, sometimes as plaintiffs, sometimes as defendants.  A trawl through court records on Thursday revealed a more complete picture of Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who have left an extensive paper trail in federal bankruptcy and state court filings.”

Wall St. Journal:  “We’ll try hard to tamp down copious displays of gratitude today, but a Pittsburgh lawsuit makes us very, very thankful we live in such a wondrous country.  It’s been hailed as the middle-finger case ─ one we touched on in this earlier post.  Here’s what happened. David Hackbart got into a messy parking dispute in Pittsburgh in 2006. He exchanged words with another motorist before resorting to that time-honored dispute resolution device: flipping the bird.  And that’s when things got constitutionally interesting.”

Wall St. Journal:  “Irish golfer Padraig Harrington has won three major championships. But one of his more impressive achievements, in our mind, came not during a tournament, but while being filmed for the show Sports Science. As demonstrated in this YouTube video, Harrington teed up a ball and whacked the devil out of it using not his normal stationery swing, but the so-called Happy Gilmore swing — the one introduced by Adam Sandler in the movie with the same name.  Trying such a swing out on the course may seem like a fun and appealing thing to do (so long as you’re out of eyeshot of the course marshal.) But before you give it a go during your Turkey Day Tourney, let us bring you a little cautionary tale that derived in that world renowned golf mecca, Nova Scotia.”

New York Times:  “Clearly, they had the wrong Mark Hoyte.  But that did not stop the lawyers at Pressler & Pressler from suing him. They swore out a complaint and sent a summons to Mr. Hoyte, ordering him to be in court last Monday.   Then things took a rare turn.”