So the Westboro Baptist Church, that cult of homophobic cretins, has had its little victory at the Supreme Court.

Rarely, if ever, has an uglier bunch taken refuge in the beautiful glow of the First Amendment.

But such is the nature of that treatise on freedom, that its benefits must accrue to the evil as well as to the righteous.

This isn’t the year for the Oregon Legislature to ask voters to change the unique income tax “kicker” clause in the state Constitution.

The kicker, passed by the Legislature in 1979, requires the state, when state income tax revenues exceed state projections by more than 2 percent, to refund the excess to people and to corporations.

It looks as though the Oregon Legislature has finally tired of merely talking about the unsustainable cost of fringe benefits for state workers and other public employees.

Lawmakers are now proposing ways to cut that expense.

A $3.5 billion budget shortfall has a way of clarifying matters, apparently.

Oregon’s state budget is pretty transparent as government ledgers go.

But there’s still an occasional streak that obscures the view.

Republicans in the House of Representatives aim to buff out those flaws. Their cleaner, as it were, is House Bill 3360.

The Baker School District has a $2.15 million problem, and the solution is going to hurt.

The pain will be widespread.

Some teachers and other employees likely will lose their jobs as a result of the district balancing its budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

Some property owners in the district will pay more in taxes if the school board puts a local option levy on the May 17 ballot and voters approve it.

Although we appreciate Rep. Greg Walden’s efforts on behalf of Ash Grove Cement’s Durkee plant, let’s be clear:

Cement plants spew too much toxic mercury into America’s air.

That said, the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule limiting mercury emissions is patently unfair to Ash Grove.

The EPA should have recognized that the Durkee plant’s situation is unusual because the limestone it quarries contains higher-than-usual amounts of mercury.

We’re sticklers for private property rights.

If a person wants to landscape his place with rusted riding lawnmowers instead of well-tended sod, well, so be it.

But our defense of this right stops, as it were, at the property boundary.

When one owner’s neglect leads directly and definitively to somebody else’s land being messed up, then some sort of grievance process ought to be available either to the affected landowner or to the government on his behalf.

This can get tricky, of course.

We appreciate state Sen. Ted Ferrioli’s dogged defense of matters important to many constituents in his district, which includes Baker County.

But in a recent tussle over legal protection for wolves in Oregon, Ferrioli, the Senate Minority Leader, should have heeded his own advice.

Just ignore.

We’re gratified that the Oregon Legislature finally recognizes that Education Service Districts, agencies ostensibly created to help public school students, are actually exacerbating school officials’ struggles to balance their budgets.

It’s too bad it took a $3.5 billion shortfall to highlight the problem.