These mf act like #Zimmerman really ain't did shit wrong. R.i.p. #TrayvonMartin ima pop me a mf #Creepycracker walkin by my house
— Vonni Versace (@Dat_Nigga_Vonni) June 27, 2013
Yesterday: Aaron Hernandez brandishing a Glock handgun for a selfie iPhone pic http://t.co/dsKeJGOopk pic.twitter.com/Ene9YROtkh
— TMZ (@TMZ) June 27, 2013
#DOMA's defeat is a remarkable win for LGBT rights, but Kate's story shows that there is much work to be done for equality #FreeKate
— Eventivist (@Eventivist) June 26, 2013
The decision reverses a previous ruling by a federal district judge that had dismissed Cooksey’s case, reasoning that advice is not protected speech and hence Cooksey had suffered no injury to his First Amendment rights.The dude dispenses "paleo-style" dietary advice on his blog.
“This decision will help ensure that the courthouse doors remain open to speakers whose rights are threatened by overreaching government” said Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Jeff Rowes. “In America, citizens don’t have to wait until they are fined or thrown in jail before they are allowed to challenge government action that chills their speech.”
Half of all voters consider radical Muslims the bigger terrorist threat facing the nation, but supporters of President Obama consider the Tea Party to be as big a danger.These people are seriously f-ked up. Man.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters consider radical Muslims to be the bigger threat to the United States today. Thirteen percent (13%) view the Tea Party that way, and another 13% consider other political and religious extremists to be the larger danger. Six percent (6%) point to local militia groups. Two percent (2%) see the Occupy Wall Street movement as the bigger terrorist threat. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
However, among those who approve of the president’s job performance, just 29% see radical Muslims as the bigger threat. Twenty-six percent (26%) say it’s the Tea Party that concerns them most. Among those who Strongly Approve of the president, more fear the Tea Party than radical Muslims.
A soldier was just beheaded on the street, and they say I'm a terrorist threat.Also, "BRITISH BAN NOW INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT."
It is worth noting that in all this media coverage of the banning of Spencer and me, not one media outlet had me on to discuss it. Not one. If what I say is so egregious, why not expose me? Because the last thing that the enemedia wants is for people to hear what I have to say. Because most rational, freedom-loving people would agree.Channel 4 contacted me for an interview and then canceled shortly thereafter.
Further, not once in all of the media accounts were we identified accurately. We oppose jihad. We are counter jihad. Despite all the column inches, not once is that even mentioned. We are not anti-Muslim. We oppose an ideology that calls for holy war, misogyny, persecution and oppression of non-believers. I don't care who or what you worship. You can worship a stone, just don't stone me with it. This is very clear. But the media's twisted and colorful descriptions of us include "anti-Muslim," "anti-Islam," "anti-Ground Zero mosque campaigners," "right wing activists," "hatemongers," "islamophobic bloggers," "anti-Muslim pair."
Repeat after me: C O U N T E R J I H A D.
If you speak the truth about Islam, you will be banned. Freedom of speech is not allowed in Great Britain anymore. Truth is not a defense. What kind of insanity is the British government pushing, and why?
They stared at each other, the detective and the priest. Kelli McIlvain found interrogating him somewhat surreal. She had been raised Catholic and taught that a man in a black clerical shirt and white collar was nothing less than an emissary of God.Continue reading.
Father Donald Patrick Roemer was 5 feet 5, maybe 150 pounds. Hazel eyes. Blondish hair. A Ventura County Sheriff's Office report described him that night as "cooperative, seems stable," though McIlvain remembered how he repeatedly buried his head on the desk and wept.
To her surprise, his confession came easily. Yes, he said, he molested the 7-year-old boy.
McIlvain lit a cigarette. She hushed her voice, slowed her cadence to match his. Were there others, she asked. Yes, he said, according to court papers, and offered name after name.
"Where do I go from here?" he asked as midnight neared.
"Well," she said, "I'm going to have to arrest you."
What McIlvain uncovered in the weeks that followed seared the case into her memory, so much that she can recall its details more than three decades later, long after she retired: A number of people inside and outside the Catholic Church had been alerted to Roemer's misdeeds, or had strong suspicions of them, she learned.
They did nothing.
Experts call it the "bystander effect" — when people fail to help in potentially dire situations. Often they are more wary of falsely accusing someone than of their fears being confirmed. They question whether it's their responsibility to help, whether stepping in would do any good. If no one else is upset, they assume it's OK to walk away.
"We think our way out of situations we don't want to believe," said Pete Ditto, a UC Irvine professor who studies moral decision-making.
According to the 12,000 pages of church records that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles made public this year, the phenomenon appears to have played a key role in allowing clergy sex abuse to fester in case after case.
Although Catholic leaders shoulder much of the blame for the abuse scandal, the culture of silence extended to teachers, secretaries and others in the church's bottom rungs. In certain cases, it took years for someone to tip off the archdiocese's top officials to suspected molesters, let alone authorities.
The Supreme Court didn't propound another Roe v. Wade on Wednesday and discover a constitutional right to gay marriage, but it did take a major step toward it. The saving grace for democratic consensus and self-government is that the marriage debate can now continue in the states, if our judges will allow it.And continuing with the DOMA decision:
That's our reading of two 5-4 rulings that saw the High Court range from its most restrained to aggressive activism in overturning the Defense of Marriage Act (Doma), a federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Lower courts will be navigating through the mess for years.
The restraint came in Hollingsworth v. Perry, where the Court was asked to issue a judicial edict expanding traditional one man-one woman unions to include gays and lesbians for all 50 states under the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection....
A different Court majority leapt in the opposite direction in the 5-4 ruling written by Justice Anthony Kennedy in U.S. v. Windsor, which overturned Doma. Section 3 of that 1996 law signed by Bill Clinton adopted the traditional definition of a spouse for federal purposes like taxes and Social Security.No doubt.
Our view is that Doma was an understandable political response at the time to state court rulings on gay marriage, and adopting a uniform federal rule was a temporary solution as states experimented with new arrangements and a social consensus evolved. Congress was always free to revise Doma later.
A different Court majority leapt in the opposite direction in the 5-4 ruling written by Justice Anthony Kennedy in U.S. v. Windsor, which overturned Doma. Section 3 of that 1996 law signed by Bill Clinton adopted the traditional definition of a spouse for federal purposes like taxes and Social Security.
Our view is that Doma was an understandable political response at the time to state court rulings on gay marriage, and adopting a uniform federal rule was a temporary solution as states experimented with new arrangements and a social consensus evolved. Congress was always free to revise Doma later.
But the majority overturned Doma with a confusing combination of logic that mixed principles of federalism with language about equal protection. On the one hand, Justice Kennedy and the four liberal Justices called Doma an illegal federal intrusion on the traditional state power to regulate marriage. On the other hand, they also described Doma as motivated by animus toward gay couples that violates the federal guarantee of equal protection.
The High Court's equal protection jurisprudence typically applies a different level of constitutional protection to discriminatory laws, known as strict or heightened scrutiny. Other laws are merely evaluated using a "rational basis" test. But Justice Kennedy never even mentions this basic question. He then goes on to make a due process argument under the Fifth Amendment about treating citizens one way under state law and another under federal law. The result is a legal muddle.
The opinion is so confusing that it inspired a highly unusual debate among the dissenters about what it means. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote his own dissent to note that while the majority "goes off course" in overturning Doma, it "is undeniable that its judgment is based on federalism." This would mean Windsor applies only to federal law, and the states are free to continue debating marriage.
But in his dissent, Justice Scalia is scathing about Justice Kennedy's "legalistic argle-bargle" and suggests that the equal protection language of the opinion means that some future case will require the Court to prohibit states from banning same-sex marriage:
"It takes real cheek for today's majority to assure us, as it is going out the door, that a constitutional requirement to give formal recognition to same-sex marriage is not at issue here—when what has preceded that assurance is a lecture on how superior the majority's moral judgment in favor of same-sex marriage is to the Congress's hateful moral judgment against it." Tell us how you really feel, Mr. Justice.
The keg is becoming the new water cooler.Nope. Definitely not in my experience, but continue reading.
At least, that's the case at such firms as the Boston advertising agency Arnold Worldwide, where workers cluster around a beer-vending machine—nicknamed Arnie—after the day's client meetings are done. As they sip bottles of home-brewed beer, employees exchange ideas and chitchat, often sticking around the office instead of heading to a nearby bar.
Plenty of offices provide free food to their workers, but as the workday in many tech and media companies stretches past the cocktail hour, more companies are stocking full bars and beer fridges, installing on-site taverns and digitized kegs and even deploying engineering talent to design futuristic drink dispensers.
The perk, firms say, helps lure talent, connects employees across different divisions and keeps people from leaving the office as the lines between work and social lives blur.
But employment lawyers worry that encouraging drinking in the workplace can lead to driving while intoxicated, assault, sexual harassment or rape. Plus, it may make some employees uncomfortable while excluding others, such as those who don't drink for health or religious reasons.
Drinking on the job has long been part of work life in the U.S. and abroad, whether it's a beer with colleagues in the United Kingdom or Japanese salarymen entertaining clients at sake bars. But holding happy hour in the office is different, experts say, because it brings after-hours activity into the professional space.
A smiling Terry Moran made little effort to contain his excitement on Wednesday, hyping the Supreme Court's pro-gay marriage decisions as "poetic" and a "declaration" for "equal dignity." During live coverage, Moran and other journalists kept cutting to California, touting the cheering and celebrations there.More at that top link, and see, "ABC: Screw Objectivity, We're For Gay Marriage; GMA Hosts Celebrate On-Air."
Minutes after the Court struck down key provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act, Moran thrilled, "And there is ringing language in here affirming the equal dignity and the equal rights of gay Americans under federal law." The grinning journalist said of Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion, "He wrote one case in language that is almost poetic in its embrace and affirmation of equal status."
More interns running from @RollCall's photogs: http://t.co/rgiSO2IN1q
— Shira Toeplitz (@shiratoeplitz) June 26, 2013
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court dramatically advanced gay rights Wednesday in rulings that direct the federal government to provide equal treatment to same-sex spouses and allow the resumption of gay marriages in California.Continue reading.
In a pair of 5-4 rulings on the final day of the court's term, the justices struck down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which denied federal benefits to gay couples married under state law, and let stand a ruling that found Proposition 8, a 2008 voter initiative that ended same-sex marriage in California, unconstitutional.
In striking down DOMA, Justice Anthony Kennedy said Congress had no business undermining a state's decision to extend "the recognition, dignity and protection" of marriage to same-sex couples.
By excluding such couples from the rights and responsibilities of marriage contained in more than 1,000 provisions of federal law, "DOMA writes inequality into the entire United States Code," Justice Kennedy wrote.
The DOMA ruling had immediate effects. The Obama administration said it would move swiftly to ensure same-sex married couples get the same tax and other benefits as heterosexual couples, although the process for doing so is uncertain for same-sex couples who marry in one state, then move to a state that doesn't recognize gay marriage.
Meantime, noncitizens who are married to American same-sex partners likely would qualify for permanent resident status, lawyers said.
In California, Attorney General Kamala Harris said she would order that marriage licenses be granted to same-sex couples statewide as soon as a U.S. appeals court takes a procedural step, which could come within a month.
The Supreme Court's rulings didn't say whether there is a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage, ensuring years of battles in states that bar it. Groups that believe marriage is between a man and woman said they would fight state by state to defend that definition, while the American Civil Liberties Union tapped veteran GOP strategists as part of a $10 million campaign seeking to convert Republican-led states to the gay-marriage cause.
@RSMcCain The next frontier in progressive equality! @equalityfl @ACLUFL
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 27, 2013
Guy on Reddit takes one of the most iconic pictures ever taken: pic.twitter.com/QAXpibKUpT
— Adam (@GPIA7R) June 27, 2013
Is trolling for "Milky Loads" from anonymous sex partners really the best medical practice? People have a right to know.And back at Sully's dish, "I Believe":
Some final thoughts after so many years of so many thoughts. Marriage is not a political act; it’s a human one. It is based on love, before it is rooted in law. Same-sex marriages have always existed because the human heart has always existed in complicated, beautiful and strange ways. But to have them recognized by the wider community, protected from vengeful relatives, preserved in times of illness and death, and elevated as a responsible, adult and equal contribution to our common good is a huge moment in human consciousness. It has happened elsewhere. But here in America, the debate was the most profound, lengthy and impassioned. This country’s democratic institutions made this a tough road but thereby also gave us the chance and time to persuade the country, which we did. I understand and respect those who in good conscience fought this tooth and nail. I am saddened by how many failed to see past elaborate, ancient codes of conduct toward the ultimate good of equal human dignity. I am reminded of the courage of a man like Evan Wolfson who had the vision and determination to change the world.Aww.
