No reason to apologize; those are very valid reasons for assuming an article is current. I also would assume a story is current if I had followed a link to it from the front page of the news provider; but I am more cautious when it's a story link someone is posting in a blog or an e-mail. After all, I don't know how the blogger/mailer found the article. Did he/she do a web search? Was it something that someone else had forwarded to them (as I suspect was the case here; I thought I saw a link to the story somewhere else on the web on Jan. 1)?

And I am especially skeptical about any story that reports something so out of character for the courts. I have to read about tons of cases at work. Yes, there are the occassional WTF rulings; but overall the courts are balanced and (as shown by the fact that even 36 years ago this wacko ruling was overturned) self-correcting.