News Weekly

As both Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch argued last week, commenting on this article in The Weekly Standard, we are seeing the "last gasp of a losing argument" from opponents of gay marriage. A few days later, former Solicitor General Ted Olson, who argued Bush v. Gore for the Bushies, joined forces with liberal lawyer (and former Gore council) David Boies and filed a legal challenge to California's Prop. 8. Now former Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking at the National Press Club, affirmed his support for a federalist approach to same-sex marriage, telling assembled journalists that "people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish."

The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don't support. I do believe that the historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis. But I don't have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that.

Via RealClearPolitics, which also has the video.

by Pam Spaulding

Jesus H. Christ, I think I’m going to be sick. Look at what Randall Terry said at today’s press conference. (Right Wing Watch):

 



Terry: The point that must be emphasized over, and over, and over again: pro-life leaders and the pro-life movement are not responsible for George Tiller’s death. George Tiller was a mass-murder and, horrifically, he reaped what he sowed.

Q: So who is responsible ...

Terry: The man who shot him is responsible ...

Q:  ... because that makes it sound like you were saying that he [Tiller] is responsible.

Terry:  The man who shot him is responsible.

Q: What did you mean by “he reaped what he sowed”?

Terry: He was a mass-murder.  He sowed death. And then he reaped death in a horrifying way.

And Kyle at RWW said the presser ended with this outlandish statement:

The event came to an utterly bizarre ending when Terry said that Tiller’s murder “can be a teaching moment for what child-killing is really all about” ... and then seemed to ask those in attendance if they’d be willing to buy him lunch - he likes Guinness and chicken wings.

People, this is frightening. The eliminationists and womb-controlling domestic terrorism advocates believe a doctor who ran a medical practice performing legal services got what he deserved.  This is sick - between this guy and O’Reilly, the Tiller family is suffering all over again. This won’t be the end of this kind of violence, I’m afraid. This man is fanning the flames of the crazies—we have to fear domestic terrorism more than anything coming from abroad.

There are plenty of instances of misleading and otherwise bad stats being used by anti-piracy groups, like the recent BSA numbers from Canada that were basically made up. Now, a group from the UK is saying that piracy costs that country's economy tens of billions of pounds. It makes the same mistake as plenty of other studies before it: counting every instance of piracy, or perhaps even just the availability of copyrighted material on file-sharing networks, as a lost sale. It's fallacious to assume that every single person that downloads a piece of content, or simply has access to it for free, would pay for it if the free version wasn't available. Furthermore, any study like this that says an entire economy is being harmed by X amount of money because of piracy is pretty much bogus. This money that's supposedly being lost because of piracy isn't being lost by the economy, as undoubtedly it's being spent elsewhere. It's not being flushed down the toilet or turned into ether, it's just not ending up in content companies' bank accounts.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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