Conservative Activist Court Rules That Employers Can Impose Their Religious Views On Employees In Hobby Lobby Case

Republicans have long claimed that Roe v. Wade was an act of an activist court to impose liberal views upon them, energizing many religious conservatives to turn out to vote for them. Today’s Supreme Court decision allowing come companies to avoid the requirements in the Affordable Care Act to include contraception on religious grounds might do the opposite. This decision will undoubtedly anger many women who will see this as meaning that their access to contraception coverage is dependent upon their employer, while the Affordable Care Act was intended to free them of this limitation and provide access to affordable contraception. It also highlights what has been clear for years that the agenda of the religious right is to block not only abortion but contraception.

Mother Jones has gathered eight of the best lines in Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent in the Hobby Lobby case:

  • Ginsburg wrote that her five male colleagues, “in a decision of startling breadth,” would allow corporations to opt out of almost any law that they find “incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
  • “The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would…deny legions of women who do not hold their employers’ beliefs access to contraceptive coverage”
  • “Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community.”
  • “Any decision to use contraceptives made by a woman covered under Hobby Lobby’s or Conestoga’s plan will not be propelled by the Government, it will be the woman’s autonomous choice, informed by the physician she consults.”
  • “It bears note in this regard that the cost of an IUD is nearly equivalent to a month’s full-time pay for workers earning the minimum wage.”
  • “Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations[?]…Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today’s decision.”
  • “Approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be ‘perceived as favoring one religion over another,’ the very ‘risk the [Constitution’s] Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.”
  • “The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield.”

Think Progress pointed out how this is not a victory for religious freedom and hurts people of faith:

But while conservatives would have the American public believe that protecting Hobby Lobby is about protecting all religious people, the reality is that today’s ruling actually hurts people of faith. In fact, a Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey conducted in early June found that a substantial majority of almost every major U.S. Christian group support the idea that publicly-held corporations and privately-owned corporations should be required to provide employees with healthcare plans that cover contraception and birth control at no cost. This is likely why so many progressive Christian leaders have vocally opposed Hobby Lobby in the press, why Americans United for the Separation of Church and State submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court opposing Hobby Lobby on behalf of nearly 30 religious organizations, and why both the Jewish Social Policy Action Network and the American Jewish Committee submitted their own amicus briefs decrying the corporation’s position.

And while white evangelicals were an outlier in the PRRI poll — only 40 percent of evangelical respondents supported the ACA’s contraception mandate for privately-owned corporations — a sizable cadre of conservative Christians have publicly articulated nuanced, faith-based opposition to the case in recent months, drawing attention to the fact that Hobby Lobby only speaks for a small minority of people of faith in America. David Gushee, an evangelical Christian professor of Christian Ethics and director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University, offered an extensive treatment of the case in the Associated Baptist Press in April. He examined the issue from the perspective of a Christian theologian, noting that any attempt to broaden the legal status of businesses to include religious exemptions — however well-intentioned — is inconsistent, dangerous, and unfair to other religious Americans.

“One way to look at it is this: The whole point of establishing a corporation is to create an entity separate from oneself to limit legal liability,” he writes. “Therefore, Hobby Lobby is asking for special protections/liability limits that only a corporation can get on the one hand, and special protections that only individuals, churches and religious organizations get, on the other. It seems awfully dangerous to allow corporations to have it both ways.“

In addition to fearing the social implications of a pro-Hobby Lobby ruling, other evangelical Christians take umbrage with the theological premise undergirding their case — namely, that opposing the ACA mandate is somehow an extension of a pro-life position. Richard Cizik, former Vice President for Governmental Affairs for the National Association of evangelicals, wrote in the Huffington Post this weekend that evangelicals who support Hobby Lobby “are not actually being pro-religious freedom or pro-life.” Similarly, Julia K. Stronks, evangelical Christian and political science professor at Whitworth University, teamed up with Jeffrey F. Peipert, a Jewish family-planning physician, to pen an op-ed for Roll Call earlier this month in which they argue that granting Hobby Lobby religious exemption will actually lead to more abortions. They write:

Although the owners of these for-profit corporations oppose the contraceptive requirement because of their pro-life religious beliefs, the requirement they oppose will dramatically reduce abortions. … Imagine a million fewer unintended pregnancies. Imagine healthier babies, moms and families. Imagine up to 800,000 fewer abortions. No matter your faith or political beliefs, our hunch is that we can all agree that fewer unplanned pregnancies and fewer abortions would be a blessing.

Jonathan Merritt, an evangelical Christian writer and blogger for the Religion News Service, went even further in his theological challenge to the case, arguing that conservative evangelicals shouldn’t call businesses “Christian” in the first place.

“The New Testament never—not one time—applies the ‘Christian’ label to a business or even a government,” he writes. “The tag is applied only to individuals. If the Bible is your ultimate guide, the only organization one might rightly term ‘Christian’ is a church. And this is only because a church in the New Testament is not a building or a business, but a collection of Christian individuals who have repented, believed on Christ, and are pursuing a life of holiness.”

These voices represent the majority of religious Americans who insist that today’s pro-Hobby Lobby decision isn’t about protecting “religious liberty.” Instead, it’s just a victory for one kind of religion, specifically the (usually conservative) faith of those privileged enough to own and operate massive corporations. That might be good news for the wealthy private business owners like the heads of Hobby Lobby, but for millions of religious Americans sitting in the pews — not to mention thousands working in Hobby Lobby stores — their sacred and constitutional right to religious freedom just became compromised.

Sarah Palin’s Lost Email

When not inventing conspiracy stories regarding Benghazi, conservatives are preoccupied with conspiracy theories about the IRS, primarily spread by looking at investigations of conservative groups while ignoring similar investigation of progressive groups. The lost email has further excited them, despite a policy of only backing up email on IRS servers for about six months, making the claims of lost email appear quite plausible. Surely conservatives are capable of understanding the consequences of government inefficiency, such as a poor backup policy.

Of course the same conservatives who see a conspiracy here showed no concern over the 22 million lost emails under Bush during the controversy over the improper dismissal of U.S.  attorneys for political reasons (when, contrary to the IRS case, there was real evidence on wrong doing). Similarly they ignore the manner in which the Bush administration broke the law by using outside email accounts to avoid detection.

If we are seeing rampant hypocrisy among conservatives, the most flagrant, not surprisingly, is Sarah Palin. Despite all her attacks on Obama over the lost email (which would have nothing to do with him even if Lois Lerner really was hiding something), Palin had a number of missing email of her own:

Perhaps Palin forgot what it was like to be the subject of a similar investigation exactly three years earlier after her office released her emails to the press. On June 13, 2011, the Anchorage Daily News reported that “Nearly a month of former Gov. Sarah Palin’s emails are missing from the documents released to media organizations last week, a gap that raises questions about what other emails might also be missing from what’s being nationally reported as her record as Alaska governor.”

According to the documents Palin’s office provided, she sent no official emails from between December 8, 2006 and December 29, 2006, in other words her first full month in office. As the paper put it, “That means zero emails during a period during which, among other things, Palin put out her proposed state budget, appointed an attorney general, killed the contract for a road out of Juneau and vetoed a bill that sought to block state public employee benefits to same-sex couples.”

The Anchorage Daily News that the gap was due to Palin’s preponderance to use a personal Yahoo email account instead of the official state account, thereby allowing her to hide certain communication from public view. The first email Palin was on record as sending came on January 2, 2007, one month after she took office.

If the IRS deliberately destroyed evidence of wrongdoing by “losing” emails, that would be unacceptable. So far, there is no concrete evidence that that is what happened. Similarly, Palin’s camp never offered an explanation for the missing emails from her office and we will likely never know if they were intentionally trying to hide specific actions.

Either way, Palin’s decision to focus her anger on missing emails has more than a whiff of hypocrisy.

McConnell Promises Conservatives That Republicans Will Work To Restrict Abortions If They Take Control Of Senate

With control of the Senate up for grabs, The Hill reports on one key reason why it is important for Democrats to get out to vote. Mitch McConnell vows to escalate Republican efforts to restrict reproductive rights and promote further government intrusion in the private lives, and bodies, of women:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised Saturday to focus more attention on limiting abortions if Republicans take control of the Senate in November.

Speaking to the National Right to Life Convention in his home state of Kentucky, the Senate’s top Republican suggested Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has blocked the upper-chamber from voting on bills that would limit women’s rights to abortion, according to conservative website Townhall.com.

But McConnell said he would push abortion-limiting legislation to pressure President Obama to take a stand on the issue.

“For six years, the president has been isolated from this growing movement,” McConnell said. “He will be forced to listen to the cause that’s brought us all here this morning. Senate Dems would be forced to take a stand.”

I fear that the Republicans will really do this, as opposed to their empty promises to work to create more jobs when they took control of the House. Undoubtedly Obama will take a stand and veto such legislation.

SciFi Weekend: Continuum; Arrow; The Flash; Doctor Who; Community; Masters of Sex

Continuum Last Minute

Last Minute, the third season finale of Continuum, was an even bigger game-changer than the previous finales. I thought the season dragged for a while after they set up the situation of two Alec’s, but the addition of Brad and the changes in the time line added considerably to the second half of the season. The final three episodes certainly made up for any slow moments earlier in the season.

At the start of the episode, the couples of Kiera and Brad, along with Alec and Emily, appeared happy to just live quiet lives together and drop out of all the action. Events such as the attempt by Piron Alec to kill Time Travel Alec prevented that from occurring. Earlier episodes dealt with Kiera’s awakening as she realized that the Orwellian future she came from was not worth preserving.  Initially I thought this would lead to her working with Liber8 to prevent the Corporate Congress from taking over. Instead the future has been changed so instead she had to prevent the even worse Terminator-like future which Alec’s time jump ultimately resulted in. If not for her awakening, and other events in recent episodes, we would not have reached the point where Kiera and Liber8 could work together so easily to prevent Piron Alec from accelerating the time line which caused mass destruction rather than tyranny. Ideally they could change things so that neither future has to come about.

While the replacement of Piron Alec with Time Travel Alec, with Time Travel Alec ultimately killing his other self, was the heart of the plot of the episode, it is not clear if it mattered in the end. Kellog already had events in motion to replace Alec as head of Piron. I found this a little unrealistic, thinking that while it was certainly plausible that others in the company would have problems with Alec, they more likely would have replaced him with someone on the inside rather than this outsider. This might also shed a little light on how time travel works on Continuum. Initially the beacon appeared to do nothing, suggesting that Brad’s time line might have been obliterated. It wasn’t until after Kellog took over Piron that the space marines appeared from the future. This suggests a variable future, but also raises the question of whether the future is the same future Brad came from. If so, was it setting up Kellog to control Piron, and not Alec taking over Piron, which really set us on a course towards that future?

With Alec out at Piron, presumably this means he will return to SadTech. While Piron starts out with greater financial resources, and would benefit from Kellog’s knowledge of the future, SadTech has the advantage in scientific knowledge with Alec, along with potential help from others such as Jason and even Lucas. Perhaps a battle between Piron and SadTech starts out the corporate wars of Brad’s future. In Brad’s time line Kellog was the winner, but the third season demonstrated that the future can be rewritten. As we learned two weeks ago that, “No one controls the future. It is an ever-evolving organism, free to change as it sees fit.”

The roles of other characters have also changed this season, and it is not certain how much they will matter (assuming everything is not changed again with a jump to another time line). Having Carlos in charge of the police was instrumental in the effort to switch the two Alecs but Dillon remains alive and may or may not return to his position. Julian knows about the time travelers and his role in fighting the original future, but where does that leave him in this new time line? Characters such as Escher, Sonya, Betty, and most of the Freelancers appear dead after this season, but death might not be a permanent change.

The appearance of the space marines raises a number of questions. Are they from the same future Brad came from, considering his reaction was to run rather than make contact with people who might have been sent back to assist him? Even if from the same future, perhaps another faction got control of time travel and received the message from the beacon. If Kellog is now the puppet master, what is he up to? Is future Kellog trying to change the time line he lives in or bring it about? He sent Brad back with vague instructions including to neutralize the zealots, stabilize the “incursion site” and “salt the God-saved Earth.” If the space marines have the same mission, I can see why Brad’s reaction would be to run.

With all the factions we have seen, other than for the space marines we know the least about what the Traveler and Curtis Chen are up to. What does it mean when the Traveler announced, “It has begun.” It no longer appears that their goal is the old Freelancer goal of keeping the future on track and, as it appears that the time line has been altered many times, it is questionable if there really is one correct future to protect. There is no indication whether the original time line can ever be restored, which might mean it is impossible for Kiera to ever return to her family (which she is now realizing). I also fear this means we might not ever find out the specifics of old Alec Sadler’s plan in sending both Liber8 and Kiera back in time.

Continuum-3x13-10

Simon Barry discussed some aspects of the finale with  TV Guide Canada:

TV Guide Canada: Let’s talk about a scene fairly early on in the episode, with Kiera kissing Brad. Some would view that as a betrayal of her husband Greg and son Sam, regardless of the timeline we’re in.

Simon Barry: Yeah. I think at a certain point we have allowed Kiera to make her decision that she’s not going home in this season. That protecting the world that she came from is a bad idea because she’s changed her mind on what the right future is. After that moment, she’s made that sacrifice of her husband and her son. That kiss, I think, is indicative of her decision to embrace the life she now has in the present. And Brad can relate to her because he’s had a very similar experience.

TVGC: There were a lot of fun scenes in the finale. I actually yelled ‘What?!’ when the camera cut to Kiera turning to Travis for help.

SB: That was one of those wonderful moments that we discovered in the editing room as opposed to something that I had written. I had written that they had gotten together, but the reveal was in a different place. It just worked so much better revealing him at the end of the scene than the beginning, which was how it was originally written. I have to give major props to Jamie Alain, who edited the episode and came up with that.

TVGC: Speaking of things written into the script, was it written in there that Garza, Travis and Kiera would arrive at Piron’s headquarters walking slow motion and ready to fight?

SB: Yes, you can thank me, that was all me! [Laughs.] Will Waring, who directed it, did a bang-up job with it. Sometimes in the script I’ll put things like, ‘This should be a “holy shit moment in slo-mo.”‘ That was a scene in the script where I wanted the audience to realize that this was a big deal. I wanted it to have the impact that it did.

TVGC: The fight between the two Alecs was pretty impressive. It must have been a difficult shoot, what with making sure the stand-in and Erik Knudsen with coordinating, as well as the CGI.

SB: That whole sequence with Alec on Alec, from a directorial view, was an amazing challenge for Will Waring. He really had to think of every shot in specific terms because this was not a typical fight sequence where you can line up the actors and shoot from different angles. You had one actor playing both sides of the fight. A really specific plan had to be drawn up and also, there was some camera trickery where we had to see both Alecs at the same time, which meant technical challenges as well. And we were doing all of this on the 35th floor rooftop of a building made everything that we were doing even more challenging. Wind, the elements and just a very small space to work in. It was an unbelievably tall order for Will and he really did his homework so that it could be shot.

TVGC: Let’s jump ahead to the big reveal of the episode. The Traveler said, ‘It has begun,’ and Kiera and Brad realized what they did had affected the timeline after all when the soldiers from 2039 arrived.

SB: Yeah. The idea was that they could check the result of what they had done. And of course, Brad’s future is still intact otherwise these guys would never have come back. We wanted to suggest that there was a layer of success.

TVGC: Those were pretty cool suits, but they’re going to stand out on the streets of Vancouver.

SB: Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be standing around looking at them though.

TVGC: Kellog has made his power play and unseated Alec at the top of Piron, suggesting his future turns out the way it is supposed to in 2039.

SB: Yeah. The fact that the soldiers came back and we saw Kellog at the beginning of the episode as this powerful guy was an indication that his control of the future is an important one.

Sacrifice

John Barrowman will be returning as a regular on the third season of Arrow and there is news on four new characters, which also give an idea about the direction of the upcoming season:

‘DANIEL’ | Though Daniel could be a fake name to throw off spoilerholics, this 20something gent — a major recurring character for Season 3 — is a handsome, enigmatic and highly intelligent entrepreneur developing groundbreaking technology. (Picture a business magnate in Ryan Gosling’s body.) Though exuding charm and confidence in public, he privately harbors a tragic past that will drive him to become a tech-powered superhero. Watch for this formidable fella to be a love interest for Felicity and a rival of Oliver’s – both personally and professionally.

‘SETH’ | A well-educated criminal with grand ambitions and a knack for chemistry, this potentially recurring character gains power over his enemies by exposing them to a drug that drains their willpower. Oh, and he is very much a physical match for The Arrow.

TOSHI | Majorly recurring in (at least) the Hong Kong flashbacks, Toshi will serve as Oliver’s teacher and handler, and eventually become a friend. A well-trained operative, skilled in weaponry, combat and intelligence gathering, he is also a devoted father and husband.

AKIKO | Toshi’s wife is another of Oliver’s Hong Kong caretakers, and is herself highly skilled in martial arts.

The Flash

The pilot for The Flash leaked out on line and reportedly included plot elements which could have ramifications for the entire DC television and movie universe. I have heard that The Flash will be appearing in the planned Justice League of America movie but Oliver Queen will not. Here is one report on The Flash pilot:

Earlier today, the first episode of CW’s The Flash leaked online and remained there for an hour, months ahead of the pilot’s planned Fall 2014 release. While several fans are already covering the overall episode, let’s focus on the bombshell within the very last scene.

At the very end of the episode, Harrison Wells — previously mentioned in Arrow, a now-wheelchair bound physicist who helps Barry access his powers and is at the helm of The Flash project — slinks into a hidden room within STAR labs, where a small podium-style projector sits in front of him. He then rises out of his wheelchair, steps forward, and turns on the projector to display the front page of a newspaper from 2024. The headline details: The Flash going missing during a crisis. Oh, also, creepy physicist, are you suddenly a bad guy?

For fans of the DCU, this points directly at the Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline, more famously known by the name of it’s 2005-2006 incarnate, Infinite Crisis. With that in mind, could this mean something huge for the DC Cinematic Universe — or will the Crisis storyline be regulated to TV?

What this could spell out is a wild ride for the cinematic universe, with The Flash already lined up for a team-up movie alongside Green Lantern, and the Justice League already on schedule for 2016. But with such an expansive storyline, this writer doesn’t think DC will go the Crisis route right off the bat.

Still, it’s incredible to imagine that plans are already this big for the DCCU. If they’re preparing for Crisis, they’re pulling out the big guns against Marvel, which — almost ironically — is currently unable to pull all of it’s entities together between production studios for a movie adaptation of one of their most incredible multi-universe crossovers, Civil War.

Doctor Who returns August 23. Steven Moffat also admitted that he knows the biggest secret of all, the Doctor’s real name, but he isn’t telling:

Discussing the situation in a recent interview with The Metro newspaper, Moffat revealed: “No-one can know the Doctor’s name, except each successive showrunner.

“We’re taken into a special room far beneath the BBC and given the ancient and special runes that spell his true and awful name.

“We’re commanded never to reveal what we’ve learned.”

He jokingly added: “Because then the show would have to be renamed Mildred…”

community, season 4, episodic photos, episode 411, still photos, unit photos

The cancellation of Community was the most disappointing news regarding the decisions of the networks. The talks to revive the show have broken down with Hulu. If we are to still get six seasons and a movie, Sony will probably have to find another home for the show very quickly as the cast currently only remains under contract until June 30.

Masters of Sex, one of the best new shows of the 2013 season, returns on July 13. The second season trailer is above.

Quote of the Day: John Stewart on Dick Cheney

“I guess now Dick Cheney knows what it feels like when someone you thought was a friend shoots you in the face.” –Jon Stewart after Megyn Kelly grilled Dick Cheney on Fox about being wrong on Iraq.

Republicans Plan Frivolous Law Suit Against Barack Obama’s Use of Executive Power

After over fifty votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act the Republicans are in the need for another gimmick. John Boehner believes he has come up with a new one in suing Barack Obama for doing what he supported when Bush was president. Republicans are giving up their claimed opposition to frivolous law suits to sue Barack Obama for issuing Executive Orders despite the fact that Obama has used issues far fewer executive orders and signing statements than other recent president such as George Bush. As Paul Waldman wrote:

It’s irresistible to charge Republicans with hypocrisy, especially given the fact that they were unconcerned when the Bush administration pushed so vigorously at the limits of presidential power. Bush and his staff regularly ignored laws they preferred not to follow, often with the thinnest of justifications, whether it was claiming executive privilege to ignore congressional subpoenas or issuing 1,200 signing statements declaring the president’s intention to disregard certain parts of duly passed laws. (They pushed the limits of vice presidential power, too—Dick Cheney famously argued that since the vice president is also president of the Senate, he was a member of both the executive and legislative branches, yet actually a member of neither and thus not subject to either’s legal constraints. Seriously, he actually believed that.)

It is certainly hypocritical for Republicans to object to abuse of executive power after they backed Dick Cheney and George Bush’s claims on the Unitary Executive with virtually unlimited power. It is also notable that the problem stems from Republican abuses in the Congress which are responsible for the current gridlock which necessitates executive action.

This flip flop on executive orders includes Speaker Boehner personally:

President Obama has issued about 180 executive orders — a power that has been utilized by every president since George Washington except for the brief-tenured William Henry Harrison — and taken other executive actions. A Boehner spokesman denounced these as “a clear record of ignoring the American people’s elected representatives and exceeding his constitutional authority, which has dangerous implications for both our system of government and our economy.”

But Boehner embraced the power of a Republican president to take action, even at times when he would circumvent Congress by doing so. President George W. Bush’s issued hundreds of orders of his own over his eight years in office. In 2001 and 2007, Boehner strongly supported unilateral actions by Bush to prevent embryonic stem-cell research involving new embryos, saying the 2001 decision “preserves the sanctity of life and allows limited research that could help millions of Americans suffering from life-threatening diseases.” He endorsed a 2008 Bush executive order to limit earmarks. In the final days of Bush’s second term, he even wrote to the president asking him to use an executive order to exempt a historic steamboat from safety regulations after Congress opted not to do so.

Boehner even pushed for administrative compliance with one of President Obama’s executive orders. In 2010, he asked Obama for a progress report on implementation of an executive order banning taxpayer funding for abortion in Obamacare. In a letter to then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, he noted that the order had “paved the way” for the law’s passage and that the lack of update on implementation “does little to diminish widespread skepticism about the administration’s commitment to enforcing the Executive Order and preventing the law law from increasing federal support for abortion.”

Most likely this comes about in response to demands from the far right wing base. It has cost the Republicans a fortune to block most Tea Party challenges in the primaries this year. In the process the establishment Republican Party has become almost as radical as the Tea Party and is forced to pull stunts such as this. It is largely a way to appease those who are demanding impeachment after the Republicans saw how that worked for them when they tried it against Bill Clinton. I imagine many Democrats would love to see the Republicans try impeachment. For now they will have to settle for this, already using the threatened law suit to raise money.

Democrats have been more successful than Republicans in raising money so far this year with small Democratic donors contributing more to the Democrats than people like the Koch Brothers are donating to the Republicans.  This is undoubtedly coming from a small percentage of the country which is more politically engaged. Ideally we would have a higher percentage of the voters outraged by the Republican tactics and abuse of the democratic process. This is unlikely to occur as the Democrats lack the ability to make an issue out of the ways in which the Republicans abuse the system. Of course it is harder to make voters aware of such problems in a country in which only 40 percent are aware of which party controls which house of Congress.

Favorable Court Rulings From Privacy Of Cell Phone Data To Marriage Equality

It has been a good week in terms of judicial opinions. Following the decision I reported on yesterday that the current no-fly list procedure is unconstitutional, there was an even bigger decision regarding civil liberties as well as two decisions regarding same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that police cannot search the contents of cellphones without a warrant:

In a sweeping victory for privacy rights in the digital age, the Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously ruled that the police need warrants to search the cellphones of people they arrest.

While the decision will offer protection to the 12 million people arrested every year, many for minor crimes, its impact will most likely be much broader. The ruling almost certainly also applies to searches of tablet and laptop computers, and its reasoning may apply to searches of homes and businesses and of information held by third parties like phone companies.

“This is a bold opinion,” said Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University. “It is the first computer-search case, and it says we are in a new digital age. You can’t apply the old rules anymore.”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the court, was keenly alert to the central role that cellphones play in contemporary life. They are, he said, “such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.”

But he added that old principles required that their contents be protected from routine searches. One of the driving forces behind the American Revolution, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, was revulsion against “general warrants,” which “allowed British officers to rummage through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity.”

“The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand,” the chief justice also wrote, “does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the founders fought.”

A federal judge in Indiana ruled that Indiana’s ban on same sex marriage is unconstitutional.

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Indiana’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional, immediately allowing same-sex couples across the state to receive marriage licenses.

U.S. District Judge Richard Young did not issue a stay on his ruling. However, the office of Attorney General Greg Zoeller, which represented the state, filed an emergency motion for stay pending appeal with the U.S. District Court this afternoon…

Young’s decision in the Indiana case mirrors “what we’re seeing in all the districts courts” that have taken up challenges, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond School of Law professor who has been closely monitoring court cases across the U.S. involving the same-sex marriage issue.

The order says: “It is clear that the fundamental right to marry shall not be deprived to some individuals based solely on the person they choose to love.”

Judges in more than a dozen other federal district courts have ruled along the same lines as Young, he said. Since the first ruling in a Utah case in December, he said, every challenge to a state ban has been successful.

The rulings by these federal district courts are being appealed and ultimately the decision will probably be made by the Supreme Court. While it will take at least until next year to see how that plays out, the 10th Circuit Court has upheld the decision of a Utah judge:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that states outlawing same-sex marriage are in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

By upholding a Utah judge’s decision, a three-member panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver became the first appeals court in the nation to rule on the issue, setting a historic precedent that voter-approved bans on same-sex marriage violate the Fourteenth Amendment rights of same-sex couples to equal protection and due process…

University of Utah law professor Clifford Rosky called Wednesday’s ruling, “the most important victory of the entire gay rights movement.”

It is the first time a federal appeals court has recognized that same-sex couples have the same fundamental right to marry as all Americans, said Rosky, chairman of Equality Utah’s board of directors.

“Very few courts have embraced the fundamental rights argument and this court seems to have completely embraced it and applied ‘strict scrutiny,’ the highest standard recognized under constitutional law,” Rosky said…

The ruling affects all states in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals: Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming.

The court’s majority opinion focused on the 14th Amendment, which gives equal protection to American citizens. The court said its reading of the Constitution shows that the legal rights of married couples has nothing to do with the gender of those in the union.

“We hold that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right to marry, establish a family, raise children, and enjoy the full protection of a state’s marital laws. A state may not deny the issuance of a marriage.

 

Federal Judge Rules That No-Fly Lists Are Unconstitutional

no fly list

There is progress in fighting one of the post 9/11 actions which infringe upon civil liberties without showing meaningful benefit in fighting terrorism. A federal judge in Oregon has ruled that the no-fly lists are unconstitutional as they lack a meaningful mechanism to appeal being placed on a list:

The U.S. government’s no-fly list banning people accused of links to terrorism from commercial flights violates their constitutional rights because it gives them no meaningful way to contest that decision, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Anna Brown, ruling on a lawsuit filed in federal court in Oregon by 13 Muslim Americans who were branded with the no-fly status, ordered the government to come up with new procedures that allow people on the no-fly list to challenge that designation.

“The court concludes international travel is not a mere convenience or luxury in this modern world. Indeed, for many international travel is a necessary aspect of liberties sacred to members of a free society,” Brown wrote in her 65-page ruling.

“Accordingly, on this record the court concludes plaintiffs inclusion on the no-fly list constitutes a significant deprivation of their liberty interests in international travel,” Brown said.

The decision hands a major victory to the 13 plaintiffs – four of them veterans of the U.S. military – who deny they have links to terrorism and say they only learned of their no-fly status when they arrived at an airport and were blocked from boarding a flight.

More on the ruling from NPR:

One need not look beyond the hardships suffered by Plaintiffs to understand the significance of the deprivation of the right to travel internationally. Due to the major burden imposed by inclusion on the No-Fly List, Plaintiffs have suffered significantly including long-term separation from spouses and children; the inability to access desired medical and prenatal care; the inability to pursue an education of their choosing; the inability to participate in important religious rites; loss of employment opportunities; loss of government entitlements; the inability to visit family; and the inability to attend important personal and family events such as graduations, weddings, and funerals. The Court concludes international travel is not a mere convenience or luxury in this modern world. Indeed, for many international travel is a necessary aspect of liberties sacred to members of a free society.

The American Civil Liberties Union has issues this response:

“For years, in the name of national security the government has argued for blanket secrecy and judicial deference to its profoundly unfair No Fly List procedures, and those arguments have now been resoundingly rejected by the court. Our clients will finally get the due process to which they are entitled under the Constitution. This excellent decision also benefits other people wrongly stuck on the No Fly List, with the promise of a way out from a Kafkaesque bureaucracy causing them no end of grief and hardships. We hope this serves as a wake-up call for the government to fix its broken watchlist system, which has swept up so many innocent people.”

Why Conservatives Hate Obamacare

Jonathan Chait writes that the Republicans have finally admitted why they oppose Obamacare. The bulk of his article is a useful recap of many of the Republican claims which have turned out to be untrue.

Republicans claimed that Obamacare is mainly signing up people who already had insurance, but actually 57 percent of those who enrolled on the exchanges previously lacked insurance. He went on to debunk conservative claims that the Affordable Care Act isn’t reducing the number of uninsured, along with false claims about insurance premiums first for this year and then projections for next year.

Finally he got to the current conservative argument:

And so conservative objections to Obamacare are finally turning from the practical to the philosophical. In response to reports that Obamacare insurance turns out to be affordable, Roy, who has spent months warning of rate shock, mocks that “other people’s money will pay for it.” Conservative columnist Byron York likewise argues “Obamacare’s ‘good news’ applies only to the poor.”

It is true that Obamacare is far more helpful to people lower down the income scale. The poorest people get Medicaid, which is free. Those higher up the income ladder get tax credits, which phase out at $45,000 a year for an individual, and $94,000 a year for a family of four. (I wouldn’t call people earning under those levels “poor.”) Of course, people who get employer-sponsored insurance also get their coverage paid for with “other peoples’ money.” The difference is that employer-sponsored insurance uses a tax deduction, which gives the largest benefits to those who earn the most money, as opposed to Obamacare’s sliding scale tax credit, which gives the most to those who earn the least.

But at least conservatives are now representing their true bedrock position on Obamacare. It is largely a transfer program benefitting people who either don’t have enough money, or pose too high a health risk, to bear the cost of their own medical care. Conservatives don’t like transfer programs because they require helping the less fortunate with other peoples’ money.

Of course even those of us who do not receive any tax credits and pay the full cost still benefit from Obamacare. While I am paying a higher premium than last year, the insurance plan I purchased is far more comprehensive and cannot be cancelled regardless of changes in medical condition. It covers preventative care with no out of pocket costs, and allows me to keep my daughter on my plan while she is in college. Obamacare does help the less fortunate. That is what we do in a civilized nation. It also helps the rest of us.

SciFi Weekend: Orphan Black; Fargo; Continuum; Game of Thrones; Better Call Saul; Utopia; Under The Skin

Orphan Black Sarah Surrendered

The second season finale of Orphan Black, officially titled By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried, will probably be forever remembered as the Clone Club Dance Party episode by fans. The happy reunion was in the midst of an episode which started with Dyad being more horrifying than ever and major revelations at the end.

It was obvious that things were not going to go well when Sarah offered her unconditional surrender in hopes of being able to see Kira after her abduction by Rachel. This did not work out so well, with Dyad moving from consent (while handcuffed) to harvesting her eggs to wheeling her in for a forced oophorectomy. Fortunately Sarah did escape due to a combination of science and new allies, with Kira playing a part in both.

The reunion and dance party, reminiscent of Sarah and Helena singing Sugar, Sugar earlier in the season, provided a needed lighter moment in the midst of the episode. Tatiana Maslany must have been exhausted in playing all four clones together, and the scenes took two days to film.

Marian appears to be a valuable ally, but on this show you can never be certain where anyone stands. As if there aren’t already enough factions involved, now there is Topside. I always assumed that Project Leda was a mythological reference to twins, meaning Sarah and Helana, but the naming means far more with the revelation that Project Castor involves making male clones as soldiers. The importance of  Rachel watching the old videos of herself as a child became clear when we saw Charlotte, who was identical to Rachel (and the other clones) at a younger age. She was the only one of over four hundred attempts to repeat the project. Clearly Dyad is lacking needed information.

The episode ended well for Sarah who recovered Kira and escaped from Dyad, but poorly for Rachel who had a pencil propelled into her eye at high velocity, after seeing the second death of a father. We don’t know if she is dead, had brain or other damage, or will return appearing well next season with either a genetically engineered replacement eye or an eye patch. (I vote for the eye patch, and give her a parrot). We finally know the truth about Paul, as well as how far Mrs. S will go when she enabled the kidnapping of Helena in exchange for Paul’s assistance in rescuing Kira and Sarah. Things are more hopeful for Cosima, who I suspect will find her own cure from the notes from Dr. Duncan in the copy of The Island of Dr. Moreau which Kira pulled out. I also wonder if the container of her eggs left behind by Helena will provide needed genetic material.

We also have a  new set of clones to watch. It is doubtful that Mark realizes he is a clone, and certain that the Proletheans did not realize it, or they would have certainly treated him differently. There are also the clones now in the military (with at least one seen after Helena’s capture) as well as the one (a defective one?) hidden in Helena’s house.

Orphan Black Season 2 Finale

Orphan Black co-creators Graeme Manson and John Fawcett gave numerous interviews. At times they were flippant, such as in giving the Death Star in response to a question as to where Helena was taken, or saying that Dr. Duncan’s notes were the Colonel’s secret recipe.  Other answers did provide interesting information as to how they got to the finale, and possibly what is to come. They told The Hollywood Reporter about their plans to introduce male clones, the decision for it to be Prolethean Mark, and how this changed the original plans for the scene when Mark and Paul met in the bar.

Let’s start with the introduction of the male clone. When did you decide that that would be the season-two endgame?

Graeme Manson: It was a plan that we had at the end of the first season. We thought it was a pretty good way to open a big door to a whole new dimension of the conspiracy and a nice throw to a new season.

Was there any serious thought over making the male clone someone other than Prolethean Mark? 

John Fawcett: We knew that we wanted to introduce a male side to the conspiracy. To some degree, we talked a lot about what the possibilities would be for that. It was important that the right decision was made, and we talked about everyone. We had crazy conversations about who the male clone could be. Ultimately, the decision was made that the story thread that made the most sense was the male clone would be Prolethean Mark.

Manson: And for a few reasons. One, it really doubled the end of the season back on the beginning nicely.

Fawcett: It’s a bookend. To be honest, the character of Mark wasn’t supposed to live beyond episode six. There was a whole plan for him to die quite violently.

Manson: At the hand of Paul!

Fawcett: There was a scene at the end of episode six where Paul and Mark meet up in the bar while Helena meets Jesse. We know that both these men are on Sarah and Helena’s trail respectively, and it was going to be a mano-a-mano showdown between the two of them in which Paul is going to murder, or kill, Mark. But through the first few episodes of the season, we realized that Ari [Millen] playing Mark was not a character we wanted to kill. He was doing such interesting work, and so we made the decision to save him, and right about that time, we were actually also making the decision on who we wanted to see the male clone be at the end of the film. A further little bit of interest in that, Ari actually, we kept that a secret from Ari, and he didn’t find that out until just before the finale scripts were passed up. Graeme had to call him and tell him.

They also said that, “Marion is apparently a new ally, so she’s important going forward. And Cal is pretty important going forward too.” Note the word “apparently.”

Fargo Finale

The finale of Fargo provided a degree of redemption for some of the characters. Early on my assessment of the show was that pretty much everyone on the show is an idiot except for Malvo and Molly. I did revise this to include Mollie’s father among the intelligent characters, but for most of the series he only had a small part. He was at  his best in the finale sitting out on the porch to protect his granddaughter by marriage.

With the jump ahead one year Lester was supposed to have ceased being the loser, but he still made major mistakes in confronting Malvo, not taking his advice to walk away, saying yes to him, and finally in guaranteeing  Malvo would be an enemy by hitting him but leaving him alive in last week’s episode.I’m not certain if Malvo’s plans from the start was to kill Lester after he helped dispose of the bodies. It is also possible that Malvo did see Lester as sort of an amusing friend and had no plans yet to kill him. Regardless, you cannot hit someone like Malvo, leave him alive, and then return to your home town.

In the finale it appears Lester was intended to portrayed as being smarter at figuring out how things will work in different scenarios. He figured out the FBI agent’s riddle, and more impressively out smarted Malvo at his home. Being shown as smarter than the loser at the start of the series was as close to redemption that Lester could receive. It was bad enough that he killed his first wife and later framed his brother and put a gun in a child’s back pack. The final straw was the manner in which he set up his second wife to get killed. Although portrayed as smarter in the end, he still was not smart enough to figure out what would happen when he ran out on the thin ice, although he was doomed regardless of whether he ran.

It was obvious what was going to happen to Lester when he ran out onto the ice, and I had a similar sense of dread when Gus went into Malvo’s cabin. I though he was smart the first time he encountered Malvo by backing away and remaining alive, and that going into Malvo’s cabin was as foolish as Lester confronting Malvo last week. Fortunately for Gus, Malvo returned wounded after his confrontation with Lester, giving Gus the upper hand. This was clearly intended to be his redemption for his cowardice the first time he ran into Malvo, but I initially didn’t see things working out this way as I saw Gus as being smart rather than a coward, not requiring redemption. Fortunately for Gus, nobody questioned how he shot an unarmed and injured man. We know that doing anything else would be unsafe, and Gus gets extra points for being smart enough to shoot him immediately, announcing that he figured out Malvo’s riddle but not taking any more time to explain. How many people have died in similar television confrontations due to not putting the opponent away immediately?

While the show centered around the anti-heroes Lester and Malvo, Molly was the hero of the story. Some reviewers have expressed disappointment that Molly wasn’t the one to take down Malvo, but that was really Gus’s story line. There was also some justice to Malvo’s demise being a combination of actions by both Lester and Gus. To Molly, Malvo was someone on the periphery regarding Lester’s story that she had virtually no actual contact with. I was a little disappointed that Molly didn’t come up with the definitive proof of both Lester and Malvo’s guilt by her own detective work as opposed to Malvo’s tapes providing the final proof. Still, Molly was proved right, and vindicated when told that she was to be made chief. The television show now paralleled the movie with having the pregnant police chief, even if Molly might not become chief until after she has her baby. Like Jerry Lundegaard in the movie, Lester Nygaard was confronted by the police in the jurisdiction each fled to, giving symmetry between the two in not having Molly be the one to capture Lester.

All in all it was a satisfactory conclusion to a self-contained story. Like Breaking Bad, the finale followed directly from the set up for the show with no surprises or gimmicks. The anti-hero met his expected doom in each case. As another example of how minor points were wrapped up in a tidy manner, the used car salesman who became Malvo’s final victim was seen earlier in the season. He wound up not buying life insurance despite Lester’s warning that you never know what might happen. On the other hand, we never did learn the fate of some minor characters, such as Lester’s brother who presumably would have been released from prison when the truth about the murder of Lester’s life was discovered. The money remains buried, as in the movie, and I suspect that it will turn up again if there is another season of Fargo.

Fargo billy_bob_thorton_fargo_ep_110_a_p

Speakeasy interviewed show writer Noah Hawley. Here are his comments on a possible future season and Lester’s fate:

I’d love to hear what you have in mind for the next installment.

Well, you never want to overstay your welcome. The question is, if there were another chapter to this story, what’s next and how do you do it? We wrapped production a week before we premiered. I literally just wrapped post-production on the final episode last week. So I’m excited to take a couple weeks and not think about it, and then come back and see if I can do something as good or better, which is really the only reason to do it, and FX agrees with me. They bought this as a miniseries and would be quite happy if this is it. That said, if I could find a way to turn this into something that continues to bring in revenue, everyone would be happy with that. But we’re all proud of the work we’ve done.

What was the significance of Lester getting swallowed up by frozen lake?

Nature corrected. That ending was in place at the end of the outline process. In the movie Bill Macy is arrested across state lines, not by Marge but by whatever random cops found him. I like the idea that Lester met his end somewhere that was totally unconnected to Molly or anyone who would take his death personally. We shot the show up in Calgary and we spent six months or so pointing the cameras away from the mountains, then we turned around and went up into the Rockies.

Continuum Kiera Brad

The season finale of Continuum airs tonight on Showcase (Friday on Syfy) but a lot more happened in last week’s episode, The Dying Minutes. Both Sonya and Kiera had complicated plans to pull off. I totally believe that the tech guy at Piron would have fallen for Sonya’s geek girl act. I can’t help but wonder if there will be another reset tonight, or at the start of next season, with a jump to another timeline following the certain death of Sonya, the possible death of Dillon, and the Freelancer blood bath. Or perhaps the action will shift up north, with Alec and Emily, Kiera and Brad, and at least part of Liber8 heading in that direction. The introduction of the Traveler adds yet more complexities. Does that mean that Wesley Crusher shows up next?

In an interview with TV Guide Canada, Simon Bary sounds like he is saying that Sonya’s death might be permanent, along with a conclusion of the Liber8 story line. He was also asked about the Traveler:

TVGuide.ca: Another huge episode. Following up on last week’s realization that nothing Liber8 could do would change history, Sonya allowed herself to be arrested and then detonated a bomb in the police precinct, killing herself and grievously injuring Dillon. Was her exit an homage to Kagame?
Simon Barry: In light of what had happened, this was one of the few plays that she had left, to be a martyr in the way that Kagame was.

TVGC: What was Lexa’s reaction when you told her what was going to happen to Sonya?
SB: Lexa is a real pro, and she understood that the only thing worse than being killed as a character is not being used well as a character, and I think that because we were in the position that we were coming to a conclusion in the Liber8 story that the opportunities for her going forward were not as interesting. When I mentioned it to her the first time, she was pretty clear that the opportunity to go out in a blaze of glory was something she not only thought was possible, but she liked it.

TVGC: I’ve enjoyed Sonya’s back story this season; learning about her past and how she became part of Liber8 has been really interesting.
SB: We knew early on that we wanted to fill in some bits and pieces and that this was one of our options. We definitely felt like, in Episode 7 for example where we see the Sonya back story, was one way for us to kind of honour the Sonya storyline. Now, that doesn’t mean we don’t have more opportunities to tell Sonya’s story. As you know on this show if somebody dies in the present, it just means that storyline may or may not be over. We certainly have many more stories about Liber8, before they went back in time, that we want to pursue in Season 4.

TVGC: You introduced another new character last night in The Traveler. Is he the first Freelancer? What can you tell us?
SB: The speculation, at least from Kiera’s perspective, is that the original Freelancer that she had been told about by Catherine, was sent back 1,000 years to set up this safety net and it had to start with one person. In The Traveler we thought it would be interesting to take that journey. And obviously given the technology that he has to be able to bring Curtis back, we are alluding to the fact that there is technology embedded within him that is related to time travel.

The show runners discussed the season finale and plans for the fifth season of Game of Thrones with Entertainment Weekly.

I also felt like the season finale of Orange is the New Black aired this week as this is when I finished the season on Netflix. No spoilers, but it was a very satisfying conclusion for several plot lines.

Defiance stated its second season with the season premiere primarily setting things up following all the changes in the first season finale, with little actual story. I have not decided yet whether I will continue to watch. Last year I finally gave in and watched later in the summer, after being underwhelmed initially, and did get somewhat more interested as the season went on.

AMC has already renewed Better Call Saul for a thirteen episode second season. The first season, to air in 2015, contains ten episodes.

The second season of Utopia finally appears on the U.K.’s Channel 4 in July. A trailer is above.

Ok, I admit that when I received this link to the nude scenes of Scarlett Johansson in Under The Skin I couldn’t resist clicking.