Supreme Court declines anti-gay student case

(Washington) The Supreme Court said Monday that it would not take the case of a Kentucky high school student who wants to sue his school district over a policy that allegedly barred him from expressing opposition to homosexuality.

Morrison, a senior at Boyd County High School, sued the Boyd County school district over a policy that required students to undergo anti-harassment training. He claimed the policy threatened him with punishment for expressing religious beliefs in opposition to homosexuality. Morrison is a professed Christian who believes his religion requires him to speak out against what he sees as behavior that doesn’t comport with his understanding of Christian morality.

Key phrases….”who believes his religion…”. Well, nobody really cares what you “believe”- any more so than we care what anyone else believes. Just as long as it doesn’t cause harm to others, everyone in the world is allowed to believe whatever gibberish they want. That’s what our country was founded upon. And “doesn’t comport with his understanding of Christan morality”? Show me where hating gays is in the Bible, or in the Constitution where it states that any morality- Christian, Islamic or FSM- is the law of the land, and perhaps we’ll care about your so called “morality”.

Duke Ellington becomes first African American on U.S. coin

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Jazz legend Duke Ellington is the first African American to appear on an American coin, the U.S. Mint says in introducing the latest in its line of state-themed quarters.

Also on the coin is the phrase “justice for all.” The Mint rejected the first inscription choice of D.C. voters, which was “taxation without representation,” in protest of the District’s lack of voting representation in Congress.
Heh.

Watched “Escape to Canada” this weekend, a look at what an actually free country acts like. Canada legalized gay marriage and decriminalized pot in a little over a year, and suddenly the nerd country of North America became Hipville. They have since backed down on the pot thing, although it still seems largely ignored if you keep quiet about it, but gay marriage alone has created a tourism boost to the nation, as gays from around the US head to Canada to be recognized as free adults.

Some explanation of Canada’s leadership in this might be explained by this chart, which ranks the US dead last in a belief in the separation of church and state. Canada was fourth. When you have a nation in which its installed “leader” can discuss amending the law of the land to exclude gays from practicing the same rights as the rest of the country, and when cops slaughter 92 year old women over fake pot, then you can perhaps grasp why this “Land of the Free” is actually anything but.

Documents reveal details in Johnston slaying, cover-up
Three former Atlanta police officers will be sentenced in court for the botched raid

Jason Smith was losing it. “I [screwed] up; I think I killed this woman,” the Atlanta narcotics cop told partner Arthur Tesler in the yard behind a small brick bungalow on Neal Street. “You guys got to help me.”

Prosecutors say the three ex-cops should be equally responsible for one thing: They must pay Johnston’s estate $8,180 — the cost of burying her.

So a raid on a non-existent drug dealer results in the murder of a 92 year old woman, and these lying sacks of shit face “up to” 12 years for “conspiring to violate Johnston’s civil rights”? Is that Federal chin music for murder? These guys should rot in jail for the rest of their miserable lives, which, since I imagine corrupt cops don’t last long in jail, probably wouldn’t be a very long life. Of course, if we didn’t have the insipid “war on drugs” that does nothing but create incidents like this, then the woman would be alive today. But she’s dead, and her killers are sweating 12 whole years in jail. Yeah, that’s justice for ya.

Glenn Beck scares Fox host into hiding under table

Fox News hosts are known for viewing the world around them with alarm — but Glenn Beck goes far beyond most of his peers at Fox in his belief that the future looks “really bad.”

“I really hope you’re wrong,” Steve Doocy added.

So, after fearmongering for years about illegal immigrants, the coming “reconquista” and general around panic over things brown, now they hide under the desk? Wimps.

Leonard Cohen plays first US concert in 15 years

AP NEW YORK – Leonard Cohen played his first U.S. concert in 15 years, returning with a two-set, six-encore, three-hour long performance that the singer called “a memorable evening.”

Cohen knows something about economic downturns: He is touring partly because he learned in 2005 that his longtime former manager Kelley Lynch, had misappropriated millions from his retirement fund. In 2006, a Los Angeles court awarded him $9.5 million. It’s not believed that he recovered any of it.

Wonder if he performed this, which could be the soundtrack to our current morass:

Ah I don’t believe you’d like it,
You wouldn’t like it here.
There ain’t no entertainment
and the judgements are severe.
The Maestro says it’s Mozart
but it sounds like bubble gum
when you’re waiting
for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

Is the U.S. Paying Off the Italian Government for Forging the Niger Documents?

“Obama Confronts a Choice on Copters” read this week’s New York Times. The President soon “will have to decide whether to proceed with some of the priciest aircraft in the world — a new fleet of 28 Marine One helicopters that will each cost more than the last Air Force One….The choice confronting Mr. Obama encapsulates the tension between two imperatives of his nascent presidency, the need to meet the continuing threats of an age of terrorism and the demand for austerity in a period of economic hardship.”

…President Obama needs to appoint an independent, public commission to examine who drove the Marine One procurement process, which many officials say (off the record) was the most secretive, rigged award they’ve ever seen. Put all officials involved on the record, and under oath. Rarely does one bloated contract connect both to military fraud and to the corruption of our intelligence agencies. Fiscal austerity and our future safety demand a full accounting.

Indeed. But lets not hold our breath waiting for it to occur.

Obama Stimulus Saves Microsoft Billionaire Hundreds Of Millions

Billionaire Paul Allen is a Microsoft cofounder, the owner of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and the owner of the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers.

For what it’s worth, one of Paul’s representatives told the WSJ the billionaire didn’t lobby for the windfall. It just fell into his lap, lucky dog.

Now would be a fine time for us unfortunate Microsoft sufferers to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the time we’ve wasted attempting to use Vista…

Minnesota Court Rejects Coleman Witness — And Perhaps His Whole Argument

The Minnesota election court handed down another defeat for Norm Coleman tonight — quite possibly a significant one — ruling in favor of a Franken motion to forbid Coleman from bringing forward an expert witness he wanted.

Why the hell is this still dragging on? Wasn’t the election last year sometime? And will Al get paid for the time Norm Coleman has wasted that he could have been serving the people who elected him Senator?

A team of researchers led by geneticist Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany announced last week that they had completed a draft sequence of the genome of Neanderthal humans.

But does this avoid ethical problems? Hardly.

I can imagine loads of ethical issues with bringing one of these things back. And why do we need to see how cavemen behave, when we have such stellar examples right here in Utah?

Utah State Sen. Compares Gays To Alcoholics, Terrorists: ‘They’re The Greatest Threat To America’

Today, the Utah state legislature “dealt a final blow” to the last of five gay rights bills taken up under the Common Ground Initiative, when it defeated a bill that would have granted gay couples rights of inheritance and medical decision-making. Yesterday, the state House rejected bills that would have allowed gay adoption and protected gays from housing and employment discrimination.

Last night, Utah’s local ABC station received leaked portions of an interview with state senator Chris Buttars (R), which will be highlighted in an upcoming documentary on Proposition 8. Buttars is an outspoken opponent of gay rights; in the latest interview, he compares gays to alcoholics and Muslim terrorists, and warns that gay people are “probably the greatest threat to America.”

Buttars: “Ugh. People love people bad. Special underwear good. Ugh.”