Interesting Rulings Today
There’s a few interesting rulings that happened today in various places.
Firstly, the supreme court ruled that the death penalty cannot apply in cases of rape – no matter how young the victim is. I tend to agree with this ruling, as I think that only death should warrant a penalty of death. Even the bible agrees with me.
The supreme court also ruled today that the 2nd amendment applies to individuals, not just militias. That’s key, and will ease the fears of many that the government is coming for their guns.
The house of representatives shot down a bill that would allow funding for the government to use satellites to spy on citizens. (wait, they don’t already do this? wow!) They didn’t actually deny it though, they simply tabled it until it has language that says it will follow all existing laws about privacy. Sadly, I expect this to pass.
Senators are actually looking into the border patrol policy of it being legal to look at the contents of Americans laptops without suspicion of committing a crime. I don’t expect this to go anywhere, but at least they’re looking into it.
A smaller court today ruled that the RIAA has to pay Tayna Anderson’s legal fees after she was acquitted on her file sharing allegations.
Scottish politicians also brought forth a bill that would make sending sexual content over email or text messages a jailable offense. Better watch your flirting.
Outside of the courts, ICANN approved the expansion of top level domain names (like .com, .net, .info, etc) so allow companies to register their brands as generic TLDs. Get ready for .msn, .google, .mac, etc. Honestly, when this goes live it will be a freaking circus from all aspects. I hope that the bureaucrats can keep up with all the trademark applications shooting in so people can get TLDs.
Another bizarre ruling comes from the NHL, which changed the rules to make all face offs after a penalty occur in the zone of shorthanded team; regardless of where play was stopped. Ok, this one didn’t happen today but I still wanted to include it.
It’s been a crazy day.
June 26th, 2008
