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Via Drudge via Twitter, here’s the latest from gossip site Radar.com:

EXCLUSIVE: John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, is seriously considering stepping down from the nation’s highest court for personal reasons, RadarOnline.com has learned exclusively…. RadarOnline.com has been told that Roberts, 55, could announce his decision at any time.

This is, obviously, not true.1 But what I’m curious about is where something like this comes from. When it’s celebrity gossip, you figure it comes from one of the thousands of sycophants and hangers-on that infest Hollywood and the celebrity world in general. But the Supreme Court? Who the hell peddles phony gossip about the Supreme Court?

1Yes, yes, maybe it is true. Then I’ll eat my words. But come on.

UPDATE: Question answered! It came from a Georgetown law professor who was playing a trick on his class. Apparently all it took was a quick text message from a student for this to hit the big time.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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