Foghorn Leghorn — Strangled Eggs. This Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon was released on March 18, 1961.

No, not the royal wedding. The royal wedding was an event I am more than capable or regarding with my customary benevolent equanimity. The carryings-on of the British aristocracy are frivolous, and the tabloid obsession with them ranges from vacuous to terrifying, but overall –eh, the British Royals, whatever they get up to, I worry about them precisely as much as I worry about what their namesakes from Kansas City are doing with their relief pitching.

This race is a test case, if a somewhat imperfect one because of the third party effort, on the potency of the argument against dismantling social safety net programs. Clearly, voters are on Hochul’s side on that issue, and she has been working to frame the race entirely around that. We shall see if that will carry the day. The election is May 24.

Apart from taxes & tyranny, warm beer and the Beatles, Robin Hood and Royal Weddings, what has England ever given us? For starters, the rule of law.

We talk about it here a lot, about how it no longer seems to apply to government and corporate elites. Like a hole in the sidewalk on a snowy day, that creates a slush-filled pool. We can step in it day after Groundhog Day. Or we can learn more about what “the rule of law” means and repair the crack.

As Jeremy Scahill stated, “Killing a dictator’s innocent grandchildren really showcases our moral superiority.”

No kidding. But what the heck, maybe Obama can cut a few more drone killing jokes tonight at the White House Correspondents Dinner nerdprom. He seems to really like that kind of humor.

On April 6, all but one of the Republican members of the US House of Representatives rejected a Democratic amendment that would have put the chamber on record backing the widely held scientific view that global warming is occurring and humans are a major cause. The following day the GOP-led House voted 255 to 172 to strip the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gases. It is remarkable that in 2011, a majority of Republicans in Congress reject the indisputable, scientific consensus that human activity is altering the climate.

Treasure Islands tells us that tax havens are much larger and much more destructive than most might realize, yet at the same time enjoy much more unofficial and formal support from governments in advanced economies than many of us want to believe.

A relatively new natural gas drilling technique – hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” – is being rushed into wide scale use with the same heedless abandon as deep water oil drilling. Activists are trying to put the brakes on it before fracking has the chance to produce its own version of last year’s BP oil spill.

Next month, we will see a series of actions at bank shareholder meetings designed to hold the financial industry accountable for crashing the economy. The New Bottom Line coalition plans events at the shareholder meetings of three of the leading banks – Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase.

Social Security currently is projected to be able to pay full benefits until around 2039, at which point current projections say it will start only paying seniors around 80 percent of what they should be getting. One would think having a program projected to be on a solid footing for the next 30 years would more than sufficient for anyone.

For some reason though, Republican politicians, Democratic politicians, cranky old reprobates appointed by Obama, and beltway pundits are actually claiming this is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with NOW because they think the program must have a full 75 years of projected solvency.