AdamSmith

Well, letting the states decide would have suited some of us fine and dandy. However, just as you decry, Congress stuck its oar in where it had no business. The result was DOMA. Leaving aside all the questions that follow from considerations of either equal protection or due process, can you see any possible way that DOMA is not a blatantly unconstitutional nullification of the full faith and credit clause? And if it is, then oughtn't this federal blunder be undone? Moreover, oughtn't it be challenged in court as vigorously as possible on the same principle we've agreed elsewhere: that any kind of affront to the Constitution -- for example, some of the current Executive's drone assassinations -- the longer allowed to go on, the more a poisonous disregard or even contempt for the Constitution they foster?

Damn! You're right -- it looks to be a wolf. Shows the power & danger of Seeing It the Way You Want to See It. Lemme work on a Revised Edition...

Not that often, though. Fortunately for certain professions.

It is a sociopolitical allegory wherein the white bunny, brown bunny, and pretty gay boy in between depict how the Supreme Court's Virginia v. Loving decision declaring interracial marriage bans unconstitutional is directly comparable to the same-sex marriage cases currently before the Court. The use of bunnies, combined with the particular kind of fun depicted between the boy and the right-hand bunny, is a side joke on the anti-same-sex-marriage arguments that the purpose of marriage is procreation. That it happens to be the brown bunny playing with the white boy is what the literary critic would say is the chiasmus or crossing between the interracial theme and the same-sex-marriage theme, which raises the image from cartoon to allegory. A bolder reader might suggest the boy's supplicant posture toward the white rabbit casts that figure, in some manner, as the Court itself, the implications of which lie outside the proper scope of this essay.

Guardian launches 'augmented reality' specs to offer immersive liberal insightGuardian Goggles' anti-bigotry technology will automatically redact columns by Melanie Phillips or Richard Littlejohn Lois P Farlo The Guardian, Sunday 31 March 2013 Alan Rusbridger, editor in chief, unveils the latest exciting step in the Guardian's mission to harness the power of online media: Guardian Goggles: Link to video: Guardian Goggles: because life's too short to think for yourself You can already access the Guardian in ways that were unimaginable two decades ago: on your desktop or laptop computer, a tablet, e-reader or smartphone. But today, ending months of speculation and rumour, this newspaper announces a groundbreaking development in the modern history of the media: a pair of web-connected "augmented reality" spectacles that will beam its journalism directly into the wearer's visual field, enabling users to see the world through the Guardian's eyes at all times. The motion-sensitive spectacles, known as Guardian Goggles, incorporate translucent screens in the lenses, overlaying the wearer's view of their surroundings with a real-time stream of specially curated opinions from the paper's reporters, critics and commentators. For example, simply by looking at the outside of a restaurant or cinema and pointing, the user can call up relevant Guardian reviews of the food or current films. "For some time, our users have been telling us they want an even more immersive Guardian experience, without the hassle of having to reach for their phones, or switch on their iPads, and Guardian Goggles are the answer," a spokesperson said. "Now, when you're out shopping, you needn't have memorised our recent features on ethically sourced foods. Just call up the 'Mini-Monbiot' app, and the products you're looking at will be rated in front of your eyes." Related software can detect the destinations featured in holiday brochures, warning wearers before they book trips to countries with problematic human rights records. The spectacles also feature optional built-in anti-bigotry technology, which prevents exposure to non-Guardian opinions by blacking out columns by Melanie Phillips or Richard Littlejohn, among other writers, as soon as the user attempts to look at them. Media analysts predicted that the Goggles could have a tectonic effect on the media landscape. "This is the easily biggest development in news technology since newspapers opened 'virtual bureaus' in Second Life in 2006, transforming journalism forever," said Paul McMullan, the former tabloid journalist who is now Professor of Disruptive Thinkovation at City University in London. "I frankly wouldn't be surprised if this were an even bigger success than Google+." Another Goggles app, currently in development, will allow readers with strong feelings about postings on the Guardian's Comment Is Free site simply to yell their objections out loud, for example in the street, or on a bus. A voice-recognition system will then add their opinions to the relevant web page within 30 seconds. An algorithm designed to detect frequently recurring viewpoints -- for example, that the Guardian should not be wasting valuable internet space by running blog posts about fashion or celebrities -- will enable those to be added to the site even faster. A still more ambitious project could see the G2 columnist and psychotherapist Pamela Stephenson Connolly delivering sex-related advice in real time. A limited-edition designer model, evoking the shape of the letter "g" from the Guardian's masthead, has been specially created by a collective of avant-garde designers working in association with Christopher Biggins. Already the glasses, a limited number of which have been given to prominent public figures for testing, have attracted a number of high-profile fans, including at least one cabinet minister. Meanwhile, a spokesman for St James's Palace said both the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were enjoying using the product, despite Prince William's grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh, suggesting that they "looked like they'd been put together by an Algerian." Guardian Goggles' impressive battery life enables them to be used for up to three hours at a time. To facilitate easy recharging for even longer periods of use, the paper plans to place unobtrusive charging stations on street corners in parts of London, Brighton and Bristol, where users may plug in their glasses without even needing to remove them. It is not yet understood how glasses-based immersive journalism will be handled by the emerging new regulatory framework for the UK media. But Hugh Grant said he would issue an authoritative ruling on the question within the next two weeks. Google Glass, a wearable-technology project blatantly inspired by Guardian Goggles, but with added features enabling the user to make creepy surreptitious video recordings in coffee shops, is expected to go on sale to consumers in 2014. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/apr/01/guardian-goggles-augmented-reality-specs

LOL Finally worth downloading "Polyester"!

caeron may have a point about her coming unhinged... Singer Michelle Shocked Sits in at Canceled Show Alternative folk singer Michelle Shocked sits outside Moe's Alley nightclub in Santa Cruz Calif., and sings, March 28, 2013 in protest after her show was canceled when she made an anti-gay slur earlier this month. (Thomas Vincent Mendoza/AP) SANTA CRUZ, Calif. March 29, 2013 (AP) Face covered and mouth taped shut, alternative folk and rock singer Michelle Shocked staged a sit in outside a Santa Cruz nightclub that canceled her show because she made an anti-gay slur at a San Francisco club earlier this month. The tape across her mouth said "Silenced By Fear." When asked a question, Shocked shook her head vigorously and strummed her guitar while seated on the ground outside popular music venue Moe's Alley. She pointed to a sign inviting people to pick up a Sharpie marker and write on the white disposable safety suit she was wearing. Earlier in the day, she had tweeted her plans: "Moe's in S Cruz tonight ok? Its an art project 'My Summer Vacation' I want your autograph. Bring Sharpie." Moe's Alley owner Bill Welch, who talked with Shocked as she strummed her guitar outside his club, had replaced her with bands Beaver Fever and Frootie Flavors. "We will not be bashing Michelle Shocked," he said. "Rather we will celebrate music, diversity and send some healing Santa Cruz energy her way." http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/singer-michelle-shocked-sits-canceled-show-18836722#.UVWr71dvDpg

The OP's commands have magical potency! March 28, 2013 Bitter Scalia Leaves U.S. Posted by Andy Borowitz WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Justice Antonin Scalia dropped a bombshell on the Supreme Court today, announcing his decision to resign from the Court “effective immediately” and leave the United States forever. Calling this week “by far the worst week of my life,” Justice Scalia lashed out at his fellow-Justices and the nation, saying, “I don’t want to live in a sick, sick country that thinks the way this country apparently thinks.” Justice Scalia said that he had considered fleeing to Canada, “but they not only have gay marriage but also national health care, which is almost as evil.” He said the fact that nations around the world recognizing same-sex marriage are “falling like deviant dominoes” would not deter him from leaving the United States: “There are plenty of other countries that still feel the way I do. I’ll move to Iran if I have to.” Throwing off his robe in a dramatic gesture, Justice Scalia reserved his harshest parting shot for his fellow-Justices, screaming, “Damn you! Damn each and every one of you to hell! You call yourself judges? That’s a good one. You’re nothing but animals!” Breathing heavily after his tirade, he turned to Justice Clarence Thomas and said, “Except you, Clarence. Are you coming with me?” Justice Thomas said nothing in reply. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/03/bitter-scalia-leaves-us.html

Well, we are. And I did. And I agree he does. Just not enough substance to offset the annoyance factor, to my taste. I promise Suckrates and I are not the same poster but I agree with the things he expressed about this above.

No more than? How very disappointing!

We don't love to attack all other gay men, just those we find particularly annoying. As you repeatedly expressed (enjoyably drolly) your distaste for the pending biopic on Liberace and his bf. You can say, Well, that was a piece of entertainment employing actors while Davey is a real person. But I think my comparison is apt: I'm laughing at, or criticizing, specifically the consumer entertainment product that Davey consciously styles & presents in these public performance pieces. I have no idea or opinion of him personally and privately, "as a gay man" or in any other way, having no basis for such.

Either half of that formulation often suffices to produce the effect you named. Or part of it, anyway.

Fairly funny comic/blog dedicated to lionizing Nikola Tesla and demonizing Edison... http://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla ...Came across it via this article on a "debate" at SXSW between the blog's creator and a pro-Edison type: http://txchnologist.com/post/45139747427/tesla-vs-edison-debate-ignites-at-sxsw

Forgive the OP for perhaps not being entirely familiar with the frequently uproariously Swiftianisms of Andy Borowitz. Or, more likely, for pulling all of our legs here. Not altogether without precedent.

Proof indeed that 90% of success is just showing up.

Things You Never Noticed in Famous Pictures... http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_50_things-you-never-noticed-in-famous-pictures_p30/#0

If memory serves, Sound of Music was the first movie I ever saw. Either that or Mary Poppins -- can't remember which.

SCOTUSblog's recap: Lyle Denniston Reporter Posted Wed, March 27th, 2013 1:28 pm Argument recap: DOMA is in trouble Analysis If the Supreme Court can find its way through a dense procedural thicket, and confront the constitutionality of the federal law that defined marriage as limited to a man and a woman, that law may be gone, after a seventeen-year existence. That was the overriding impression after just under two hours of argument Wednesday on the fate of the Defense of Marriage Act. That would happen, it appeared, primarily because Justice Anthony M. Kennedy seemed persuaded that the federal law intruded too deeply into the power of the states to regulate marriage, and that the federal definition cannot prevail. The only barrier to such a ruling, it appeared, was the chance – an outside one, though — that the Court majority might conclude that there is no live case before it at this point. After a sometimes bewilderingly complex first hour, discussing the Court’s power to decide the case of United States v. Windsor (12-307), the Court moved on to explore DOMA’s constitutionality. And one of the most talented lawyers appearing these days before the Court — Washington attorney Paul D. Clement — faced fervent opposition to his defense of DOMA from enough members of the Court to make the difference. He was there on behalf of the Republican leaders of the House (as majority members of the House’s Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group), defending the law because the Obama administration has stopped doing so. Justice Kennedy told Clement that there was “a real risk” that DOMA would interfere with the traditional authority of states to regulate marriage. Kennedy also seemed troubled about the sweeping breadth of DOMA’s Section 3, noting that its ban on benefits to already married same-sex couples under 1,100 laws and programs would mean that the federal government was “intertwined with citizens’ daily lives.” He questioned Congress’s very authority to pass such a broad law. Moreover, Kennedy questioned Clement’s most basic argument — that Congress was only reaching for uniformity, so that federal agencies would not have to sort out who was or was not married legally in deciding who could qualify for federal marital benefits, because some states were on the verge of recognizing same-sex marriage. Along with sharply negative comments about DOMA by the Court’s four more liberal members, Kennedy’s stance could put the law on the edge of constitutional extinction. But, if the Court were to do that based on states’ rights premises, the final ruling might not say much at all about whether same-sex couples were any closer to gaining an equal right to marry under the Constitution. There did not appear to be a majority of Justices willing to strike down the 1996 law based on the argument that the Obama administration and gay rights advocates have been pressing: that is, the law violates the Fifth Amendment guarantee of legal equality in general. If the House GOP leaders’ lawyer had trouble on Wednesday, so did the federal government’s lawyer, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., who was pushing for a wide-ranging ruling that might have the potential to outlaw any ban on same-sex marriage. It was not apparent that Verrilli was making much headway with his argument that any law that treats gays and lesbians less favorably, because of their sexual identity, should have to satisfy a stricter constitutional test. The Court, although it has been dealing with gay rights cases for years, has never spelled out a specific constitutional standard for judging laws that allegedly discriminate based on homosexuality. The indications on Wednesday were that the DOMA case might be decided without supplying such a standard, since a decision based on interference with states’ prerogatives would not require the creation of a test based on equality principles. There was a third lawyer in the case to discuss the constitutional issue, New York City attorney Roberta A. Kaplan, representing the New York City woman who had successfully challenged DOMA in this case — Edith Schlain Windsor, an eighty-three-year-old widow of a same-sex marriage, who sat in the second row of the audience to watch the Court deal with her case. Kaplan seemingly missed several opportunities, in answering the Justices’ questions, to the apparent consternation of gay rights lawyers in the attorney section. http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/03/argument-recap-doma-is-in-trouble/#more-161880

The halls are alive ... with the sound of Muzak!

Anthony Lewis Anthony Lewis, who has died aged 85, was a New York Times columnist and author who twice won a Pulitzer Prize, the highest award in American journalism. Anthony Lewis Photo: NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE 6:29PM GMT 26 Mar 2013 Throughout his long career, the issue that preoccupied Lewis was constitutional law, and its impact on human rights and freedom of the press. In his book Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment (1991), he addressed what one judge called “probably the most important free press case since the dawn of the Republic”. Lewis took the title from the words of the First Amendment to the US Constitution: “Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The Sullivan case concerned a libel action against The New York Times over its publication of an advertisement by a group called the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South. The advertisement was critical of police and other officials in Montgomery, Alabama, who responded by suing the Times for $3 million. After four years of litigation the Times’s lawyers managed to get the case brought before the Supreme Court for review. The Court threw it out, in effect establishing a doctrine that the press, under the First Amendment, had substantial protection against officials too thin-skinned to take the criticism that accompanies life in the public eye. Although a lifelong liberal, Lewis did not believe that the press should have privileged status under the law when it came to the protection of sources; neither was he happy about unwarranted intrusion into privacy. Joseph Anthony Lewis was born in New York City on March 27 1927 and attended the private Horace Mann school before going on to Harvard, where he was a contemporary of Robert Kennedy. After four years with The New York Times he moved to the Washington Daily News, where in 1955 he won his first Pulitzer, for a series of articles on injustices suffered by some civil servants during the Eisenhower administration. The principal subject of the series was a US Navy employee who was sacked as a potential security risk after being denounced by unnamed informants. As a result of Lewis’s articles the man was reinstated. The case formed the basis for a film, Three Brave Men (1956), starring Ray Milland and Ernest Borgnine. In 1955 Lewis moved to the Washington staff of The New York Times, specialising in stories about the Justice Department and the Supreme Court, work which won him his second Pulitzer in 1963. In 1964 he published Gideon’s Trumpet, an analysis of the workings of the Supreme Court which drew on the case of Clarence Earl Gideon, a drifter and habitual criminal convicted of theft in Florida in 1961 and sentenced to five years’ jail. Gideon was unable to afford a lawyer, and Florida provided free legal aid only in capital cases. In a letter to the Supreme Court he claimed that the US Constitution guaranteed him the right to legal representation. It was a case of great significance, determining whether the constitutional guarantee that the defendant in a federal case should have counsel extended to a defendant in a criminal case brought by an individual state. In the event, Gideon was granted legal representation for a retrial in Florida, and was acquitted. According to Justice Goldberg of the Supreme Court, Lewis’s book about the case “will take its place in the annals of distinguished literature about the law”. Lewis’s other books included Portrait of a Decade, about race relations in the United States; and Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment (2008). From 1965 to 1972 Lewis was chief of The New York Times bureau in London, and often appeared on radio and television making trenchant comments on British affairs. He wrote his column for more than 30 years, retiring at the end of 2001 with a warning to America not to surrender its civil liberties in the wake of 9/11. Lewis lectured at Harvard Law School, was a visiting teacher at the Universities of California, Illinois and Oregon, and a Visiting Professor at Columbia. His interests included opera and musicals . Anthony Lewis’s marriage to Linda Rannells was dissolved. He is survived by his second wife, Margaret Marshall, former chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and by a son and daughter of his first marriage. Anthony Lewis, born March 27 1927, died March 25 2013 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9955529/Anthony-Lewis.html

A sometimes very funny parody of Tripadvisor.com... http://tripadvisaargh.tumblr.com/