The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which ushered in many of the worker protections we enjoy today, was a major progressive victory. But as the century that followed it shows, it was by no means the end of the struggle to get workers treated fairly. Employers, aided by conservatives in the executive and judicial branches, have often found ways of ensuring these laws are not fully enforced. Symczyk v. Genesis Healthcare Corp., which the Supreme Court considered yesterday at oral argument, presents another case in which conservatives on the Supreme Court might erect a barrier making FLSA harder to enforce.

A powerful man sleeping with a younger woman outside the bounds of matrimony may not be uncommon, but when revealed, it inevitably produces a scandal. In the case of the adultery revelations about former CIA Director David Petraeus, however, the banal, tawdry sex scandal is masking a much deeper one. A great deal of intimate personal information has been revealed to the public based on an FBI investigation, despite a rather notable lack of underlying activity that can plausibly be called criminal. There's no particular reason anybody but David Petraeus's wife should care about his sexual improprieties, but we should all care about how easy it is for government officials and employers to invade the privacy of online communications.