WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court seemed to split sharply Monday on whether a law school can deny recognition to a Christian student group that won’t let gays join, a case that could determine whether nondiscrimination policies trump the rights of private organizations to determine who can - and cannot - belong. In arguments tinged with questions of religious, racial and sexual discrimination, the court heard from the Christian Legal Society, which wants recognition from the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law as an official campus organization with school financing and benefits. Hastings, located in San Francisco, turned them down, saying no recognized campus groups may exclude people due to religious belief or sexual orientation. The Christian group requires that voting members sign a statement of faith. The group also regards ‘unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle’ as being inconsistent with the statement of faith. ‘CLS has all of its activities entirely open to everyone,’ lawyer Michael McConnell said. ‘What it objects to is being run by non-Christians.’ A federal judge threw out the Christian group’s lawsuit claiming its First Amendment rights of association, free speech and free exercise had […]
Three centuries have passed since the polymath Sir Christopher Wren predicted that ‘a time will come when men will stretch out their eyes-they should see planets like our Earth. By most astronomers’ accounts, that time is just about nigh. Indeed, detecting big planets orbiting other stars is no longer tricky-nearly 450 such exoplanets have been catalogued. Smaller, rocky planets orbiting at a comfortable distance from their stars-as the Earth does-remain more elusive. Most exoplanets have been discovered by inferring their presence from the rhythmic wobble their gravity imparts on their home star-like a waltz between two dancers of markedly different weights. The problem is that this method favours the discovery of large planets close to their stars. As a result, the catalogue of planets is filled with ‘hot Jupiters, huge bodies baking brightly in the light of their sun. To find places that might support life it is necessary to look for planets a little farther away from their stars, but not so far away that they are frozen lumps of ice and rock, like the dwarf planet Pluto. But it isn’t easy. Spotting the light from a tiny planet across astronomical distances is akin to discerning a […]
WASHINGTON — The question in a case argued Monday in the Supreme Court sounded both irresistible and important: Did a California police department violate the Constitution by reading sexually explicit text messages sent by an officer on a department-issued pager? But the tangled factual record, uncertainty about where technology is heading and occasionally muddled advocacy pointed toward a limited ruling that might provide little guidance to government employers and perhaps none to private ones. ‘I just don’t know how you tell what is reasonable, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said. ‘I suspect it might change with how old people are and how comfortable they are with the technology. The Supreme Court has said the Fourth Amendment, which forbids unreasonable government searches, figures in the analysis when public employers search their employees’ offices and files. The chief justice appeared sympathetic to the police officer in the case, Sgt. Jeff Quon of the Ontario Police Department’s SWAT team, who had received mixed guidance from his superiors about the status of messages sent on his pager. The messages included communications to and from his wife and mistress. The department’s written policy allowed ‘light personal communications but cautioned […]
During his time as archbishop in Germany, Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, chaired a meeting in which a pedophile priest’s living arrangements and therapy were discussed. He must have been familiar with the man’s criminal past. Catholic Church officials assigned full responsibility for the reassignment of a known pedophilic priest to retired vicar general Gerhard Gruber who served as deputy to Joseph Ratzinger when he was archbishop. Gruber is now challenging a Church statement that he ‘acted on his own authority,’ a claim he says was never discussed with him. The emergency plan was hastily assembled in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising on the evening of March 11, a Thursday. The Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper had exposed the scandal surrounding pedophile priest Peter H., and the affair over sexual abuse in the church was getting dangerously close to the pope. Peter H., a vicar from the western German city of Essen who had molested boys on several occasions, was sent to Munich in 1980, where he was assigned to work as a pastor again . As a result, he was able to abuse even more boys. The archbishop and chairman of the diocesan council, which […]
DALY CITY — People have been toking up in the Cow Palace parking lot for more than 50 years. This was the first time it was legal. The International Cannabis and Hemp Expo, the first trade show in the United States to allow on-site pot smoking, attracted an estimated 15,000 enthusiasts to Daly City over the weekend. They talked bud, sold products ranging from a $500 water bong to a $19,500 mobile grow house, and discussed how efforts to legalize marijuana would impact their livelihoods. ‘We’re exercising our rights as patients to peacefully gather,’ said Bob Katzman, chief operating officer of the expo, as he stood near the designated puffing area. ‘We’re here to talk about changing some of the existing laws, but we’re not here to break the law.’ Katzman said it took organizers four years to negotiate a permit with a venue that would allow marijuana consumption. It wasn’t possible, he said, until a ‘massive change in the political climate.’ That climate is set to be tested in November, when an initiative that would legalize marijuana is to be decided by California voters. Now, marijuana is available only to those with a medicinal […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
