My Obsessions

Wolf management continues to be hijacked by hunting and livestock interests.

Monsanto is protected from lawsuits and judges that would enjoin them as a result of a law that passed without review. Sign this petition to change that.

“The Monsanto Protection Act—which became law in March—allows Monsanto and other large corporations to ignore existing food safety rules, and continue selling genetically modified seeds even if a court has blocked them from doing so.

“It’s been called ‘one of the most outrageous special interest provisions in years,’ and was even slipped in anonymously without review or debate into a must-pass budget bill.”

A north Texas judge has forbid a lesbian couple from living together, citing a “morality clause” in one of the women’s divorce papers. The clause—ubiquitous in divorce cases—is intended to stop a divorced parent from having a different love interest sleep over while children are in the home. If the lesbian couple was heterosexual instead, they could simply get married to make the clause null. But in Texas, where same-sex marriage isn’t recognized, they’re stuck. As a result of a judge’s ruling Tuesday, Carolyn Compton’s partner, Page Price, will be forced to move out of the home where they currently live with Compton’s two daughters.

The subject of the latest outrageous ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is an 11-by-17-inch poster. The National Labor Relations Board requires nearly six million private employers to display the poster, which informs employees of their right to join or form a union or to take action together to improve their working conditions.

This week, three conservatives on the court struck down the rule on the ground that the board lacks the authority to make it. The rule, the court said, violated an employer’s First Amendment right not to be compelled to endorse a view he disagrees with, the way students in public school cannot be forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

The appeals court ruling is a reminder of why the court is sometimes known as the graveyard of federal regulation.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit court has four vacancies, out of 11 seats. Republican obstructionism has blocked new appointments during the Obama administration. A decision on a subject as politically charged as this one shows why it is important to have balance on the court.

City- or county-sponsored gun buybacks — often used in larger cities to entice people to give up their handguns — have become effectively pointless in Arizona with legislation signed by Gov. Jan Brewer.

The bill prohibits cities and counties from destroying any guns that come into their possession; instead, the firearms must now be sold to federally licensed dealers.

The Louisiana state Senate Education Committee rejected a move to repeal the state’s Science Education Act on Wednesday, handing a defeat to opponents who have criticized the law for essentially allowing the teaching of creationism in science class.

The repeal effort was led by Zack Kopplin, a Rice University student from Baton Rouge, La., who, with the support of more than 70 Nobel Prize-winning scientists, argued that the law constitutes a risk for Louisiana and its schoolchildren. In a recent column in the UK’s Guardian, Kopplin cited discussions with Louisianans from a range of fields who said the Science Education Act was stunting the educational process for students and perpetuating an anti-science culture that has already made businesses and tourists more hesitant to invest in the state.

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