Category: Uncategorized

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US Supreme Court to hear Prop 8 and Windsor DOMA cases

The US Supreme Court has announced it will hear the appeal of Prop 8 and the Windsor DOMA challenge. ScotusBlog has this:

“Trying to sort this all out, it is clear that the Court has agreed to consider the merits case in Prop. 8, because that is what the petition presented as its question, but that it is also going to address whether the proponents had a right to pursue their case. If the Court were to find that the proponents did not have Art. III standing, that is the end of the matter: there would be no review on the merits of Proposition 8, or of the 9th CA decision striking it down.”

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Minnesota: Gov. Mark Dayton would sign marriage equality legislation

Governor Mark Dayton of Minnesota said he would sign marriage equality legislation if it reached his desk.

Dayton, a Democrat, made the comments in an interview Thursday, according to Minnesota Public Radio. He added that he was unsure whether the legislature was ready to take up the issue, however.

“I hope we’re going to get to that point,” he said. “The younger generation is broadly accepting of that change and we’ll get there, it’s just a question of when.”

Last year Dayton symbolically vetoed Minnesota’s ultimately failed ballot measure to place a ban on same-sex marriage in the state constitution.

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British PM David Cameron: “Gays should not be excluded from marriage”

“I am in favor of gay marriage because I’m a massive supporter of marriage and I don’t want gay people to be excluded from a great institution,” British Prime Minister David Cameron told Channel 4 News, adding that religious institutions would in no way be forced to perform same-sex marriages should that be against their beliefs.

More from the Evening Standard here.

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Unemployment drops to 7.7%

The economy added 146,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, its lowest level since December 2008, the government said today in a report that was complicated by special factors of weather and politics.  Clearly Hurricane Sandy was a factor in the past month.

Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist for Capital Economics, described the report as “something of a mixed bag” but said “on balance, it’s positive.”

The good news being that we are still adding jobs.  Four years ago before President Obama took office, we were LOSING hundreds of thousands of jobs a month.

Read more at BusinessWeek.

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Newark Mayor Cory Booker on Day 3 of the SNAP Challenge

Newark Mayor Cory Booker is currently doing the SNAP Challenge, wherein he is spending this week living on the same amount of money for food as food stamp folks.

Some critics of SNAP say that people get on the program and stay because it’s cushy and comfortable.  Booker’s public experience is to show how difficult it truly is to subsist on just about $4 a day.

Below are some of his thoughts from his 3rd day of the challenge:

“My third day on the #SNAPChallenge was by far the toughest. Today, I was in motion and at meetings all day. My crazy schedule required that I prepare all of my food in the morning to enable me to eat on the go.

“In addition to preparing and packaging my meals, I realized early this morning that I am eating too much food per meal. If I do not cut back the amount I am eating at each meal, I will run out of food before the #SNAPChallenge is over. 

“In the days ahead I am now going to eat smaller portion sizes. I decided to eat my dinner of peas, black beans, cauliflower and broccoli in small bites between 3pm and 7pm in between meetings and calls hoping that would allay some of the hunger pains I felt yesterday. This actually worked and something I might try again tomorrow.”