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via David Jackson, USA Today President Obama won Monday’s foreign policy debate in a pair of instant polls, in one of them decisively. In a survey by CBS News, 53% awarded the debate to Obama, to 23% for Republican Mitt Romney and 24% undecided. An instant CNN poll found a closer contest as 48% favored … Continue reading
via Chicago Sun-Times Media mogul Rupert Murdoch may be looking to buy the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times as the parent company for the two newspapers attempts to exit from bankruptcy, according to a report. Executives from Murdoch’s News Corp. are in “preliminary talks” with Tribune Co.’s debt holders, who are expected to … Continue reading
via Kirk Johnson, The New York Times Details of decades of sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America, and what child welfare experts say was a corrosive culture of secrecy that compounded the damage, were cast into full public view for the first time on Thursday with the release of thousands of pages of … Continue reading
via Lila Shapiro, The Huffington Post Continuing its efforts to fight same-sex marriage in four ballot measures around the United States, the Catholic Church is now the top donor to the cause among religious institutions, according to a new report from the Human Rights Campaign. This fall in Washington, Maryland and Maine, voters will decide … Continue reading
via David Ariosio, CNN A federal appeals court in New York on Thursday became the nation’s second to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, finding that the Clinton-era law’s denial of federal benefits to married same-sex couples is unconstitutional. The divisive act, which was passed in 1996, bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages and … Continue reading
via Tom Philpott, Mother Jones You’d be forgiven for not noticing—unless you live in California, where you’ve likely been bombarded by geotargeted web ads and TV spots—but this election could spur a revolution in the way our food is made. Proposition 37, a popular Golden State ballot initiative, would require the labeling of food containing … Continue reading
via The Salt Lake Tribune The Supreme Court sided with Democrats on Tuesday in refusing to block a decision over disputed early voting days in the battleground state of Ohio, giving President Barack Obama’s campaign a victory three weeks before the election. The court refused a request by the state’s Republican elections chief and attorney … Continue reading
via Richard K. De Atley, Press Enterprise Voters in November will be asked if they want to get rid of California’s death penalty, currently imposed on 726 inmates — 112 of them from Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The state’s death chamber has gone unused since 2006 because of a judicial review of the lethal … Continue reading
via Lucia Graves, The Huffington Post It started with a coalition of disgruntled Americans, then a handful of governors took up the cause last year, and now — for the first time in nearly 20 years — a federal court will hear oral arguments in a lawsuit challenging the classification of cannabis as a dangerous … Continue reading
via Harry Bradford, Alice Hines, and Christina Wilkie, The Huffington Post Employees at 28 Walmarts in 12 different cities walked out of work Tuesday, but things may get a whole lot worse for the U.S.’s biggest retailer come Black Friday. United Food and Commercial Workers’ Making Change At Walmart, the group behind the strikes protesting … Continue reading
via Gregory J. Krieg, ABC News Mitt Romney says he has no plans to push new anti-abortion laws if elected, a position that could put him at odds with parts of his core constituency and his own running mate, Paul Ryan. “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become … Continue reading
via David Ingram, Reuters A new South Carolina law that generally requires voters to show photo identification does not discriminate against racial minorities but cannot go into effect until the start of next year, a federal court ruled on Wednesday. The U.S. District Court three-judge panel said too little time remains before the November 6 … Continue reading
via Alice Hines, The Huffington Post The first retail worker strike against Walmart has spread from Los Angeles, where it began last week, to stores in a dozen cities, a union official said Tuesday. Walmart workers walked off the job in Dallas, Seattle, the San Francisco Bay area, Miami, the Washington, D.C., area, Los Angeles, … Continue reading
via Jennifer Waters, Market Watch Tucked into the U.S. Supreme Court’s agenda this fall is a little-known case that could upend your ability to resell everything from your grandmother’s antique furniture to your iPhone 4. At issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to … Continue reading
via Lucia Mutikani, Reuters The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to a near four-year low of 7.8 percent in September, a potential boost to President Barack Obama’s re-election bid. The Labor Department said on Friday the unemployment rate, a key focus in the race for the White House, dropped by 0.3 percentage point to its lowest … Continue reading
via The Huffington Post Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan reiterated his well-known opposition to same-sex marriage in Cincinnati today. As ThinkProgress noted of this CNN clip, Ryan responded to an audience member’s question by declaring, “The things you talk about like traditional marriage and family and entrepreneurship…these aren’t values that are indicative to any … Continue reading
via Kris Maher, The Wall Street Journal A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday blocked the state’s controversial voter-identification law from taking effect in time for the November election. Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson said he thought the measure, which would have required voters to show a photo ID at polls, could have kept some people from … Continue reading
via Julia Preston, The New York Times The Department of Homeland Security has stated in writing that foreigners who are same-sex partners of American citizens can be included under an Obama administration policy suspending deportations of some immigrants who pose no security risk. In letters sent late Wednesday to several Democratic lawmakers, Homeland Security Secretary … Continue reading
via AP, Fresno Bee California has become the first state to ban a controversial form of psychotherapy aimed at making gay teenagers straight. Gov. Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he had signed SB1172 by Democratic Senator Ted Lieu of Torrance. The law, which prohibits sexual orientation change efforts for anyone under 18, will stop children … Continue reading
via Stephen Ceasar, Los Angeles Times The University of California will pay damages of $30,000 to each of the 21 UC Davis students and alumni who were pepper-sprayed by campus police during an otherwise peaceful protest 10 months ago, the university system announced Wednesday. The agreement, which must still be approved in federal court, also … Continue reading
via Steve Friess, Politico Microsoft has enjoyed months of great press for its promise to make Do Not Track the default setting on its forthcoming iteration of Internet Explorer, but it has left out one important detail: Users will still be tracked. That also goes for users of Chrome, whose parent Google announced last week … Continue reading
via Ron Nixon, The New York Times Customers might complain about the flood of unsolicited credit card applications, supermarket fliers and shopping catalogs in their mail, but the Postal Service is hoping to deliver even more. Faced with multibillion-dollar losses and significant declines in first-class mail, the post office is cutting deals with businesses and … Continue reading
via Miranda Leitsinger, NBC News When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told a group of students that the Supreme Court would probably hear challenges during its upcoming term to the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages, she confirmed what many observers were already thinking: The nation’s high court is poised to … Continue reading
via Somini Sengupta and Kevin J. O’Brien, The New York Times Facebook on Friday confronted a new obstacle over what to do with one of its most vital assets — pictures. The company promised European regulators that it would forgo using facial recognition software and delete the data used to identify Facebook users by their … Continue reading
via Robin Wilkey, The Huffington Post A pair of scientists at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco have found that a compound derived from marijuana could stop metastasis in many kinds of aggressive cancer, potentially altering the fatality of the disease forever. “It took us about 20 years of research to figure this out, … Continue reading
The Brandt Standard 