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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Via Taylor Berman I came across these two videos of Pancho the Chihuahua who seems to have mastered yoga. I am going to show the videos to Baxter the Wonder Dog and see if he might want to try it.
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We don’t know when and if the Senate intelligence report on torture will be released. But while it remains secret, some of its contents may come out in dribs and drabs. But we should not underestimate the ability of the government to keep unpleasant things hidden.
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There is an interesting case that is being heard today before the US Supreme Court in which technology and copyright laws come into conflict. It concerns a firm named Aereo that is marketing a small antenna that can be connected to your mobile device that can then pick up programming that is being broadcast over the air by the TV networks. In other words, you are no longer tethered to your TV but can watch anywhere and even record and save for later viewing.
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Fairleigh Dickinson University conducted a survey in relation to the of the upcoming ruling by the US Supreme Court on the Greece prayer case that I have written extensively about. It asked 833 people two questions.
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In the comments to my post on a local physician Syed J. Akhtar-Zaidi whose bank accounts and other assets had been seized by the overzealous US attorney Steven Dettelbach for this area because they claim he was prescribing pain killers indiscriminately to make money, reader jimmyfromchicago gave me a link to a long article in the New Yorker magazine by Sarah Stillman about these civil forfeiture laws. What she describes is shocking, a terrible violation of any kind of due process protections, where law enforcement is able to confiscate people’s belongings without even charging them with any crime.
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Over the weekend I watched this film that was nominated for four Academy Awards including best picture, actress (Judy Dench), adapted screenplay, and music score, although it did not win any. It is an excellent film, one of the best that I have seen in recent years, and one that I can strongly recommend to readers.
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