Obama’s Tangled History With Supreme Court Sets Stage for Nominee Fight

WASHINGTON — The first time President Obama sat down to pick a new Supreme Court justice, surprised aides discovered that he had gone beyond the briefing memos to read the leading candidate’s past judicial rulings. The president, a onetime constitutional law teacher, was in his element, a “legal nerd,” as one aide called him, putting theory into practice.

But if nothing else, the last seven years have made clear to Mr. Obama that the Supreme Court is anything but a nerdy, academic exercise. His currentstandoff with the Senate over replacing Justice Antonin Scalia culminates a profoundly consequential struggle over not just the law, but power, politics and his legacy.

What’s the Point of Moral Outrage?

HUMAN beings have an appetite for moral outrage. You see this in public life — in the condemnation of Donald J. Trump for vowing to bar Muslims from the United States, or of Hillary Clinton for her close involvement with Wall Street, to pick two ready examples — and you see this in personal life, where we criticize friends, colleagues and neighbors who behave badly.

Why do we get so mad, even when the offense in question does not concern us directly? The answer seems obvious: We denounce wrongdoers because we value fairness and justice, because we want the world to be a better place. Our indignation appears selfless in nature.

Ted Cruz Fights in Texas, Hoping It Won’t Be His Alamo

HOUSTON — Senator Ted Cruz cannot stop talking about the Alamo.

He is always eager to twang, delivering his best stump-speech impression of a West Texas farmer. He boasted recently that he knew how to “shoot me a bird.”

“I cannot wait to get home,” he told voters in Nevada, unsubtly, after a disappointing third-place finish in the caucuses there, “to the great state of Texas.”

Torture Questions Stalk Sheikh Who Would Lead World Soccer

ZURICH — Nothing rocked international soccer quite like the waves of arrests across several continents last year, as the United States announced bribery and corruption charges against the men running the world’s biggest and richest sport. But as the organization that governs global soccer gathers this week to choose a new president, the leading contender risks stoking another source of controversy for the sport: human rights.

Pedro de Heredia

Pedro de Heredia

(Madrid, hacia 1520 - Océano Atlántico, 1554). Conquistador español que fundó la ciudad de Cartagena de Indias y exploró la costa y el interior de la actual Colombia hasta Antioquia.

De familia noble y amigo de juergas y pendencias, en su juventud se vio envuelto en un lance contra seis hombres que le cortaron la nariz. El cronista Pedro Simón relata que un médico de la Corte le hizo entonces una buena cirugía estética, aunque propia de la época, que consistió en que "le arrimó el corte y rostro al molledo del brazo derecho y estando así sesenta días, le fue formando otras narices que, por ser remedio del mismo paño, diferenciaban poco de las primeras". Heredia buscó luego a sus agresores y mató a tres de ellos en una riña, motivo por el cual tuvo que huir de Madrid.