The last week has seen the deaths of singers Ben E. King who used to sing with The Drifters and died at the age of 76, and Jack Ely, lead singer of The Kingsmen, who died at the age of 71.
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It has been amusing to see how police unions have reacted to the recent actions by prosecutors to charge police officers with crimes. They whine that the prosecutors are rushing to judgment because of public protests, that police are not being given the benefit of the doubt or the presumption of innocence, and that accused officers are not getting their due process rights.
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Here is the video of Bernie Sanders announcing his candidacy for president. It is a short and powerful speech that hits hard on the key issue that we have become an oligarchy and have to take back control from the wealthy if democracy is to have any hope of surviving.
Jon Stewart had a lot of fun pointing out the absurdity of the hypotheticals that some justices raised as possible objections to allowing marriage to include same-sex couples. As Jon Stewart pointed out, these objections reeked of desperation since they could be easily countered. He seemed to think that this signified that June would bring in a verdict in favor of same-sex marriage. I hope he is right though I am not as hopeful that it will be a clear-cut one.
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Baltimore’s top prosecutor Marilyn Mosby announced today that all six police officers who had custody of Baltimore resident Freddie Gray when he died after suffering a broken neck in their custody are being criminally charged.
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Mark Griswold, a friend and colleague at my university who is a professor of radiology, gave a talk at the Microsoft builders’ event this week that highlighted the features of a new device called the HoloLens headset that overlays virtual 3D objects onto the physical environment around us and promises to revolutionize many fields of education by providing students with the ability to see complete systems that are hidden within an outer shell, like the skeletal structure or the cardiovascular system of a human body. See for yourself
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Trying to predict how the US Supreme Court will rule on the highly contentious issue of same-sex marriage is a mug’s game but I will indulge in it anyway. The court will be deciding two questions:
What follows are my speculations on how all this will eventually play out based on the hearings and the past opinions and statements of the justices. The hearings can be tricky to evaluate because often the justices may seem to be pushing a point of view when what they are really doing is not advocating for that view but seeing what are the best reasons for it.
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An articulate young man tells Geraldo Rivera and the Fox News crew to get the hell out of Baltimore because they are never there to report on the awful conditions in that area or when there are peaceful protests and demonstrations to try and get things improved. They only come when there is upheaval and then just to deplore the violence and paint the residents when they are in a bad light.
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While the death of Michael Brown sparked protests in Ferguson, it was the result of lawsuits and the release of investigative reports that revealed the extent of the police abuses in that town and others.
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