From reader Marcus Ranum, I got this link to an article that says that Britain’s GCHQ launched DDoS attacks against websites of political dissidents who were engaged in lawful activities. Thus the government is doing what it asserts are criminal activities if done by private entities.
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The case of United States v. Windsor that the US Supreme Court ruled on last summer in which the Defense of Marriage Act DOMA was held to be unconstitutional has had a domino effect, with lower courts in state after state ruling that bans of same-sex marriage are unconstitutional.
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French president Francois Hollande made a state visit to the US. The Daily Show looks at the coverage of the visit by our esteemed media who clearly have a good grasp on the important issues at play during the visit and what the public needs to know.
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The story put out by the government that the NSA had created and uses its massive spying powers purely to combat terrorism has been seen to be a joke. The US and UK are spying on everyone because they can and are willing to do it to gain any advantage in any area, even if it does the kinds of things that are condemned as criminal when done by others.
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You may recall Thomas Perkins, the multi-millionaire who recently said that the attacks on the one-percenters is similar to the rhetoric that the Nazis used to inflame people against Jews and thus may be the precursor to a something similar happening here. He must be feeling pleased with the reception those remarks got because he is back in the news, with new and even more profound insights.
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There were several commenters who disagreed with my assertion in an earlier post that belief in both god and evolution by natural selection are incompatible and forces one to choose one or the other. They pointed out that there were large numbers of people who believed in both god and evolution or that the tremendous suffering that occurs in nature was incompatible with only a loving omnipotent god or that I was being parochial and equating all religious people with the young Earth Christians in the US.
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A US district judge in Virginia ruled today that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional because it violated the due process and equal protections clauses of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. This follows Wednesday’s similar ruling in Kentucky and earlier rulings in Oklahoma and Utah. Like those rulings, the order was stayed pending appeals, so that this issue is being fast-tracked to the US Supreme Court.
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Kevin Drum describes what happened in the US Senate two days ago. The Republican party leadership clearly wanted to avoid another knock down, drag out, fight over raising the debt ceiling that so hurt them the previous times they have tried it. But the Tea Party wing has decided that raising the debt ceiling is the Greatest Evil Ever and was demanding that the party oppose it.
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I think the anonymous NFL people who were interviewed by Sports Illustrated and said that they thought that Michael Sam coming out as gay would make him less desirable for teams in the NFL draft because of the ‘controversy’ he would generate, must be regretting their words because they have been getting a beating over those remarks, by critics saying they showed how backward are the views of the NFL administrators, while players seem to be more accepting. [Read more…]
Via Machines Like Us, I came across this video of a crow (named 007) solving an extremely difficult puzzle. According to this article: [Read more…]