Michael Che of The Daily Show speaks to some of the people who are convinced that the influx of refugee children from Central America is all part of some grand covert plan to destroy America, that they are Trojan horses. At the same time, he finds encouraging signs that a lot of people see the issue not as some kind of existential threat to the US but simply as children fleeing persecution.
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The recent discovery in Patagonia of the fossils of a massive dinosaur of a completely new species was a great surprise. The word ‘massive’ is actually an understatement.
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Dan Froomkin was one of the best reporter/bloggers in the mainstream press before he was fired by the Washington Post in June 2009 for being too hard on the occupant of the White House, first George W. Bush and then later on Barack Obama, threatening the relationship the newspaper carefully cultivates with power, where you are allowed to criticize but only within certain limits.
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Norm Stamper used to be police chief in Seattle when he unleashed police in full riot gear onto demonstrators at the 1999 World Trade Organization. He greatly regretted that action and now has become a critic of paramilitary gear for police and for using harsh tactics when dealing with the general public.
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A three judge panel of the US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously struck down same-sex marriage bans in Wisconsin and Indiana. You can read the history of the case here and the opinion here.
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Via Jonathan Turley I learned something that I had not known before, and that is that in India the law requires you to get government approval to change your religion. That bizarre law had its genesis in preventing forcible conversions by giving a third party the opportunity to judge if the person genuinely agreed to the conversion.
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As was expected, the full panel of judges in the DC District Court of Appeals has decided to re-hear the Halbig v. Burwell case where a panel of three judges voted 2-1 that the tax credits provided by the federal government was not allowed under the Affordable Care Act, saying that the language of the act only allowed exchanges set up the states to do so.
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The Sunday Assembly movement began in the UK and is sponsoring ‘atheist churches’ around the world for the growing number of nonbelievers to get together regularly for fellowship and to work for good causes around the motto “Live Better, Help Often, and Wonder More”.
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So Eric Cantor, after having faithfully protected the interests of Wall Street while pretending to serve the public as Majority Leader in the House of Representatives before losing his primary to a Tea Party candidate, decided to quit his job early and go straight to Wall Street at a high salary even though he has no financial background. It is no surprise that his role will be to provide access to congress to serve his company’s needs.
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The telecommunication companies are pushing hard against net neutrality so that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can charge different rates to companies for use of their networks. This would result in large companies that are willing to pay being able to provide faster response times than smaller, poorer companies, eventually squeezing the latter out of business. President Obama appointed the head of the lobbying body of the cable companies to head the FCC, which strongly hinted that the fix was in.
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