In a nation rapidly losing the distinction between law and Left advocacy, the U.S. Supreme Court has provided a moment of coherence by refusing to overturn a lower court ruling denying a sex-change operation, at public expense, to a convicted murderer.

Robert Kosilek, born male 65 years ago, and convicted of murder in Massachusetts in 1990, will have to keep his male bits and pieces, even though he insists he’s really a woman and that the Massachusetts Department of Corrections should provide him with the expensive surgery required to make the switch he says he desires. He is not content with the hormone and electrolysis treatments and the female clothing and personal items the Massachusetts Department of Corrections has already provided him.

Showing just how far round the bend we’ve gone, a lower federal court in 2012 ordered Massachusetts to pay for the surgery Kosilek wants, which would have cost about $50,000. This court bought Kosilek’s argument that his Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment were being denied him (presumably by not paying to rid him of his unwanted parts), and that the surgery was necessary to free him from the psychological stress of “gender-identity disorder.”

Happily, three of the five justices on the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t go along with the gag. They vetoed this case of “really dumb demand disorder,” and overturned the lower court’s ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing the business to end here, demonstrating that sanity can still be found in the republic, and, judging by the photos of Kosilek accompanying news stories about his case, saving said republic from a damned ugly woman.

While conservatives can be thankful for this interlude of sanity, we have to acknowledge the further erosion of standards and objectivity at the Associated Press, once a source of reliable, message-free news. In recent years the AP has slanted its news stories as sharply left as a certain left-wing newsletter published in Manhattan. (Hint: This publication is so far to the left that David Brooks is its house conservative.) In its story about Kosilek, the PC AP consistently referred to him as “she,” “her,” and “herself.”

In the name of honestly, I suggest that this old news agency henceforth and hereafter identify itself at the top of its news stories with AP-PC.