This is very troubling.
FBI prepares to defend 'Stingray' cell phone tracking | Politics and Law - CNET News
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Newtown gunman Adam Lanza fired 155 bullets in less than five minutes, prosecutor says - Open Channel
Newtown gunman Adam Lanza fired 155 bullets in less than five minutes, prosecutor says - Open Channel: "By Michael Isikoff, Tom Winter and Erin McClam, NBC News Adam Lanza fired 155 bullets in less than five minutes on the day he killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the chief prosecutor investigating the massacre said Thursday. The total included 154 fired from a Bushmaster .223-model rifle and a final bullet, fired from a Glock 10mm handgun, that Lanza used to take his own life, said Stephen Sedensky, the chief prosecutor investigating the shooting. Three Samurai swords were recovered from the Newtown, Conn., home that Lanza shared with his mother, authorities said as they released search warrants from the second-worst school shooting in American history."
(Via.)
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Hardball: DOMA challenged at the Supreme Court
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Hardball: DOMA challenged at the Supreme Court: ""
(Via.)
Justices signal they might strike down federal marriage law - NBC Politics
Justices signal they might strike down federal marriage law - NBC Politics: "Hearing a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows federal benefits to go only to heterosexual married couples, the Supreme Court appeared skeptical of the statute and indicated that it might strike down a section of the 1996 law. At issue in Wednesday’s oral argument was the Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, passed by overwhelming margins in both houses of Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton."
(Via.)
Justices to Hear Arguments on Defense of Marriage Act - NYTimes.com
Justices to Hear Arguments on Defense of Marriage Act - NYTimes.com: "WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court returns to the subject of same-sex marriage for a second day on Wednesday, when the justices hear arguments about the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996."
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Rachel Maddow: Calif. AG: ‘We should not wait when people are being deprived of their fundamental rights’
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(Via.)
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Is the Meaning of Your Life to Make Babies? | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network
From an evolutionary gene’s-eye perspective, the genes are immortal, and our role, the meaning of life, is to perpetuate the genes. In a few centuries, all traces of our existence as human individuals — memories of us, all our accomplishments –will likely be gone and forgotten, except for genes that survive from those of us who successfully reproduced through the generations.
But, of course, we don’t experience the world from a gene’s eye evolutionary perspective. One experiences the world as an individual person, not as a gene dispenser (fun as that may be). The joy we get from parenting comes not from some abstract generic idea of gene propagation, but from specific love and interaction with our own children — making your own baby son giggle uncontrollably when you make ridiculous animal noises, the bittersweet emotional rush you feel as you watch your daughter walk down the aisle. We care about ourselves and others as persons, not as a gene menagerie. Humans create our own meanings.
Is the Meaning of Your Life to Make Babies? | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network
White Supremacist Brings Racist Filmmaker to Texas A&M | Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center
In recent years, globetrotting white supremacist financier and organizer Preston Wiginton has appeared at racist skinhead gatherings (he won a “strongest skinhead” contest at Hammerfest in 2005); co-sponsored lectures with hate groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom; rallied racist skinheads in Russia (where he lives part of the year in an apartment rented from ex-Klan boss David Duke); and been denied entry to the UK to address a festival put on by the neo-fascist British National Party.
He’s a busy guy on the white supremacist circuit, so it’s no surprise that he’s organized yet another event. This time, Wiginton has called in racist filmmaker Craig Bodeker to show his film, A Conversation about Race, on the Texas A&M campus on March 20.
White Supremacist Brings Racist Filmmaker to Texas A&M | Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center
Fifty-five percent of the nation’s streams and rivers are now in “poor” condition, posing health risks to fish, other wildlife and humans, EPA report finds - NY Daily News
The percentage of river and stream miles rated as “good” has declined. High levels of phosphorous and nitrogen are cited in the unsatisfactory conditions.
Fifty-five percent of the nation’s streams and rivers are now in “poor” condition, posing health risks to fish, other wildlife and humans, EPA report finds - NY Daily News
We Are Still Radically Overcharged for Health Care | FDL Action
The International Federation of Health Plans is out with their new comparative price report for 2012 and it again shows the United States radically overpays for basically every health care service relative to any other first-world country. From the report:
We Are Still Radically Overcharged for Health Care | FDL Action
Prop 8 defenders have gender anxiety - Salon.com
Cooper also wilted under Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s questioning of whether it would be justifiable to discriminate against gay people in a non-marriage context. He said it wouldn’t. “I don’t quite understand it,” Sotomayor said, having cornered him. “If you’re not dealing with this as a class question, then why would you say that the Government is not free to discriminate against them?” In other words, Cooper has to justify why marriage is different, and his answer is because marriage is supposed to be for babies. (Or as he inauspiciously put it to Sotomayor,” Your Honor, that’s the essential thrust of our — our position, yes.”) In the absence of childbearing, Cooper said, society would “refocus the purpose of marriage and the definition of marriage away from the raising of children and to the emotional needs and desires of adults, of adult couples.” This was viewed as self-evidently terrible.
Prop 8 defenders have gender anxiety - Salon.com
The Last Word: Three More Senators Back Marriage Equality
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The Last Word: Three More Senators Back Marriage Equality: ""
(Via.)
The Last Word: Three More Senators Back Marriage Equality
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The Last Word: Three More Senators Back Marriage Equality: ""
(Via.)
Monday, March 25, 2013
Colorado spending $208 million on empty solitary confinement prison - The Denver Post
CAÑON CITY — Three days ago, Colorado shut down a brand-new prison it didn't need.
Unless the state government finds someone else who can use it, Colorado taxpayers can expect to spend $208 million for an empty building.
Finding someone else may not be easy. Colorado State Penitentiary II, also known as Centennial South, consists of 948 solitary-confinement cells. It has no dining room, no gym, no rooms where a group of prisoners could take classes or go to therapy or get vocational training. It's row after identical row of empty cells.
From the beginning, critics of this project objected, correctly, that Colorado was putting people in solitary confinement at a rate that dwarfed the national
Read more:Colorado spending $208 million on empty solitary confinement prison - The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_21924289/colorado-spending-208-million-empty-solitary-confinement-prison#ixzz2ObxFBtNT
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Colorado spending $208 million on empty solitary confinement prison - The Denver Post
Sunday, March 24, 2013
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