A current law that makes it a crime to sell videos of animals being tortured or killed is just too damn broad and infringes on free speech, a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices indicated during formal arguments today.

See veteran reporter Lyle Denniston's excellent blow-by-blow analysis on Scotusblog.

Congress had passed the law in 1999, "mainly ... aimed at videos in which women in high-heeled shoes crush small animals as a type of sexual fetish."

But opponents of the law say it's much too broad and could make such things as videos of bullfighting and of the manufacturing of foie gras illegal, not to mention even documentaries and footage of various blood sports.

The immediate case is U.S. v. Stevens (links to every fucking document and amicus brief here). It involves a Virginia man, Robert Stevens, "who made and sold three videos of pit bulls fighting each other and attacking hogs and wild boars."

Unlike Michael Vick, that other Virginia man who's into dog fights, Stevens doesn't have a pro football career or shoe-endorsement deal.

Best quote jotted down by Denniston on Scotusblog was Justice Antonin Scalia's observation that "it is not up to the government to decide what our worst instincts are."

And who knows more about people's worst instincts than a Supreme Court justice who goes on duck-hunting trips with Dick Cheney?