Ok folks, let’s get one thing clear. The First Amendment guarantee of free speech does not mean that you can say anything to anyone at any time in any place in any capacity. That this need to be clarified at all is astounding but clearly some people just do not get it, as when a state trooper Brian Hamilton started questioning Ellen Bogan after he pulled her over.
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I have been ranting about the abuses of this practice for some time and was glad to see John Oliver use it as the basis for his latest investigative report on Last Week Tonight. (As an aside, actor Jeff Goldblum seems to like making goofy cameo appearances on these comedy shows.)
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The US Supreme Court said today that it will not hear any of the seven same-sex marriage cases that were appealed to them. Appeals Courts in all those cases had ruled in favor of overturning bans on such marriages but injunctions had been in place preventing them from actually taking place until the Supreme Court ruled. By saying they will not hear those cases, the injunctions become void and now marriages can go ahead in five new states Indiana, Wisconsin, Utah, Oklahoma, and Virginia.
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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has emerged as the leading liberal voice on the US Supreme Court. At age 81, she is also the oldest justice. She gave an interview to the magazine Elle in which she discussed, among other things, why those who have been publicly urging her to retire while president Obama is still in office so that he can appoint someone else in her mold are misguided and that she has no plans to retire.
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An Oklahoma county judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of a Baptist minister charging that the 6-foot tall granite Ten Commandments monument that was placed on grounds of the state capital violated the state’s constitution. The judge blocked the lawsuit from even going to trial. The ruling will be appealed to the state supreme court and there is another lawsuit pending in a federal court that is scheduled for trial on March 10, 2015.
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The Hobby Lobby case, where the US Supreme court ruled that under some vaguely defined circumstances, owners of companies had right to impose their religious views as company policies as if the companies were individuals under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), was widely predicted to open up a Pandora’s box with others seeking similar exemptions from following the law because of their ‘sincerely held religious beliefs’.
And lo, what the prophets foretold has come to pass.
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A 14-year old boy took a photograph of himself with a Jesus statue in a public area that, to put it as gently as I can, suggests an extremely friendly relationship between Jesus and him. It seems like he took the phrase ‘Jesus loves me’ a little too literally.
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The new session of the US Supreme Court starts soon with the first meeting of the justices on the 29th of this month and they already have seven petitions on same-sex marriage submitted to them as a result of Appeals Court verdicts. These cases consist of three from Virginia, and one each from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wisconsin.
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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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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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