Where feeding the homeless is a crime

I read a news item recently about a 90-year old man who was arrested (twice!) in Fort Lauderdale because he violated a city ordinance that prohibited people from feeding homeless people in public. While the city asserts that it is doing so for the good of the homeless, one cannot help but have the suspicion that the real reason is that they don’t want the sight of homeless people to ruin the tourist experience for this popular vacation spot.
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Why conspiracies of silence exist

The revelations of CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi’s abusive behavior towards women have been stunning. Among many women who moved in the same circles as he did, his behavior was apparently common knowledge and they took care to avoid him and quietly passed the warning along to other women who might be unsuspecting. But that quiet network was not enough to prevent some women from not knowing and thus falling victim. To make it worse, there was also a belief among some that he was gay, thus leading some women to put their guard down in his presence and think that he only wanted to be their friend. Among men, the reactions were all over the place but the primary one was why no women had publicly accused him of behaviors that had been apparently going on for a long time.
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Why do people do this?

It has always been the case that people have tried to change their appearance using many techniques, hairstyles and makeup being the most common. While a person’s body belongs to themselves and they can pretty much do what they want with it, sometimes the things they do completely baffle me because I would never have dreamed of going so far.
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Hurricane Katrina and dog rescue

In a previous post where I discussed the strong bond that dog owners have with their pets and the joy of reuniting with them, I recalled the case during Hurricane Katrina when one young man refused to be evacuated unless his dog was rescued too. It was only when a person working for Oprah Winfrey’s network promised that he would take care of the dog and that they would be reunited later that he agreed to go. Their reunion later was something to see.
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Setback for same-sex marriage

Yesterday the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down its verdict on the six same-sex marriage cases from the four states in its jurisdiction (Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee). District judges had in each case ruled that the bans on such marriages in each of those states was unconstitutional and the three-judge panel looked at all the cases together. The panel ruled 2-1 to reverse the lower courts and uphold the bans, meaning that same-sex marriages cannot proceed in these four states. The majority opinion is, frankly, appalling. I do not say this simply because I disagree with the conclusion but for reasons that I give below.
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