Legislators may vote on same-sex marriage next week, according to GateHouse Media: "Advocates for same-sex marriage in Illinois say they're ready for a vote next week. It's been months of energetic lobbying, but there are signals lawmakers may be prepared for a tally after the measure was set aside earlier this year."
The maker of a mockbuster film about hobbits didn't have any luck in arguing that they weren't infringing on the trademarked fictional creatures from JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Global Asylum tried to argue that it was fair use to make a film referencing hobbits because it's a "reference to a real-life human subspecies, Homo Floresiensis, discovered in 2003 in Indonesia." The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling this week.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shootings, Connecticut has been having a huge debate on where to draw the line between public access to law enforcement records like 911 calls and protecting victims' families from further trauma and further invasions of their privacy. During testimony before a legislative task force, the spouse of one of the adults killed in the shooting suggested a compromise, according to the Hartford Courant: "Bill Sherlach, whose wife Mary was among the six adults and 20 children shot to death on Dec. 14, told members of the Task Force on Victim Privacy and the Public's Right to Know that he's willing to support a compromise: the release of a written account of the 911 calls made that day, as long as the audio is not made public. 'Transcripts can rely all the information that the public wants without having to hear the sounds of a slaughter in the background,'' he said."
The Hawaii Senate has passed a bill to authorize same-sex marriage. The bill is expected to pass the House of Representatives too, Reuters reported. If the legislation is enacted, Hawaii could become the 15th state to legalize same-sex matrimony. The bill exempts houses of worship from having to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies.
New Yorkers will vote on a ballot measure that would increase the age at which appellate judges have to retire to age 80. The New York Times reports that Governor Andrew Cuomo has been quietly opposing Proposition 6. One reason may be that if the ballot meaure passes it would "allow two Republican judges to serve longer terms, limiting his ability to put a lasting liberal stamp on the Court of Appeals," The Times reports.
Raising the retirement ages of judges isn't just a New York issue. Legislation in Pennsylvania has advanced that would increase the retirement age for judges from age 70 to age 75. The legislation has to pass the Pennsylvania General Assembly another year before it can go to voters to approve it in 2015.
ProPublica reports on the lack of regulation for assisted living and how this puts the elderly at risk.
Nursing homes for elder Americans (who tend to need much more skilled nursing care than the elderly living in assisted living facilities) face much stricter regulation. Not so with "assisted living facilities, [which] at least initially, were meant to provide housing, meals and help to elderly people who could no longer live on their own," ProPublica reports.
Assisted living facilities tend to be free to decide how much staff their facilities should have and don't have to be inspected by outsiders very frequently.
After a committee in the Hawaii Senate passed a same-sex marriage, "SB 1 now awaits a vote in the full Senate, where it is expected to pass comfortably. It will then be heard by the House Judiciary and Finance committees Thursday morning, where its fate is less certain," The Huffingon Post reported.
With new patent reform legislation introduced in the House of Representatives, Corporate Counsel asks if patent reform should be left to the judiciary, not Congress. But the judiciary may be moving faster anyway: "Most of the key features of the anti-patent troll bill introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, dubbed the 'Innovation Act of 2013', could actually end up duplicating moves made by the judiciary, including two decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure," according to Corporate Counsel. Goodlatte's bill would allow for shifting reasonable attorney fees from defendants to patent trolls whose "principal business model is to assert patents as their main source of revenue," but the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up two cases involving patent-case fee-shifting, Corporate Consel also reported.
After Missouri State Trooper Dennis Engelhard was killed while investigating a traffic accident, his same-sex partner sought survivor benefits. Missouri pays benefits to the surivors of highway patrol officers killed in the line of duty, the Associated Press reported. The Missouri Supreme Court has ruled that because the couple were not married that no benefits are owed, according to the AP.
While Missouri prohibits same-sex marriage in its state constitution and a state law, “the result cannot be any different here simply because [Kelly] Glossip and the patrolman were of the same sex. The statute discriminates solely on the basis of marital status, not sexual orientation,” the majority of five justices said according to AP.
The two-member dissent, however, said the statute should be struck down because it "specifically discriminate against gay men and lesbians by categorically denying them crucial state benefits when their partner dies in the line of duty," according to AP.
The unseen part of the digital economy is how much power it takes for Google and Amazon and Facebook and Netflix to be available to us all the time, whenever we want. Aereo, one of the streaming services retransmitting broadcast TV over the Internet, also faces a huge electrical bill. The Wall Street Journal estimates that 90,000-135,000 subscribers in New York City could cost Aereo $2 million a year. The Journal further reports: "Power is 'one of the biggest challenges' the company faces, [CEO Chet] Kanojia said, adding that one option he is considering is getting off the grid and generating power using fuel cells."
Broadcasters are challenging Aereo's streaming service in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing it is infringing their copyrights in their programming.
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