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11 Points
I thought it'd be a good time to find a bunch of stuff that the Bible bans... stuff that's a lot LESS convenient. Don't worry, though... just because I'm pointing it out, that doesn't mean you now have to follow it. It's a lot easier to keep discriminating against gay people for no particular reason than to stop eating bacon, after all.
Here are 11 things that are technically banned by the Bible. (All quotes are translations from the New American Standard Bible, but, because I'm actually trying to maintain serious journalistic integrity here, I cross-referenced several other translations to make sure I wasn't missing the point.)
Why matchbox twenty's Rob Thomas is my new hero on Hitfix
You can't only support the issues that directly affect your life because what it ultimately comes down to is that any time any one's freedoms are eclipsed, everyone's rights are in danger. There will always be someone who is threatened by "the other": i.e., someone who is not the same as them. And yet they don't seem to intuitively understand that one day, someone else who has the power will see them as "the other" and will come for their freedoms.
Rob Thomas: The Big Gay Chip on My Shoulder
A civil union has to do with death. It's essentially a document that gives you lower taxes and the right to let your faux spouse collect your insurance when you pass away. A marriage is about life. It's about a commitment. And this argument is about allowing people to have the right to make that commitment, even if it doesn't make sense to you. Anything else falls under the category of "separate but equal" and we know how that works out.
YouTube - Drew Carey Responds To Obama's Anti-Medical Marijuana Speech 3/27/2009
Drew Carey On Medical Marijuana
Op-Ed Columnist - The Bigots’ Last Hurrah - NYTimes.com
Iowa and Vermont were the tipping point because they struck down the right’s two major arguments against marriage equality. The unanimous ruling of the seven-member Iowa Supreme Court proved that the issue is not merely a bicoastal fad. The decision, written by Mark Cady, a Republican appointee, was particularly articulate in explaining that a state’s legalization of same-sex marriage has no effect on marriage as practiced by religions. “The only difference,” the judge wrote, is that “civil marriage will now take on a new meaning that reflects a more complete understanding of equal protection of the law.”
Some opponents grumbled anyway, reviving their perennial complaint, dating back to Brown v. Board of Education, about activist judges. But the judiciary has long played a leading role in sticking up for the civil rights of minorities so they’re not held hostage to a majority vote. Even if the judiciary-overreach argument had merit, it was still moot in Vermont, where the State Legislature, not a court, voted to make same-sex marriage legal and then voted to override the Republican governor’s veto.
Why no one should be shocked by The Pirate Bay verdict - Ars Technica
The "Whack-A-Mole" strategy that Big Content is using, one which has largely failed to stem piracy, is being replaced with an emphasis on "graduated response" or "three strikes" laws that could boot illegal file-swappers off the Internet. But while the campaign hasn't stopped piracy, it hasn't lost many major cases in court, either. It's certainly possible to rail against dark powers and political forces—which may be present in some cases—but careful judgments like the Grokster ruling show a willingness among some of the world's top legal thinkers to differentiate between Grokster and Google.
The Pirate Bay Verdict and the Future of File Sharing - PC World
That evolution has already begun. Just recently, The Pirate Bay team prepared a new service called IPREDator, set to launch publicly any day now. It allows people to surf the Net more anonymously using a virtual private network, or VPN. Unlike other VPN services, The Pirate Bay promises its IPREDator will keep no logs of customer activity and therefore could never turn user information over to authorities.
Hollywood's Victory Over The Pirate Bay Will Be Short-Lived - PC World
And while the entertainment industry seeks compensation via lawsuits, other similar services (which I do not endorse) such as Mininova, Demonoid and Torrentbox to name a few, will continue to thrive. That is, of course, until they get sued into oblivion as well. And then there are always new technologies on the horizon. Hollywood might want to start looking at a budding new peer-to-peer tool called OneSwarm that aims to let file-swappers preserve their privacy by cloaking their IP address.
Why Google Is The New Pirate Bay - Forbes.com
Google, on the other hand, may be more legally defensible than any single torrent site. Any piracy-related activity by its users would be dwarfed by the search engine's massive number of legitimate users, says Big Champagne's Garland, and Google is careful to avoid any encouragement of copyright infringing activity.
The Raw Story | Portugal's drug decriminalization 'bizarrely underappreciated': Greenwald
...the strongest evidence in Portugal that supports drug decriminalization is the declining usage of drugs in the crucial 15-19 age group.
In every single drug category, with the exception of the new drugs that have come into popular usage since 2001, like ketamine and GHB, teen drug use has declined. The biggest drug category declines were seen in marijuana, which saw teen drug use slip from just over 10 percent in 2001 to 6 percent in 2006.
Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS
The financial industry brought the economy to its knees, but how did they get away with it? With the nation wondering how to hold the bankers accountable, Bill Moyers sits down with William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout
Commentary: War on drugs is insane - CNN.com
Someone described insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. That's a perfect description of the war on drugs.
RIAA, MPAA Copyright Warnings: Facts and Fiction | TorrentFreak
This week several scary stories surfaced about how the MPAA and RIAA are negotiating with ISPs on how to deal with copyright infringers. Even though it was often presented as news, those who look deeper will realize that this is nothing new at all, just the same old threats dressed up in a new jacket.
A Gay-Marriage Solution: End Marriage?
he may find that the folks who cling hardest to marriage are gay couples. After all, what was the most sweeping part of the May 2008 decision Ming and his colleagues issued that granted gays the right to marry? It was the idea that the word marriage is so strong that denying it to gay couples violates the most sacred right enshrined in the state constitution: the right for all people to be treated with dignity and fairness.
Malevolent voices that despise our freedoms | Philip Pullman - Times Online
We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness - the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.
RIAA Sued for Fraud, Abuse and Legal Sham | TorrentFreak
…[through] concerted efforts and cartels, control or attempt to control the channels of creation, distribution, and sale of musical works throughout the United States and the world. They are not artists, songwriters, or musicians. They did not write or record the songs. For a number of years, a group of large, multinational, multi-billion dollar record companies, including these [record labels], have been abusing the federal court judicial system for the purpose of waging a public relations and public threat campaign targeting digital file sharing activities.
Piracy: An Important Message From the Global Entertainment Industry
The Pirate Bay is carrying this spot-on cartoon on what we already knew about labels and studios: Their "new media—first radio, then TV, then tapes, then video—will kill our industry!" argument is simply stupid FUD.
Scholarly paper on the ineffectiveness of using ISPs to police copyright - Boing Boing
Andrew A. Adams (University of Reading) and Ian Brown (Oxford Internet Institute) have just released a new paper on the risks that we face now that the entertainment industry wants to augment DRM with ISP surveillance and termination of accused infringers. They argue that all the evils that arose from ineffective DRM will be magnified by ineffective ISP termination, that the music and film industries will be no richer, and that the public will be at much greater risk of censorship and unfair disconnection from their education, work, health information, families, free speech, and civic engagement via the Internet.
Johann Hari: We need to stop being such cowards about Islam - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent
In Europe, we are finally abolishing the lingering blasphemy laws that hinder criticism of Christianity. But they are being succeeded by a new blasphemy law preventing criticism of Islam – enforced not by the state, but by jihadis.
News from The Pirate Bay Press Conference | TorrentFreak
Just hours ago The Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån held a joint press conference at the Museum of Technology in Stockholm. It was broadcasted live on the web and Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Svartholm spoke at length. Here is a breakdown of some of the key points.
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