As the Beatles said, “I read the news today. Oh, boy.”

All in all, four thousand holes just about anywhere would be an improvement.

I’m not going to say much about the Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion, but I do recommend you check out Charles Stross’ post for a quick rundown on other rights that are on the chopping block if the opinion stands as currently written.

That said, I find it interesting that none of the stories I’ve seen have even speculated about how the draft was leaked. I saw one passing mention of the leak being “unprecedented”, but not Word One about how it got out*.

* If you value your sanity and your breakfast, do not read anything Fox News has to say. The pieces I dipped into explicitly state that the content of the decision is unimportant; what matters is to find and punish the leakers before ‘The Left’ can turn them into heroes. I’ll leave what the commenters are saying to your imagination. Trust me, it’s worse than you might come up with.

Anyway, what I found most interesting, and least predictable, was the other main topic of reporting. Suddenly, over the past few days, the papers* are full of stories about suicide.

* Including the all-electronic ones. Which raises a question: what do we call those sources of information and information-like content? “The electrons”? Might be overbroad. But I digress.

To the extent that they focus on suicide prevention, this is a GoodThing™. But I find the timing interesting. Yes, there have been several high-profile suicides lately. But when has that not been true? What makes this batch so significant that so many news sources feel the need to cover the subject in depth?

For the record, I’m not suggesting that it’s anticipatory of an upswing in abortion-related suicides. I refuse to believe that knowledge of the impending leak could have been that widespread in newsrooms without the general public hearing about it. No conspiracy theory here.

I don’t have an answer to “why”. Why does anything become a trend–or a fad, for that matter?

But whatever the reason, I’m hoping the trend continues. With everything else in the news these days, we’re not going to see a reduction in the suicide rate without positive action.