Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties case arguments

Lyle Denniston has a summary of the oral arguments in today’s contraceptive case and you can also read the transcript here. Denniston seems to have the sense (shared by several other reports I read) that the day did not go well for the government’s case, despite the spirited question by the three women justices of the lawyers for the companies. It will be quite telling if a 6-3 verdict splits along gender lines.
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NSA storing every single phone call in one country

In a lesser noticed story that is once again based on Edward Snowden’s documents, Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani write in the Washington Post that the NSA has “built a surveillance system capable of recording “100 percent” of a foreign country’s telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place.”
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Michelle Obama, pastry Nazi?

For some reason, people seem to be seeking ways to attack Michelle Obama although as far as I can see, she seems to have been an exemplary First Lady. The fact that nothing has stuck suggests that she has been very savvy about her words and behavior. One continuous strain has been to mock her focus on childhood obesity and her drive to get people to eat more healthily and exercise and has been used to paint her as some kind of health food fanatic.
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