Cultivated Compendium

 The Albuquerque Journal reports the New Mexico Attorney General argues that same-sex marriage is an issue of civil rights to be decided by the courts, not to be put up as a ballot measure for voters. The New Mexico Supreme Court is going to hear the issue next month. New Mexico is the rare state that does not directly prohibit nor directly authorize same-sex marriages.

The Chicago Sun-Times has this report: "A Will County judge on Friday found a Joliet crime reporter in contempt of court for not divulging how he obtained confidential police reports about a notorious double murder earlier this year. Will County Circuit Court Judge Gerald Kinney on Friday found patch.com reporter Joseph Hosey in contempt of court and gave him 180 days to disclose his source. Hosey faces jail time if he does not reveal who gave him the reports, Kinney said."

A retirement professional has this overview on same-sex spouses getting Social Security benefits in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act. One highlight is that the Social Security Administration is paying spouse benefits "if the couple wedded in a state that performs same-sex marriages, and reside at the time of claiming Social Security in a state that recognizes same-sex marriage."

The Associated Press reports the Arkansas Attorney General has approved the popular name and ballot title of a ballot measure that would ask Arkansas voters to repeal the definition of marriage as between only a man and a woman. The ballot measure would only change the state constitution, not a state law that bans same-sex marriage. The AP further reports, "Arkansas' gay marriage ban was approved by 75 percent of voters in 2004. Same-sex couples have filed lawsuits this year in federal and state court challenging the ban."

John Dean has this analysis of the Jones V. Dirty World Entertainment case heading to the Sixth Circuit, a case which could change the parameters of the law on the safe harbors provided in the Communications Decency Act to Internet Service Providers from defamatory on-line material.

CDA Section 230 protects Internet intermediaries fr0m liability for information provided by other information content providers. According to the trial court opinion, a Cincinatti Bengals cheerleader complained about sexual postings about her, includiing that she had slept with multiple team members and that she had a sexually transmitted disease, on thedirty.com. But the site refused to take them down. Web site editor Hooman Karamian, also known as Nik Richie, not only selected what postings to put up but also commented on the postings. The trial judge, according to the opinion concluded, thedirty.com and its editor were not entitled to the CDA safe harbor because the editor '“specifically encourage development of what is offensive about the content”' of the web site.

You can read the opinion on appeal here: http://www.dmlp.org/sites/citmedialaw.org/files/2012-01-10-SummaryJudgme...

The Environmental Protection Agency is going to announce the full details of its plan today to start regulating the amount of carbon emissions new coal and gas power plants can emit. Court challenges by the energy industry are predicted, the Washington Post reports.

US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was at Stanford for Constitution Day, where she said this last term's "heady and hefty" decisions on same-sex marriage and voting rights and other matters brought sharp dissents. But, according to the  Stanford Report, Ginsburg said: "What holds us together is that we revere the institution for which we work," Ginsburg said. "We know that we must maintain a high level of collegiality."

The Atlantic has a profound piece on Australian parents seeking to have their daughters with disabilities sterilized.

On one side, removing women's uteruses can ensure that they will not have children they can't care for and can improve their health in some situations. As one parent whose 31-year-old daughter has the mentality of a three-year-old described it to the magazine, "The hardest part for Sophie’s Sydney-based parents was managing her periods. 'She has an older sister and a younger sister and we tried to get her to use pads, but it just didn’t work,' said Merren Carter, Sophie’s mother."

On the other side, sterilization raises the specter of eugenics. As The Atlantic reported: "One woman’s father, who believed that she should not have children, told her she was going to the hospital to have her tonsils taken out. 'I did not have a sore throat afterwards,' she told the [Australian Senate] committee. It was only when she was trying to have kids with a long-term partner that she had realized what happened. Her partner eventually left her because he wanted children."

A West Virginia judge has been charged by federal prosecutors  with allegedly conspiring with a prosecutor, county commissioner and now-deceased sheriff to stop a confidential informant from talking with the FBI information about his drug deals with the sheriff, according to WSAZ News Channel 3, which covers news in West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky.

According to the news report: the informant was targeted by the sheriff after he tried to collect a $3,000 debt the sheriff owed the informant for making political signs. The sheriff arranged for an undercover informant to try to buy oxycodone from the sign-maker, and the sign-maker was indicted for possession of controlled substances with intent to deliver. But after the sign-maker was arrested he disclosed to the FBI that the sheriff had bought prescription narcotics from him several times. Then the judge, the sheriff and the others allegedly arranged to offer the sign-maker a favorable plea deal if he would fire his attorney, who was assisting the FBI, and replace him with a lawyer allegedly handpicked by the conspirators.