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The anti-hanky-panky law: Massachusetts judge wants divorcing couples to get court approval before having sex at home

Scott Keyes
Think Progress
Fri, 21 Mar 2014 11:17 UTC
woman in bed
© shutterstock
There's nothing that sets the mood for a romantic evening like petitioning a judge for permission to have sex at the end of the night.

If Massachusetts State Sen. Richard J. Ross (R) gets his way, that's exactly what many women (and men) would have to do if they have children and are going through a divorce. In fact, not only would permission-less coitus be banned, but so too would the romantic evening and many dating activities.

Ross' bill seeks to amend Massachusetts divorce law with the following provision (emphasis added):
In divorce, separation, or 209A proceedings involving children and a marital home, the party remaining in the home shall not conduct a dating or sexual relationship within the home until a divorce is final and all financial and custody issues are resolved, unless the express permission is granted by the courts.
The legislation, S787, was first filed in early 2013. On Thursday, it received an extension for consideration in the State House until June 30. In its current state, the bill does not specify what the penalty is for pre-divorce copulation.
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Light Saber

It's not just Crimea: Alaska petition to secede to Russia going strong at 18K signers

Cheryl K. Chumley
The Washington Times
Tue, 25 Mar 2014 15:31 UTC
Alaska Russia
A petition that seeks to put Alaska back under Russian control has garnered more than 18,000 signatures in just a few days - about a fifth of what's needed to capture a formal White House look.

The petition, called "Alaska Back to Russia," was created by a resident of Anchorage who declined to list his name, but instead gave only the initials of S.V., United Press International reported.

The petition was first circulated last week and so far, it's garnered more than 18,000 signatures. If a total of 100,000 sign on by April 20, the Obama administration will supposedly issue a formal response.
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Cut

Spanish judges ruled Catalonia can't vote for independence, but Catalans will go ahead anyway

Per Liljas
Time
Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:46 UTC
Catalan demonstrators
© Josep Lago/Agence France-PresseGetty Images
Demonstrators hold Catalan flags during a protest calling for independence from Spain in Barcelona, October 2013
"This will have no effect on the process," shrugs a Catalan government spokesman

In a Tuesday ruling, Spanish judges found Catalonia's planned independence referendum to be unconstitutional, but secessionists in the Spanish autonomous region (called a "community" in Spain) have vowed to proceed regardless.

"This will have no effect on the process," said the Catalan government's spokesman Francesc Homs on local television.
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Arrow Down

How Australia continues to 'Breed Out the Color' of its aboriginal population

John Pilger
Alternet
Mon, 24 Mar 2014 14:31 UTC
Aboriginal Population
© Parliament of the World's Religions; Screenshot/YouTube.com
The tape is searing. There is the voice of an infant screaming as he is wrenched from his mother, who pleads: "There is nothing wrong with my baby. Why are you doing this to us? I would've been hung years ago, wouldn't I? Because [as an Australian Aborigine] you're guilty before you're found innocent." The child's grandmother demands to know why "the stealing of our kids is happening all over again." A welfare official says, "I'm gonna take him, mate."

This happened to an Aboriginal family in outback New South Wales. It is happening across Australia in a scandalous and largely unrecognized abuse of human rights that evokes the infamous Stolen Generation of the last century. Up to the 1970s, thousands of mixed race children were stolen from their mothers by welfare officials. The children were given to institutions as cheap or slave labor; many were abused.

Described by a Chief Protector of Aborigines as "breeding out the color", the policy was known as assimilation. It was influenced by the same eugenics movement that inspired the Nazis. In 1997, a landmark report, "Bringing Them Home", disclosed that as many 50,000 children and their mothers had endured "the humiliation, the degradation and sheer brutality of the act of forced separation ... the product of the deliberate, calculated policies of the state." The report called this genocide.

Assimilation remains Australian government policy in all but name. Euphemisms such as "reconciliation" and "Stronger Futures" cover similar social engineering and an enduring, insidious racism in the political elite, the bureaucracy and wider Australian society. When, in 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized for the Stolen Generation, he added: "I want to be blunt about this. There will be no compensation." The Sydney Morning Herald congratulated Rudd on a "shrewd maneuver" that "cleared away a piece of political wreckage that responds to some of its supporters' emotional needs, but changes nothing."
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Smoking

California again leads the way in anti-smoking laws: San Mateo County proposes banning people from smoking in their own homes

Bonnie Eslinger
San Jose Mercury News
Tue, 25 Mar 2014 13:10 UTC
Image
Smoking inside apartments, condominiums and other multiple housing units soon may be a no-no in unincorporated San Mateo County.

Following a study session discussion that touched on the evils of second-hand smoke, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday directed staff to return with a proposed smoking ban by this summer.

A draft of the potential ordinance already had been outlined in a March 7 memo by Health System Chief Jean Fraser and Family Services Director Brian Zamora to the board.

The proposed ban on indoor smoking was suggested by Supervisors Carole Groom and Adrienne Tissier and drew the support of their board colleagues.

"I'm pleased that we're going to look at it," Tissier said. "Having grown up with a smoker in the family and subjected to second-hand smoke, it would be a pleasure not to have that done to others."

During the meeting, Stanford researcher Neil Klepeis explained how cigarette smoke drifts between housing units through vents, ducts, cracks and gaps. A person living next door to a smoker is exposed to high levels of smoke particles, he said.
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Newspaper

U.S. Senate trying to limit First Amendment rights by defining 'journalist' - bloggers don't count

Zaid Jilani
AlterNet
Mon, 24 Mar 2014 12:31 UTC
citizen journalist
Journalists have to be employed to be called journalists in Chuck Schumer's eyes.

After the revelation that the Department of Justice had taken phone records from Associated Press journalists as part of a leak investigation, members of Congress reintroduced the Free Flow of Information Act, also known as the federal media shield law. The basic purpose behind the law is to protect journalists from having to reveal confidential sources to the government.

The bill's chief sponsor, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), claims it has wide support in his chamber, and has identified five Republicans who would vote to support it. It is expected to come up for a vote in April.

But the devil here is in the details. While the law does extend certain protections to some journalists, it is very particular about who exactly it covers. The Associated Press's Donna Cossata explains:
"The bill's protections would apply to a 'covered journalist,' defined as an employee, independent contractor or agent of an entity that disseminates news or information. The individual would have to have been employed for one year within the last 20 or three months within the last five years.

"It would apply to student journalists or someone with a considerable amount of freelance work in the last five years. A federal judge also would have the discretion to declare an individual a 'covered journalist' who would be granted the privileges of the law.

"The bill also says that information is only privileged if it is disseminated by a news medium, described as 'newspaper, nonfiction book, wire service, news agency, news website, mobile application or other news or information service (whether distributed digitally or otherwise); news program, magazine or other periodical, whether in print, electronic or other format; or thorough television or radio broadcast ... or motion picture for public showing.'"
Not protected by the proposed law? Bloggers and people who post on social media. In other words, the law almost naturally privileges journalists whose organizations have most money - like print media - rather than the most accessible forms of media that anyone can use to disseminate information quickly.
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Che Guevara

2014 Worldwide Wave of Action: MLK's spirit rises for truth, justice and freedom

Carl Herman
Washington's Blog
Sun, 09 Feb 2014 11:55 UTC
Image
The 2014 Worldwide Wave of Action (and here) begins ~April 4 on the anniversary of Martin King's assassination by the US government (civil court trial verdict), with this operation completing ~July 4.

Purpose of this operation
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X

Madeline McCann: Former resort employee and suspect 'died in 2009'?

Brendan de Beer and James Meikle
The Guardian
Thu, 20 Mar 2014 18:35 UTC
Image
© PA
Madeleine McCann
A suspect in the Madeleine McCann case who may have sexually assaulted five British girls in the Algarve up to 10 years ago died in 2009, according to a source close to Portuguese investigators into the disappearance of the three year-old.

The source also said there had been another so far unpublicised incident in which another British girl on holiday with her parents was sexually abused, although he did not go into when this came to light nor where or when it took place.

The revelations came the day after the Metropolitan police in Britain appealed for information on a total of 12 incidents in which an intruder entered holiday accommodation in three resort areas including one where Madeleine, then three, went missing in May 2007. Four of these cases, between 2004 and 2006, involved assaults on girls aged seven to 10 and one involved two children, according to Scotland Yard, although police in both countries have looked at incidents up to 2010, three years after Madeleine vanished.

The Guardian's source was careful to say the police had come to "no definitive conclusions" about the Cape Verdean national Euclides Monteiro, who died, aged 40, in a tractor accident. His name previously emerged in Portugal as a possible suspect in November although the interest of Portuguese and UK authorities in any connection to sexual assaults had not been made public at that time.
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Cell Phone

French telecom Orange investigates second wave of suicides among staff - 'explicitly related' to jobs

Kim Willsher
The Guardian
Wed, 19 Mar 2014 13:33 UTC
Image
© Balint Porneczi/Bloomberg
Ten people at telecoms giant have killed themselves this year, most over what company says are 'work-related' reasons

The French telecoms company Orange is on "serious alert" after reports of a fresh spate of work-related suicides.

Since the beginning of the year, 10 of its employees have killed themselves - most for reasons "explicitly related" to their jobs, according to the company's own stress and mental health watchdog.

Orange was formerly the state-owned France Telecom, which reported a similar wave of deaths between 2008 and 2009. The number of suicides so far this year is almost as high as for the whole of last year, when 11 workers took their own lives.

Of the 10 deaths this year - three women and seven men, the youngest aged 25 - eight have been directly linked to work, according to the observatory for stress and forced mobility, which is responsible for monitoring work conditions at the company.

On Wednesday the French health minister, Marisol Touraine, called the new deaths worrying. "The company has to take the necessary measures. I know that the company and the unions are alert to this ... we cannot leave the situation as it is," she told French radio.

Comment:
Ten French employees of Orange have committed suicide this year
Why France has such a high rate of suicides

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Handcuffs

Man released after 15-year prison sentence robs same store

Jeff Goldman
nj.com
Wed, 26 Mar 2014 07:31 UTC
Image
© Toms River police
Christopher M. Miller
A day after being released following a 15-year stay in state prison for robbing a Toms River shoe store, a 40-year-old man allegedly committed the same crime at the same business, authorities said today.

When Christopher M. Miller woke up Friday morning, he was on the verge of being freed from South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton. A little more than 24 hours later, he returned to the scene of his crime - the Stride Rite shoe store on Hooper Avenue in Toms River - and demanded cash from the store's two employees, police said.

Miller took the cash register containing $389 but the workers refused his demand to turn over their car keys, authorities said. Instead, Miller took cellphones belonging to a 17-year-old boy and a 43-year-old woman before fleeing on foot.

"He was not armed but just made a verbal threat," police spokesman Ralph Stocco said. He said that Miller became agitated when the employees did not move as quickly as he liked.
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