Lawsuits challenging the banning of same-sex marriage by states or the non-recognition of those marriages that were performed in states where they are legal, have been cropping up all over the place and every one of them has been successful so far. Georgia has now become the last Southern state to be sued.
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I have written many times before about how the US government abuses is infamous ‘no fly’ list. People arrive at an airport either within the US or abroad to come to the US and are told that they cannot board the plane. No reasons are given for the denial and the affected people cannot find out why they are on the list or whether they are on the list at all or what they can do to try and get off it. It is as perfect an example of the arbitrary denial of due process as one can think of.
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The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that in a closed system the entropy will either stay the same (for reversible processes) or increase over time (for irreversible processes). The entropy of a closed system can never decrease, except for short-lived random fluctuations. But an open system that can interact with its environment can have its entropy decrease.
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While much media attention is being paid to the defiance of the Ukrainian government by various armed groups in that country, you may have missed the story of armed defiance of the US government taking place right here.
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The right to abortion has been severely restricted in the US by making it harder to get one and Ohio is one of the worst states in this regard. To counter this, the Cleveland Skeptics and Northeast Ohio Secular Woman are challenging Center for Inquiry Northeast Ohio in a local Bowl-a-thon for abortion access.
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Stephen Colbert returned from his break and used two segments to make fun of the media fuss over the announcement that Hillary Clinton’s daughter is pregnant. Colbert mugs a lot for the camera but in these segments he outdid himself. I was really impressed at how flexible his face is. Watch especially at the 3:24 mark on the first clip and the 1:00 mark on the second.
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I wrote earlier about two interesting cases for which oral arguments were heard before the US Supreme Court this week. One was heard on Monday and concerned a suit brought by the company POM Wonderful against Coca-Cola and the other was brought by the broadcast TV station ABC against Aereo and was heard on Tuesday.
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Today is reportedly the day when William Shakespeare was born 450 years ago in 1564. There is no actual record of his birth date but he was baptized on April 26th and this makes people think that today was the likely day, which also happens to be the day he died in 1616.
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I thought that legal challenges to saying the Pledge of Allegiance in schools because of objections to the phrase ‘under God’ had been exhausted when several federal Courts of Appeals had all agreed that it was constitutional and that the lack of conflicting rulings made it unlikely that the US Supreme Court would hear the case.
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Like Philomena that I reviewed yesterday, this film was also up for multiple Academy Awards this year, though it too did not win any. It was nominated in 10 categories, including the grand slam of the seven major ones (film, director, actress, actor, supporting actress, supporting actor, screenplay).
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