The Great Migration: European Union ministers have overruled some of its members in a vote to apportion 120,000 refugees now in Greece, Hungary, and Italy among its member countries. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia voted “no” while Finland abstained. Luxembourg’s foreign minister Jean Asselborn, said, “We would have preferred to have adoption by consensus, but we did not manage to achieve that.”

The NY Times reports that the arrival of half a million refugees so far this year “has set right-wing nationalist and populist politicians against Pan-European humanitarians, who have portrayed the crisis in stark moral terms.”

It’s a test of European unity with Slovakia’s prime minister saying, “’As long as I am prime minister, mandatory quotas will not be implemented on Slovak territory.”

Nation: Counting down to another government shutdown, Senate Republicans yesterday introduced a short-term bill that would keep the government open through Dec. 11 while increasing defense spending by $13 billion and eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood. It’s expected to be knocked down by Senate Democrats and followed immediately by a “clean” bill that’s free of riders.

Because it offers abortions, Planned Parenthood will continue to be a Republican target but President Obama says he will veto any bill that defunds the organization.

Politics: Hillary Clinton says she is opposed to building the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry Canadian oil to the Gulf of Mexico. Speaking in Iowa she called the pipeline a “distraction from the important work we have to do to combat climate change.” And she said, “Therefore, I oppose it.”

Republicans have broadly supported the pipeline for its potential contribution to energy independence, but environmentalists say it would import a particularly dirty quality of oil. President Obama so far has not taken a stand on whether the pipeline should be built.

The Obit Page: Beloved former NY Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, who played with 10 championship teams and was named an All-Star in 15 consecutive seasons, has died at age 90. In a long life, Berra became more famous for inspiring the cartoon character Yogi Bear and for his inscrutable “Yogi-isms” than he did for being a great baseball player. Some of the sayings attributed to Yogi:

-“You can observe a lot just by watching.”

-“If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him.”

-“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

-“Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”

Welcome, Francis: With Pope Francis visiting the US, conservative columnist George Will has caused a ruckus writing that, “Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony. With a convert’s indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably fashionable, demonstrably false, and deeply reactionary.”

Will goes on to condemn the Pope’s view on fossil fuels, pollution, sustainability, and world food production. And he got in a kick at the Catholic stance on birth control. He wrote that the Pope, “stands against modernity, rationality, science and, ultimately, the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which people and their desires are not problems but precious resources. Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their nation’s premises.”

The Pope is scheduled to arrive on the South Lawn of the White House this morning.

Happy Birthday: A federal judge in Los Angeles has ruled that a company collecting royalties from use of the song “Happy Birthday” doesn’t own the rights and neither does anyone else. Many people don’t know that until now it has cost money to use the song in movies, television shows, stage productions, and even in restaurants where waiters collect and sing to customers celebrating birthdays.

The judge ruled that the trail of the song’s origination and copyright ownership is not clear and that the song should be in the public domain.

Expect appeals. And many more.