TRUE OR FALSE

The Supreme Court on Monday took away one of the government’s tools for prosecuting and deporting workers in this country illegally, ruling that the crime of identity theft was limited to those who knew they were using another person’s Social Security number. People who use false documents can be jailed, the court said. But they cannot be convicted of the more serious crime of “aggravated identity theft” without proof that they knew the identification number belonged to someone else, the court ruled unanimously. — The Los Angeles Times

THE REAL MEDICAL EMERGENCY

Some hospital emergency rooms have seen record-breaking numbers of patients this week as those with coughs, sore throats and fevers — and sometimes no symptoms at all — have sought reassurance that they do not have the deadly H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu.

Although the pattern is far from universal, the surges have been particularly heavy at children’s hospitals, presumably because the young are so susceptible to respiratory diseases with comparable symptoms. Some hospitals have had to increase staffing and enact specialized triage plans. Waiting times have billowed in some emergency rooms, even for the seriously ill.

At San Joaquin Community Hospital in Bakersfield, Calif., none of the 188 patients — a daily record — who arrived at the emergency room on Tuesday had symptoms that met the criteria to even be tested, said Jarrod B. McNaughton, the hospital’s vice president. The burden has not been limited to states with confirmed cases. For instance, in Illinois, where the first three cases were confirmed only on Friday, Children’s Memorial Hospital of Chicago has been treating more than twice its usual volume of emergency room patients this week — The New York Times

STAR POWER

Using 192 separate lasers and a 400-footlong series of amplifiers and filters, scientists at Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) hope to create a self-sustaining fusion reaction like the ones in the sun or the explosion of a nuclear bomb — only on a much smaller scale. Sci-fi-inspired End of Days jokes may follow this historic undertaking like they did for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, but the science behind this advanced laser system is profoundly serious. “We are well on our way to achieving what we set out to do — controlled nuclear fusion and energy gain for the first time ever in a laboratory setting,” said Edward Moses, the facility’s principal associate director for NIF and photon science. The hope is that this reaction will release more energy than the lasers put into the target isotopes and perhaps redefine the global energy crisis in the process. — Wired.com

SCHOOL TRENDS

It has been 13 years since Mayor Richard M. Daley seized control of Chicago’s school system, creating a new template for urban education. City hall now runs the classrooms in New York, Boston, Cleveland and a handful of other major American cities. The Chicago model has also gone federal. President Obama reached into the city’s system to tap Arne Duncan as education secretary; he brings to the national stage a penchant for merit pay and charter schools, a determination to close failing schools — and a reasonably amiable relationship with the powerful teachers’ unions, which may soon be put to the test. Duncan recently warned that he may withhold federal education stimulus money from states that limit the number of charter schools — caps typically backed by the unions. — Newsweek

Q VS. A

The key to transparency working as it should is context. And that’s where Missouri’s site, other state sites, and perhaps Obama’s stimulus transparency efforts, all may be doomed to come up a little bit short. In a vacuum, $15,000 in taxpayer funds spent at a bra shop sounds downright scandalous. Only when it is researched and explained does it sound eminently reasonable. Numbers with dollar signs next to them have a way of inspiring people to ask questions. What large numbers standing alone don’t do is provide answers. — Governing