GODDAMMIT LOUISIANA! Twenty-one times since the federal Defense of Marriage Act was all but cast down in 2013 as unconstitutional, judges have ruled favorably against various states’ same-sex-marriage bans. Until, that is, now. An 80-year-old judge in Louisiana has decided it’s okay to continue discriminating against loving couples, citing several abhorrent reasons—among them the notion that doing so would somehow lead to legal incest. Mind you, this is the same judge who slapped down a drilling moratorium not all that long after the Deepwater Horizon spill that totally done screwed up the Gulf Coast.
The cops in Ferguson, Missouri, now work for the latest American police department facing a federal civil rights investigation by the Department of Justice. The inquiry, of course, was brought on by the controversial police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. But it will go well beyond what happened to Brown in looking at how a largely white police agency keeps the peace (or, rather, doesn’t) in a town whose citizens are mostly African American. This should all sound a little bit familiar.
World leaders convening for a NATO summit unsurprisingly have some meaty issues on their plates, led by what the fuck to do about the Islamic State—the subject of an urgent letter, urging confrontation, urgently co-written by a very urgent President Obama and an equally very urgent British Prime Minister David Cameron.
They’ll also take up the morass in Ukraine. The country’s prime minister, after taking a call from the invading Vladimir Putin heavy with the promise of peace talks in Minsk, is leaning toward a cease-fire in his war against pro-Russian separatists—a cease-fire that leaves the rebels in remarkably good standing. That willingness to settle things comes as more horror stories emerge about just how badly Russian solders are kicking the shit out of the Ukrainian regulars.
Oh, but one thing? If Ukraine really and truly goes through with threats to join NATO… then Russia wants everyone to know that all bets are off.
Attorney Chaumtoli Huq was standing on a sidewalk, waiting for her children to finish using a bathroom in the Times Square Ruby Tuesday. Huq also happens to be Muslim and South Asian—and was still dressed in traditional garb after attending a pro-Palestinian protest. An officer told her to move along—and when she tried to explain, reasonably—Huq was roughed up, arrested, held for hours, and harassed, according a lawsuit she just filed in federal court.
The World Health Organization, a branch of the United Nations, might have done a better job responding to an Ebola explosion that’s now many months from being controlled—if only its budget hadn’t been cut dangerously back.
Remember Al-Qaida? Overshadowed by the rise of their more vengeful offspring, ISIS, they’ve announced an expansion into India as part of a poetically phrased “caravan of jihad.”
Enjoy a slower Internet, at least on certain sites, next week. Several tech companies have promised to squeeze their traffic September 10 to help protest an FCC decision threatening what ought to be the bedrock principle of “net neutrality.”
“To put this in perspective, an African elephant is about 5 tons, T. rex is 8 tons, Diplodocus is 18 tons, and a Boeing 737 is around 50 tons,” said study author and paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara at Drexel University. “And then you have Dreadnoughtus at 65 tons.” Meet the new largest land animal ever!
DON’T BE SO GULLIBLE, McFLY. SRSLY.
I know what I’m going to do Sept 10! I’m going to go surfing, all day. One doesn’t have to worry about slow internets out there. It’s nice.