woodcarving cumming

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Obama on Prop 8: How sweeping is administration support for gay marriage?

Even if the Supreme Court agrees with President Obama's brief arguing?that California's Prop. 8 is unconstitutional,?that doesn't mean there will be a nationwide right for gays to marry.

By Peter Grier,?Staff Writer / March 1, 2013

President Obama speaks to reporters in the White House briefing room on Friday. The president took questions about the amicus brief the White House filed with the US Supreme Court, which argues that California?s Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage, is unconstitutional.

Charles Dharapak/AP

Enlarge

President Obama on Friday said that in recent years, the whole nation has moved toward the position that gay couples should marry ? a change in thinking that mirrors his own.

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

That?s a ?positive thing,? he said at a short news conference, and it?s a big reason the administration on Thursday filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the US Supreme Court arguing that California?s Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage, is unconstitutional.

?When the Supreme Court essentially called the question by taking this case about California?s law, I didn?t feel like that was something that this administration could avoid,? Mr. Obama said. ?I felt it was important for us to articulate what I believe and what this administration stands for.?

But do Obama and his administration believe the court should establish a broad national right for gays to wed? That?s a question with a complex answer not entirely reflected in the president?s words.

Strictly speaking, the US did not have to get involved in Hollingsworth v. Perry (12-144), the Supreme Court case on Prop. 8. That?s because the case centers on the constitutionality of a state statute: in this case, a proposition passed by California voters, which amended the state constitution to limit ?marriage? to a union between a man and a woman.

The administration?s brief argues (unsurprisingly) that Prop. 8 is indeed unconstitutional. But it does not hold that all state prohibitions on gay marriage are thus also unconstitutional.

However, the brief?s reasoning still might ultimately lead the Supreme Court, if it agrees, to eventually establish gay marriage as a national right.

Got that? No? OK, we?ll back up and try a fuller explanation.

The reason Prop. 8 is unconstitutional is because California already allows gays full rights and benefits via civil unions, according to the administration brief. Thus there is no reason to deny them the final step of marriage, except simple prejudice, the brief argues. If California thought there was some substantive reason to prevent gay marriage ? say, that it would be bad for children ? then the state would block civil unions as well.

And if gays are being denied marriage due to prejudice, then Prop. 8 runs afoul of the Constitution?s promise that all Americans will be treated equally.

?The government seeks to vindicate the defining constitutional ideal of equal treatment under the law,? said Attorney General Eric Holder in a statement issued after the brief was filed.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/1yN-nVveGjU/Obama-on-Prop-8-How-sweeping-is-administration-support-for-gay-marriage

Susan Rice American Airlines the Who jon bon jovi jon bon jovi Kliff Kingsbury Amish Mafia

eTrizzle: find movies from a variety of sources

eTrizzle

Unless you've used the eTrizzle service on the web before, the name won't give you any indication of what this app actually does. Confusing branding aside, the app provides a very useful service. In an age where people are looking to "cut the cord" and have multiple sources of content, it can be either confusing or time consuming to try and find where movies are available.

eTrizzle hopes to solve this problem by aggregating several different sources of digital (and physical) movie content and making it searchable right from an app.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/2KZYn6tcDC0/story01.htm

trayvon martin obama care miss universe canada don draper gallagher madmen james cameron

Facebook scoops up Atlas. More social ads incoming?

Facebook bought Atlas, an advertising tracking and management company, from Microsoft this week for an undisclosed sum. Facebook is likely hoping to improve the precision of its own ads, and perhaps to launch an ad network to rival Google's.

By Jeff Ward-Bailey,?Contributor / March 1, 2013

Facebook purchased ad company Atlas from Microsoft this week, and could be working on creating its own ad network. Here, a mural at Facebook's California headquarters stylizes the code on which the social network runs.

Paul Sakuma/AP/File

Enlarge

Facebook has a mountain of data on its users? activities, locations, and other data -- which allows it to serve up advertisements that are pretty narrowly tailored to individual tastes. Now that ad-focusing ability could get even better.

Skip to next paragraph Jeff Ward-Bailey

Writer

Jeff began writing for the Monitor's Horizons blog in 2011, covering product news and rumors, innovations from companies like Apple and Google, and developments in tech policy.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Jodi Arias Voicemail: Killer Leaves Message For Travis Alexander AFTER Stabbing Him

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/03/jodi-arias-voicemail-killer-leaves-cheerful-message-for-travis-a/

time change rpi dst friends with kids pacific standard time northern mariana islands summer time

Work continues near sinkhole that swallowed man

Jeremy Bush places flowers and a stuffed animal at a makeshift memorial in front of a home where a sinkhole opened up underneath a bedroom late Thursday evening and swallowed his brother Jeffrey in Seffner, Fla. on Saturday, March 2, 2013. Jeffrey Bush, 37, was in his bedroom Thursday night when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five other people were in the house but managed to escape unharmed. Bush's brother jumped into the hole to try to help, but he had to be rescued himself by a sheriff's deputy. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

In this undated photo released by Jeremy Bush, shows his brother Jeff Bush. Jeremy Bush heard a loud crash and screaming coming from his brother's room early Thursday, March 1, 2013 in Seffner, Fla. A large sinkhole opened under Jeff's bedroom and he disappeared together with most of the bedroom furniture. Jeremy jumped into the hole and was quickly up to his neck in dirt. Jeff is presumed dead. (AP Photo/Jeremy Bush, HO)

Brenda Bush is escorted by a Hillsborough County Sheriff's deputy as she places flowers, Saturday, March 2, 2013, at a makeshift memorial in front of a home where a sinkhole opened up underneath a bedroom late Thursday evening and swallowed her son Jeffrey in Seffner, Fla. Jeffrey Bush, 37, was in his bedroom Thursday night when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five other people were in the house but managed to escape unharmed. Bush's brother jumped into the hole to try to help, but he had to be rescued himself by a sheriff's deputy. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

An engineer, tethered with a safety line, walks in front of a home where a sinkhole opened up underneath a bedroom late Thursday evening and swallowed a man in Seffner, Fla. on Saturday, March 2, 2013. Jeffrey Bush, 37, was in his bedroom Thursday night when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five other people were in the house but managed to escape unharmed. Bush's brother jumped into the hole to try to help, but he had to be rescued himself by a sheriff's deputy. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

Engineers talk in front of a home, where a sinkhole opened up underneath a bedroom late Thursday evening and swallowed a man, in Seffner, Fla. on Saturday, March 2, 2013. Jeffrey Bush, 37, was in his bedroom Thursday night when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five other people were in the house but managed to escape unharmed. Bush's brother jumped into the hole to try to help, but he had to be rescued himself by a sheriff's deputy. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

SEFFNER, Fla. (AP) ? Engineers worked gingerly Saturday to find out more about a slowly growing sinkhole that swallowed a Florida man in his bedroom, believing the entire house could eventually succumb to the unstable ground.

Jeff Bush, 37, was in his bedroom Thursday night when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five other people were in the house but managed to escape unharmed. Bush's brother jumped into the hole to try to help, but he had to be rescued himself by a sheriff's deputy.

On Saturday, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokesman Ronnie Rivera said one of the homes next door to the Bush house also was compromised by the sinkhole, as determined through testing. The family, which had evacuated Friday, would be allowed to go inside for about a half-hour to gather belongings, Rivera said. The family was outside, crying and organizing boxes.

Engineers had been testing since 7 a.m. Saturday. By 10 a.m., officials moved media crews farther away from the Bush house so experts could perform tests on the home across the street.

It's unclear how large the sinkhole is or whether it leads to other caverns and chasms throughout the neighborhood. Experts say the underground of West Central Florida looks similar to Swiss cheese, with the geography lending itself to sinkholes.

Experts spent the previous day on the property, taking soil samples and running various tests ? while acknowledging that the entire lot where Bush lay entombed was dangerous. No one was allowed in the home.

"I cannot tell you why it has not collapsed yet," Bill Bracken, the owner of an engineering company called to assess the sinkhole, said of the home. He described the earth below as a "very large, very fluid mass."

"This is not your typical sinkhole," said Hillsborough County administrator Mike Merrill. "This is a chasm. For that reason, we're being very deliberate."

Officials delicately addressed another sad reality: Bush was likely dead and the family wanted his body. Merrill, though, said they didn't want to jeopardize any more lives.

"They would like us to go in quickly and locate Mr. Bush," Merrill said. Officials added Saturday morning that a fund had been set up to help the families affected by the sinkhole.

On Saturday, Jeremy Bush ? who tried to rescue his brother when the earth opened ? lay flowers and a stuffed lamb near the house and wept.

Hillsborough County Fire Chief Ron Roger called the situation "very complex."

"It's continuing to evolve, and the ground is continuing to collapse," he said.

Sinkholes are so common in Florida that state law requires home insurers to provide coverage against the danger. While some cars, homes and other buildings have been devoured, it's extremely rare for them to swallow a person.

Florida is highly prone to sinkholes because there are caverns below ground of limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water.

"You can almost envision a piece of Swiss cheese," Taylor Yarkosky, a sinkhole expert from Brooksville, Fla., said while gesturing to the ground and the sky blue home where the earth opened in Seffner. "Any house in Florida could be in that same situation."

A sinkhole near Orlando grew to 400 feet across in 1981 and devoured five sports cars, most of two businesses, a three-bedroom house and the deep end of an Olympic-size swimming pool.

More than 500 sinkholes have been reported in Hillsborough County alone since the government started keeping track in 1954, according to the state's environmental agency.

The sinkhole, estimated at 20 feet across and 20 feet deep, caused the home's concrete floor to cave in around 11 p.m. Thursday as everyone in the Tampa-area house was turning in for the night. It gave way with a loud crash that sounded like a car hitting the house and brought Bush's brother running.

Jeremy Bush said he jumped into the hole but couldn't see his brother and had to be rescued himself by a sheriff's deputy who reached out and pulled him to safety as the ground crumbled around him.

"The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn't care. I wanted to save my brother," Jeremy Bush said through tears Friday in a neighbor's yard. "But I just couldn't do nothing."

He added: "I could swear I heard him hollering my name to help him."

A dresser and the TV set had vanished down the hole, along with most of Bush's bed.

A sheriff's deputy who was the first to respond to a frantic 911 call said when he arrived, he saw Jeremy Bush.

Deputy Douglas Duvall said he reached down as if he was "sticking his hand into the floor" to help Jeremy Bush. Duvall said he didn't see anyone else in the hole.

As he pulled Bush out, "everything was sinking," Duvall said.

Engineers said they may have to demolish the small house, even though from the outside there appeared to be nothing wrong with the four-bedroom, concrete-wall structure, built in 1974.

Jeremy Bush said someone came out to the home a couple of months ago to check for sinkholes and other things, apparently for insurance purposes.

"He said there was nothing wrong with the house. Nothing. And a couple of months later, my brother dies. In a sinkhole," Bush said.

___

Follow Lush at www.twitter.com/tamaralush

Online: http://www.dep.state.fl.us/geology/feedback/faq.htm(hash)17

www.firefighter-relief.com

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-02-Sinkhole%20Swallows%20Man/id-650073e5b8bf453a814dd727c5899ee5

attwireless taylor swift zac efron the scream stephen colbert new madrid fault rihanna and chris brown affirmative action

Winners in Israel's game-changing election unlikely to lead charge for peace

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still without a coalition more than a month after winning parliamentary elections, but amid the political horsetrading the next government's agenda is coming into view.

While the Israeli leader initially called for a super-sized coalition to grapple with foreign foes like Iran and regional instability, it increasingly appears that a divisive domestic issue ? entitlements for the ultra-Orthodox ? will be a top priority. That will push the peace process further onto the back burner as President Obama prepares to make his first visit to the country as president, which many hope will spur a renewed push for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Mr. Netanyahu?s coalition-building effort has been rattled by an unexpected alliance between two ascendant political parties which, despite their contradictory views on the Palestinians, have doggedly pursued a joint demand to end draft exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim.

With the deadline for coalition negotiations two weeks away, it looks like he won?t be able to form a majority government without them.

RECOMMENDED: How much do you know about Israel? Take the quiz

The axis between Yesh Atid, a centrist party that supports a Palestinian state, and the pro-settler Jewish Home party, which believes in annexing most of the West Bank, brushes aside a longstanding divide between hawks and doves. It also shows starkly that the Israeli public is more focused on socioeconomic issues than Arab-Israeli peace.

"This is a strange and wondrous moment in Israeli history?. For the first time we have a coalition of parties driven by a domestic agenda," says Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

"The political system has always deferred dealing with long-festering domestic problems because of external threats and emergencies. Those threats certainly exist today, but what has changed is that the Israeli public is demanding of its leadership that it learn how to walk and chew gum at the same time: 'Deal with our external threats, but don?t defer dealing with our internal problems.' "

The shift reflects both exhaustion and pessimism about Israel?s ability to solve the decades-old conflict with the Palestinians, even amid rising fears that a new intifada, or uprising, might erupt and that the two-state solution could be rendered unworkable. That change coincided with a rising concern about bread-and-butter issues, which first came to dominate the public agenda in summer 2011, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis staged street demonstrations over cost-of-living issues.

'SHARING THE BURDEN'

During the election campaign, Yesh Atid championed the middle class and the value of "sharing the burden," a code for ending government entitlements to the ultra-Orthodox that allows the burgeoning Israeli group to stay out of the army and the workforce in favor of religious study. Jewish Home, a party of Israeli religious nationalists, promised to block surging housing prices, and also supports integration of the ultra-Orthodox into the mainstream.

In coalition negotiations, both parties focused on reforming the draft, an issue that bridges much of the right and left, secular and religious.

Political commentators yesterday speculated that Netanyahu would partner with Yesh Atid and Jewish Home, while leaving the ultra-Orthodox out of the coalition.

"Some people believe that real peace isn?t expected, and because of that we can deal with domestic issues like the draft, and entitlements for the ultra-Orthodox," says Avraham Diskin, a professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

When Yesh Atid and its charismatic leader Yair Lapid surprised pollsters with a second-place finish last month, it stoked hope that he would help moderate government policy toward the Palestinians and restart peace negotiations after being stalled for five years.

But cooperation with the Jewish Home seems to indicate that is not Mr. Lapid's priority. In a gesture to his ally, Lapid recently asked parliament members from his party not to participate in a tour sponsored by a pro-peace activist group. It was a reminder that the peace process was barely discussed during the election, and that parties that championed it fared poorly.

"The Israeli public didn?t vote on the two-state solution. It wasn?t a topic in the election," says Tal Shalev, a political reporter for the Walla news website. "The two big issues are the economy and the Haredim."

Friday, March 1, 2013

Volcanic aerosols, not pollutants, tamped down recent Earth warming

Mar. 1, 2013 ? A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for clues about why Earth did not warm as much as scientists expected between 2000 and 2010 now thinks the culprits are hiding in plain sight -- dozens of volcanoes spewing sulfur dioxide.

The study results essentially exonerate Asia, including India and China, two countries that are estimated to have increased their industrial sulfur dioxide emissions by about 60 percent from 2000 to 2010 through coal burning, said lead study author Ryan Neely, who led the research as part of his CU-Boulder doctoral thesis. Small amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions from Earth's surface eventually rise 12 to 20 miles into the stratospheric aerosol layer of the atmosphere, where chemical reactions create sulfuric acid and water particles that reflect sunlight back to space, cooling the planet.

Neely said previous observations suggest that increases in stratospheric aerosols since 2000 have counterbalanced as much as 25 percent of the warming scientists blame on human greenhouse gas emissions. "This new study indicates it is emissions from small to moderate volcanoes that have been slowing the warming of the planet," said Neely, a researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a joint venture of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A paper on the subject was published online in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Co-authors include Professors Brian Toon and Jeffrey Thayer from CU-Boulder; Susan Solomon, a former NOAA scientist now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Jean Paul Vernier from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.; Catherine Alvarez, Karen Rosenlof and John Daniel from NOAA; and Jason English, Michael Mills and Charles Bardeen from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

The new project was undertaken in part to resolve conflicting results of two recent studies on the origins of the sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere, including a 2009 study led by the late David Hoffman of NOAA indicating aerosol increases in the stratosphere may have come from rising emissions of sulfur dioxide from India and China. In contrast, a 2011 study led by Vernier -- who also provided essential observation data for the new GRL study -- showed moderate volcanic eruptions play a role in increasing particulates in the stratosphere, Neely said.

The new GRL study also builds on a 2011 study led by Solomon showing stratospheric aerosols offset about a quarter of the greenhouse effect warming on Earth during the past decade, said Neely, also a postdoctoral fellow in NCAR's Advanced Study Program.

The new study relies on long-term measurements of changes in the stratospheric aerosol layer's "optical depth," which is a measure of transparency, said Neely. Since 2000, the optical depth in the stratospheric aerosol layer has increased by about 4 to 7 percent, meaning it is slightly more opaque now than in previous years.

"The biggest implication here is that scientists need to pay more attention to small and moderate volcanic eruptions when trying to understand changes in Earth's climate," said Toon of CU-Boulder's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. "But overall these eruptions are not going to counter the greenhouse effect. Emissions of volcanic gases go up and down, helping to cool or heat the planet, while greenhouse gas emissions from human activity just continue to go up."

The key to the new results was the combined use of two sophisticated computer models, including the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model, or WACCM, Version 3, developed by NCAR and which is widely used around the world by scientists to study the atmosphere. The team coupled WACCM with a second model, the Community Aerosol and Radiation Model for Atmosphere, or CARMA, which allows researchers to calculate properties of specific aerosols and which has been under development by a team led by Toon for the past several decades.

Neely said the team used the Janus supercomputer on campus to conduct seven computer "runs," each simulating 10 years of atmospheric activity tied to both coal-burning activities in Asia and to emissions by volcanoes around the world. Each run took about a week of computer time using 192 processors, allowing the team to separate coal-burning pollution in Asia from aerosol contributions from moderate, global volcanic eruptions. The project would have taken a single computer processor roughly 25 years to complete, said Neely.

The scientists said 10-year climate data sets like the one gathered for the new study are not long enough to determine climate change trends. "This paper addresses a question of immediate relevance to our understanding of the human impact on climate," said Neely. "It should interest those examining the sources of decadal climate variability, the global impact of local pollution and the role of volcanoes."

While small and moderate volcanoes mask some of the human-caused warming of the planet, larger volcanoes can have a much bigger effect, said Toon. When Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, it emitted millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere that cooled Earth slightly for the next several years.

The research for the new study was funded in part through a NOAA/ ESRL-CIRES Graduate Fellowship to Neely. The National Science Foundation and NASA also provided funding for the research project. The Janus supercomputer is supported by NSF and CU-Boulder and is a joint effort of CU-Boulder, CU Denver and NCAR.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

R. R. Neely, O. B. Toon, S. Solomon, J. P. Vernier, C. Alvarez, J. M. English, K. H. Rosenlof, M. J. Mills, C. G. Bardeen, J. S. Daniel, J. P. Thayer. Recent anthropogenic increases in SO2from Asia have minimal impact on stratospheric aerosol. Geophysical Research Letters, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/grl.50263

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/TsOWzedDGyM/130301123048.htm

ohio state girl with the dragon tattoo ohio state basketball collateral dick cheney heart umf elite eight

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Recent posts

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Friday, March 1, 2013