Cultivated Compendium

The Associated Press reports that, while gay and lesbian Americans are racking up success after success in the fight for same-sex marriage, that the picture is not as rosy for transgender Americans: '“My sense is that we are 20 years behind the mainstream gay and lesbian movement in terms of public understanding,' said Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund," according to the AP.

While New Jersey has authorized same-sex marriage through court action, Democrats in the New Jersey Senate were hoping to codify same-sex marriage by statute. But The Newark Star-Ledger reports "Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg said Sunday that she decided to follow the advice of Lambda Legal, a gay rights law group, to take the bill off the agenda." Lambda Legal disfavored the religious exemptions in the now-pulled legislation.

TechCrunch reports that Aereo, which could be a disruptor to the broadcast TV industry if its Internet streaming service of broadcast programming is found not to violate copyright law, wants to go to the U.S. Supreme Court too. Broadcasters are already seeking an appeal to the justices.

In a statement reported by Tech Crunch, the company says, "'The long-standing landmark Second Circuit decision in Cablevision has served as a crucial underpinning to the cloud computing and cloud storage industry. The broadcasters’ filing makes clear that they are using Aereo as a proxy to attack Cablevision itself. ... Consumers have the right to use an antenna to access the over-the-air television. It is a right that should be protected and preserved and in fact, has been protected for generations by Congress. "' Aereo was built specifically with Cablevision in mind, TechCrunch further reports.

An audit by the Department of the Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General found that most hospitals don't have policies about copying and pasting health information in electronic health records, iHealthBeat reports. That could lead to health care fraud and abuse such as fraudulent billing and incorrect information being entered into patient records. Only 24% of hospitals had a policy regarding the "improper use of copy-and-paste functions within EHR systems," iHealthBeat further reports.

Separately, Government Health IT reports that earlier this month the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services decided to propose a delay in the next two stages of its program to incentivize healthcare providers to adopt "meaningful use" of electronic health records in exchange for governmental incentives.

Grist, an online environmental magazine, speculates whether the 90 companies that have been identified as causing two-thirds of human-driven global warming emissions could be sued under tort law. Environmental law experts told Grist that such lawsuits would fail in federal court. The U.S. Supreme Court found in American Elecctric Power v. Connecticut that states can't sue companies for emitting greenhouse gases. Only the Environmental Protection Agency can regulate interstate CO2 pollution because the federal Clean Air Act displaces federal common law, Grist reports. State lawsuits wouldn't be pre-empted, but it would require proving specific causation, Grist reports: "Let’s say your house was damaged by a hurricane. You would have to convince a judge and jury that the specific hurricane was caused by climate change. Just because climate change makes storms stronger and more frequent doesn’t mean you can blame oil companies for any given storm in a court of law."

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Australia's High Court "has cleared the way for a federal law on same-sex marriage, even though it struck down the ACT law providing for them." The court reasoned that the word marriage in the constitution is not restricted to opposite-sex unions. The court held that the Federal Parliament could change a law that restricts marriage to unions between men and women. "It was thought that if ever the Federal Parliament did legislate for same-sex marriage it would invite a constitutional challenge on the basis that the word 'marriage' in the Constitution meant only unions between a man and a woman," the newspaper further reports.

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analyzes the new constitution proposed for Egypt (another constitution was just adopted in 2012). The proposals include:

* The Egyptian military would get enshrined as a branch of government unto itself;

* While it's typically a good thing for the judiciary to have autonomy, the Egyptian judiciary, "which strongly supported the military takeover" from the elected Muslim Brotherhood, won independence in the constitutional draft;

* The Supreme Constitutional Court, which decides constitutional issue, would get the right to appoint its own chief justice.

The new constitution is slated for a referendum in January. In July, the Egyptian military overthrew Egypt's president Mohamed Morsi, the first president to be elected since the removal of former president Hosni Mubarak.

According to Motley Fool, if Aereo wins in the U.S. Supreme Court, a victory won't just change the contours of copyright law but make the firm "a real lever for content distributors" to affect the market for retransmission fees for cable and satellite companies to carry broadcasters' content. "CBS would be the hardest hit because it commands the largest share of viewers," Gary Bourgeault writes.

On the other hand, broadcasters CBS and Fox are threatening a "reverse lever" by potentially changing to a cable model if the justices authorize the Aereo model of retransmitting broadcast TV programming over the Internet through individualized antennas, Borgeault also writes. That would mean Aereo would be cut out of the free broadcast content.

Advocates say that some plans offered through the Obamacare online insurance exchanges are offering skimpy drug coverage for expensive conditions like AIDS, cancer and other chronic conditions, The Washington Post reports. One advocate, John Peller, vice president of policy for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, told The Post: '“The fear is that they are putting discriminatory plan designs into place to try to deter certain people from enrolling by not covering the medications they need, or putting policies in place that make them jump through hoops to get care.'"

The issues are, advocates told The Post, that: "The plans are curbing their lists of covered drugs and limiting quantities, requiring prior authorizations and insisting on 'fail first' or 'step therapy' protocols that compel doctors to prescribe a certain drug first before moving on to another — even if it’s not the physician’s and patient’s drug of choice."

Five financial regulatory agencies approved the Volcker rule Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reports. The rule could "lop as much as $10 billion total in yearly pretax profit from the eight largest U.S. banks through lower revenue and higher compliance costs, according to estimates from Standard & Poor's," The Journal further reports. On the other hand, the rule aims to prevent another financial crisis by curbing proprietary trading through curbing "banks' ability to bet with their own capital" and forcing "them to draw bright lines separating trades for clients from trades to limit their risks and so-called proprietary bets," The Journal also reports. 

"Proprietary trading helped fuel the financial-services industry's climb to dizzying heights in the years leading up to the financial crisis—and created millionaires within the biggest banks," The Journal further reports.

The rule goes into effect April 1.