Thursday, Jul 03rd
Last update06:54:21 AM GMT
Domestic Glance
New Jersey has a free-speech lawsuit on its hands after a woman's attempt to score an atheist license plate got rejected, reports NJ.com. Shannon Morgan says it was bad enough when she typed in 8THEIST on the state website and learned that it was deemed objectionable.
But when she typed in BAPTIST and was allowed to proceed, she decided to lawyer up. The state is showing a clear preference for "theistic beliefs over non-theistic ones," says her lawsuit.
Two flags, tattered by an explosion blocks away, have flown at half-staff at the Emergency Medical Services station since shortly after a fertilizer mixing operation blew up April 17, 2013, devastating this quiet central Texas town and killing 15.
The dead included three out-of-town men attending a course at the EMS facility, who then joined local volunteer firefighters to fight the blaze.
Attorney General Eric Holder's long-awaited revisions to the Justice Department’s racial profiling rules would allow the FBI to continue most or all of the tactics opposed by civil rights groups, such as mapping ethnic populations and using that data to recruit informants and open investigations, reports the New York Times.
A draft of the new rules expands the definition of prohibited profiling to include not just race, but religion, national origin, gender and sexual orientation. The draft increases the standards that agents must meet before considering those factors. They do not change the way the FBI uses nationality to map neighborhoods, recruit informants, or look for foreign spies.
Last month a baby in Tennessee made history: Emilia Maria Jesty was the first child born in the state to have a woman listed on the birth certificate as her "father."
The marital status of the baby's parents was the subject of a flurry of court filings up to a few days before her birth. Valeria Tanco and Sophy Jesty were wed in New York, a state that recognizes gay marriage, and moved to Tennessee, which does not.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday further opened up the taps on political campaign spending, with a bombshell ruling that removes the long-standing limits on how much total money an individual can contribute to federal candidates.
In what amounts to a 5-4 ruling won by conservatives, the court declared the aggregate contribution limits imposed four decades ago violated the First Amendment’s free-speech protections. Though individual donations may still be limited, for now, the ruling means donors can spread their wealth across as many candidates and causes as they can find.
US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has used a "back door" in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans’ communications.
The NSA's collection programs are ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August the Guardian revealed a secret rule change allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans' details within the databases.
Now, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed for the first time the use of this legal authority to search for data related to “US persons”.
...in 2005, amid a federal push to avoid another communications nightmare like the one blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, deaths of 125 New York firefighters at the collapsed World Trade Center, Rupf and Plummer joined forces. They set their sights on a new digital two-way radio system so that all of their first responders could talk to each other.
There was, however, a catch.
A notice circulated by Alameda County to gauge vendors’ interest in the project said that the first $5.7 million phase must include a master controller made by Motorola Inc., and the equipment must connect with the county’s aged, proprietary Motorola SmartNet II system.
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