Indian Supreme Court decriminalizes gay sex

This going to be a very busy day for me and there are plenty of things I want to write about later, such as the fallout and backlash to the New York Times op-ed about the palace coup against Donald Trump in the White House and the hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court. But I want to first flag a really important news item and that is that the Supreme Court of India has, in a unanimous ruling, decriminalized homosexual acts, thus nullifying anti-gay laws that were in section 377 of the penal code, a relic from the days of British colonialism.
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How money buys immunization from prosecution

The influence of money in politics lies largely in the fact that if you are a big donor to politicians, you can get immediate access to them. Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. is perhaps the best example of this process in action. It turns out that the Manhattan district attorney’s office is currently considering bringing criminal charges against the Trump organization in the wake of the information released in the recent convictions and plea deals of close associates of Donald Trump.
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Satanic fun and games in Arkansas

Those wacky Satanists are at it again in their efforts to maintain the separation of church and state, targeting the inane practice of some legislatures to post monuments to the Ten Commandments on public grounds. Some people think that the lack of public religiosity is the cause of America’s descent into immorality and that reminding people about what their god expects of them will make their behavior better. There is so much that is obviously wrong with that view that I will not waste time dealing with it.
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Prosecuting the prosecutors

The protestors who were acquitted of all charges for actions during Donald Trump’s inauguration are now pressing for action against the prosecutors. According to Sam Adler-Bell, they are turning the tables on the people who brought charges against them, accusing them of prosecutorial misconduct for the extraordinary lengths they went to expand the number and seriousness of charges, to the extent of including people who just happened to be there as being complicit in the actions, and also for withholding evidence that was in the defendants’ favor.
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All charges dropped against Trump protestors

I have written before about the punitive prosecutions launched in Washington, DC against 234 people who were arrested during the anti-Trump demonstrations at his inauguration last year and charged with ‘felony rioting’. After a trial, a jury cleared six protestors of all charges. Then prosecutors were forced to drop charges against six others after the judge found that they had behaved unethically.
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Give the religious an inch and they’ll try to take a mile

The US Supreme Court frequently takes up cases involving the Establishment Clause about the extent to which religious elements can be introduced into the public sphere. Rather than unequivocally declare that it should never be allowed and thus ending the debate once and for all, a decision that would likely result in them having to face the wrath of the religious in America, they have instead tried to rule very narrowly, inserting intricate conditions on when such things can be allowed. They have done this with prayers, religious displays, and the like.
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The US president is not the commander-in-chief of all Americans

A segment on the radio recently discussed Donald Trump’s decision to invite people this year to celebrate iftar, the name given to the breaking of the daily fast by Muslims during Ramadan. This was an annual practice started some years ago but Trump did not have one last year when he was at the height of his anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions. During an interview on the program The World, the question was asked as to who might be invited and what Muslims would agree to go. The person being interviewed, who worked for president George W. Bush on Muslim outreach, repeatedly kept referring to Trump as the “commander in chief for all Americans”, as if this means that we were obliged to accept an invitation from him to come to the White House.
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The Colorado same-sex cake ruling

The US Supreme Court yesterday issued a 7-2 ruling that upheld the decision by a Colorado baker to not bake a cake for the wedding of a same-sex couple. While this is not a good thing, it could have been a lot worse. The ruling was very narrowly crafted to deal with very specific particulars of this case and so cannot be taken as a blanket license for private businesses to discriminate against the LGBTQ community. Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor were the dissenters. You can read the opinions here.
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Justice-American style

There were massive protests in Washington DC on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration and the authorities rounded up large numbers of people. Of course, it will not do to have people protesting in the streets. What do these people think, that they are living in a democracy? So in order to deter such unseemly behavior in the future, the authorities decided to throw the book at the arrested people, charging them with conspiracy to riot, that could have resulted in decades in prison if they were found guilty.
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