Former CIA agent Philip Giraldi gets together with former colleagues from the agency around the holidays and on these occasions tries to understand how they can support the anti-constitutional, anti-human rights, war criminal polices that have now become routine actions of the US government. [Read more…]
Newton’s first law of motion, that an object will continue in its current state of motion unless acted upon by an external force, can be used as a metaphor about how changing the status quo is harder than maintaining it. It seems to apply in law too, where the status quo carries with it a weight that puts a heavier burden on those trying to change it than those trying to maintain it. This was manifest in the case involving Utah’s same-sex marriage. [Read more…]
This was shown on Britain’s Channel 4. I haven’t been watching any US TV but I wonder if any US news outlets aired or will air this short message by one of the most significant political figures of 2013 and possibly the decade. [Read more…]
Edward Snowden gives 14 hours of interviews to Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, one of the reporters who has been given access to his documents. The article summarizes much of what he has done but in the excerpts below, I give some bits that describe how and why he did what he did and what his life is now like in Russia. [Read more…]
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has denied the appeal by the state of Utah to issue a stay of the US District Court judge’s ruling to overturn the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. In its ruling it said: [Read more…]
After the US District Court judge Robert Shelby declared on Friday that the Utah ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, marriage licenses started being issued while the government filed a motion with him asking him to stay his order pending appeal. The government, perhaps fearing that many more same-sex couples would get married while the judge considered their motion for a stay, also filed an emergency motion with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals asking them to immediately impose a stay. [Read more…]
I wrote recently about the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties case that is pending before the US Supreme Court that will test the limits of the Free Exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment and the reach of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 that says that any government action that impinges on a person’s religious freedom must have ‘compelling interest’ and no other less restrictive choice of action to achieve its ends. [Read more…]
The good news out of Ohio is that the Medicaid expansion program has been upheld by the courts. This was part of the Affordable Care Act that was meant to take care of the people who fell into a gap, who earned too much (although still poor) to be eligible for Medicaid but did not earn enough to get affordable insurance through the new health exchanges. [Read more…]
The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in a unanimous that the ban on same-sex marriage in unconstitutional, making it the 17th state to do so. This was not such a big surprise. The same court had ruled in August 22 of this year that a photographer could not deny services to a same-sex couple. (I will write more about this case later because it offers some interesting features.) [Read more…]