The following is the intro to the mini-essay I'm writing for next week's Las Vegas Weekly. You can read the rest of the essay on Thursday, at LasVegasWeekly.com

The following mini-essay is really boring. Unless you’re a stuck-up know-it-all who’s intent on following “the issues” and putting your friends to sleep at cocktail parties, you’ll probably want to skip over it, flip to this week’s club ads, and stare at all the pictures of the pretty girls in skimpy skirts.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten rid of the riffraff, let’s get down to business.

Every now and then the Supreme Court of the United States does something really stupid. Four years ago, in a comically blatant violation of the Fifth Amendment, the Court held that state and local governments could take land from private owners and give it to other private owners. So, yeah, I’d consider that a “really stupid” decision.