This bundle of cuteness has just been saved by the U.S. Senate. (Flickr/Stijn Vogels)
Back in April, the Supreme Court struck down a law banning depictions of animal cruelty on the grounds that the statute was overbroad (I wrote a column about it) . The law was meant to crack down on "crush videos" - in which women in high heels are seen stepping on small animals, like our friend pictured above - but the Court worried that the law could be used against things like hunting videos (and the case in question actually involved videos of dogfights). If you thought your representatives in Washington would take that kind of thing lying down, you couldn't be more wrong.Following on a House action from July, the Senate just passed a measure making it illegal to make or distribute crush videos - with appropriate exemptions for videos portraying hunting, fishing, trapping, and other wholesome activities. Not only that, they did it unanimously. Maybe Barack Obama has changed the partisan culture in Washington after all. Who says Congress can't get anything done?-- Paul Waldman
