Big Case for the Supremes: SCOTUS is set to hear an important abortion cases Wednesday. The issues involve the “… standards for doctors and facilities” where abortions take place. Yahoo explains:

“One of the two Texas regulations before the court requires doctors who provide abortions to have admitting privileges” at a local hospital so they can treat patients needing surgery or other critical care.”

The other part involves making clinics have “hospital-grade facilities.” Given the make-up of the the courts this one will be interesting to watch. A ruling probably won’t happen until June.

POLLING! Numbers coming in from everywhere. TX, TN, GA, VA, MA, and AL. Here is data from RCP and a reminder the most recent debate was 2/25/16:

• Texas – 2 new polls. Cruz in top spot beating second place Trump in low double digits.
• Tennessee –  1 new poll. Trump 40, Cruz 22, Rubio 19.
• Georgia – 2  new polls. Trump on top. One has him at 40 – the other at 30.  One has Cruz in 2nd place with 29 percent and Rubio 3rd at 22 %. The other poll has Cruz and Rubio tied.

Neither Kasich nor Carson received double digits in any of these polls.  As you can see this is messy. Some polls were done before the debate, others included a day after the debate. And none of these are able to tell if the candidates recent work over the last 3 days of campaigning has done any good. So, due to all that I’m not even getting into the other states. You know where to find RCP.

She’s off and running: Yesterday, Hillary Clinton soundly defeated Bernie Sanders in South Carolina’s Democratic  Presidential Primary 73-26.  I wouldn’t say he “got schlonged*” exactly but…yeah, he did.  For her part, The Hill said Clinton promised  “Tomorrow, this campaign goes national.” She begins by taking a swipe at the GOP frontrunner.

“Despite what you hear, we don’t need to make America great again — America hasn’t stopped being great. But we do need to make America whole again,” she said Saturday in South Carolina, mocking Trump’s campaign slogan.”

Maybe the Best/Worst Trumpism of the Day. So far. In the Trump twittersylum he is being credited with saying, “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep” and he’s retweeting this. When told on Meet The Press the quote was really by fascist Benito Mussolini,** Trump said he knew that:

“It’s a very good quote, it’s a very interesting quote. I know who said it, but what difference does it make whether it’s Mussolini or somebody else?”

Chuck Todd wants to make sure Trump understands the importance of who said the original quote: “You want to be associated with a fascist?”

“No, I want to be associated with interesting quotes,” Trump shot back.

Bye & Pie: Denver Post credits 2 sources with saying Denver QB Peyton Manning will confirm his retirement this week. (Could he could crop up elsewhere in the NFL later maybe? As owner or coach?) And SHOCKING news from baseball. No more pie-in-the-face celebrations after an Orioles game. There were safety concerns.  Because…meringue!  Yahoo shows us how this isn’t going well.

•  Quickhits: Its the end of the month-long “python hunt” in Florida.  Awww.  106 pythons were caught.  The longest was 15 ft. Over 1,000 people registered to remove pythons from the wetlands.
• Today is National Chocolate Souffle Day.  For some inexplicable reason.  Interesting note that soufflé “is the past participle of the French verb souffler, which means “to blow up.”  That explains a lot.
• On 2/20/16  Maine Gov. Paul LePage said GOP governors should write a letter “to the people.” The letter was suppose to disavow Donald Trump “and his divisive brand of politics.” He was so miffed when it didn’t happen that Friday LePage came out and, strangely, endorsed Trump.  whattheheck?
• Oscars are on tonight you can lament about the losers you wanted to be winners down below.
• At the end of this election someone will mention The Grateful Dead album title, ” What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been“. (I wanted to be the first)

That’s all for today’s Water Cooler. Hope you find something to interesting. If not, that’s ok. Because if you find something elsewhere you can always pop it down in the comments and let us know what you found. We’re big on bright shiny objects.  Don’t worry about threadjacking here. The ‘cooler is always Open Thread.

* theory is the word means to beat someone badly.

** Spread the word   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini

*** all emphasis mine.