The 9th has jurisdiction in nine western states and this decision would have been the ruling for every one of those states. But the court decided to craft a very specific ruling that will only apply to California.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and Minority Leader in the House, says on her Twitter page that Prop 8 was ruled to be “what we knew it to be: unconstitutional. Victory for equality & CA families!”

In the court’s opinion, it pointed out that ”although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted.”

“Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California.”

The court said gay marriages cannot resume in the state until the deadline passes for Proposition 8 sponsors to appeal to a larger panel of the 9th Circuit. If such an appeal is filed, gay marriages will remain on hold until it’s resolved.

The panel also said there was no evidence that former Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker was biased and should have disclosed before he issued his decision that he was gay and in a long-term relationship with another man.

To view a timeline of the entire marriage equality battle in California, click here.

Now a 69-year-old grandmother, Alford discusses in her book Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath, her 18-month-long affair with the President of the United States as teenage White House intern. Kennedy is said to have carried on numerous White House affairs during his presidency, including an alleged dalliance with Hollywood starlet Marilyn Monroe.

Mimi Alford, pictured left in a 1963 portrait, recounts her several personal moments with the president; how she lost her virginity to him, his tears after the death of his newborn son, and  the terrifying drama of the Cuban missile crisis, in which she quotes President Kennedy as saying “I’d rather my children red, than dead.”

Alford claims that their affair started in the summer of 1962, when she was 19, less than half the age of Kennedy. It “never occurred to her” to resist the advances of a married man. ”The fact that I was being desired by the most famous and powerful man in America only amplified my feelings to the point where resistance was out of the question. That’s why I didn’t say no to the president,” she wrote. He was killed the following year by an assassins’ bullet at the age of 46.

Once she had completed her stint at the press office of the White House, Alford returned to Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She further asserts that he, President Kennedy, sometimes would call her dorm under the pseudonym “Michael Carter.”

While back at Wheaton, she thought she was pregnant and told the president’s adviser, Dave Powers. With the high potential threat of a crippling scandal, abortion also illegal in 1962, Powers put her in touch with a woman who had a contact for a doctor. In the end, it was a false alarm.

The last time she saw him was on November 15, 1963, a week before Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas.

Ms Alford’s decision to write the memoir came after being exposed in “a tabloid frenzy” in 2003 when a Kennedy biographer had referred to “a 19-year-old… White House intern” as one his affairs, according to her publisher, Random House.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/iran-warns-world-of-coming-great-event/

Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader of Iran.

The recent decision to go public has brought about the release of Facebook’s financials. In 2011, the company brought in $3.71 billion in revenue, making a profit of $1 billion. The vast majority of its revenue comes from advertising.

Notably, Facebook’s IPO is set to rival Google’s 2004 offering of $1.9 billion which holds the record for the industry. Only Visa Inc., General Motors Co., and AT&T Wireless have had IPOs of more than $10 million.

Zuckerberg has expressed his reluctance to make Facebook public in the past, fearing the move would damage the company’s image and culture. He was, however, swayed upon realizing that the company  would be required to report its financials by late 2011 due to its size. The decision was then made to reap the benefits of an IPO in the process. Individually, Zuckerberg owns 23% of the company.

With more than 845 million users across the world, Facebook’s IPO promises a windfall to the banks managing the offer. Amongst those potentially managing the deal are Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and Goldman Sachs.

For its users, the IPO represents a fundamental shift in Facebook’s business structure which has the potential to affect its operations, perception, and direction in the long run. It is clear, however, that the Facebook offering will create waves within the financial and technology sectors regardless of its ability to surpass previously established milestones.

The Stop Online Piracy ACT (SOPA) was introduced to the House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 by Representative Lamar Smith. The bill allows copyright holders to seek court orders against foreign websites that permit or facilitate copyright infringement.  If the US Department of Justice finds a website in question to be guilty of infringement, the consequences can be very severe. A website with even one instance of infringement can be prohibited from partaking in online advertising, linking to search engines and may ultimately be blocked altogether by internet providers.

The proponents of SOPA and its Senate counterpart, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), include the Motion Picture Association of America, pharmaceutical makers, media businesses and the US Chamber of Commerce.  These advocates of the bill believe that it is a necessary step in the protection of copyright laws and intellectual property.

To some, the protection of copyright and intellectual property is of especially critical importance given the economic woes of the past four years. Sponsor Representative John Conyers argues that the protection against copyright infringement and intellectual property theft SOPA seeks to address is integral to the larger economy. “Millions of American jobs hang in the balance, and our efforts to protect America’s intellectual property are critical to our economy’s long-term success” he stated in a press release in October.

Despite the aforementioned justifications, the bill remains a highly contentious matter which has experienced vocal and pervasive outrage. Opponents of the bill believe it violates the First Amendment and amounts to little more than internet censorship, fearing SOPA may become the precedent for further threats to free speech.  ”If SOPA and PIPA are enacted, the US government must be prepared for other governments to follow suit, in service to whatever social policies they believe are important” Cynthia Wong of the Center for Democracy and Technology warned in a piece on the organization’s website.

Nonetheless, the web protests were essential to defeating the proposed legislation. PCWorld.com estimates that more than 162 million people saw the protest message from Wikipedia and 4.5 million people signed petitions against the bill. In response to the outcry, 18 senators backed away from the legislation, and on January 24 the Senate vote on PIPA was canceled altogether.

However, this tension between anti-internet censorship activists and groups that seek to protect copyrighted material online has long been a struggle played out in the political arena. Ever since the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a variety of proposals throughout the 2000s signal continued strife over the protection of content on a largely unlimited internet. Even with the stalled movement towards enacting SOPA and PIPA directly, a new bill, the OPEN Act, has already been brought to the House. The OPEN Act differs from SOPA and PIPA by giving regulatory authority to the International Trade Commission instead of the Justice Department and by targeting websites that are more clearly and majorly involved in copyright infringement.

The overwhelming public outcry over SOPA and PIPA has been able to keep those eager for more stringent internet accountability from having their way. Although it appears the issue has been put on hold for the moment, history and the recent proposal of the OPEN Act indicate that the concerns over copyright protection and internet censorship will not be put to rest anytime soon.

Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat from Arizona whose incredible recovery from a shooting last year stirred both her colleagues and the nation, announced this Sunday that she will resign from her congressional seat in order to focus on her recovery.

In a video released on Sunday afternoon, posted on her website and tweeted from her Twitter account, Giffords explained “I don’t remember much from that horrible day, but I will never forget the trust you placed in me to be your voice. Thank you for your prayers and for giving me time to recover. I have more work to do on my recovery, so to do what is best for Arizona I will step down this week.”

On Jan. 8, 2011, Ms. Giffords was shot in the head while holding a ‘Congress on Your Corner’ meet-and-greet event outside a grocery store in Tuscan, Ariz. She was one of thirteen people injured in the assault.  Six others, including 9-year-old Christina Green, and federal judge John Roll, were killed. The gunman, Jared Loughner, is currently being treated with anti-psychotic drugs in a prison hospital to determine whether he will be fit to stand trial.

Gifford’s decision to resign poses a challenge to democrats in Arizona. The race for her seat representing Arizona’s Eighth District is in a chaotic state because she was expected to be a shoo-in for re-election had she decided to run this year. Democrats, fearing the loss of the seat, hoped that Ms. Gifford’s husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, would run in her place. Friends of the couple said on Sunday that this was not likely, as Kelly would be more inclined to spend time assisting his wife with her recovery.

In Gifford’s video announcement to resign from her position however, she did hint at an eventual return to elective office, saying “I will return, and we will work together for Arizona and this great country.”

Gabby Giffords did decide to finish the interrupted Congress on Your Corner event in the supermarket parking lot where she was shot before she retired.  It was a private event with some of the same attendees who came to the event last year. She also attended President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night in the House chamber. It was her last official presence before she submitting her resignation.

While Occupy Wall Street protesters have a broad set of grievances that includes income inequality and perceived corporate greed, many students have more specific concerns: soaring tuition, campus budget cuts, and fear of heavy student loan debt and lack of job opportunities upon graduation. Although student protests related to these issues have broken out sporadically on U.S. college campuses over the past few years, the Occupy protests – and the police response to them – have swelled in the ranks of campus activities in recent weeks.

California students have regularly protested tuition hikes since the economy fell three years ago. Tuition for in-state students in the ten campuses of the University of California reached $12,192 this year, up from $2,274 just two decades ago. At 23 campuses of the California State University system, tuition this year is $5,472, up from $1,572 as recently as 2002-2003.  A growing number of students now face large student loan debts in part because of such tuition hikes, making it unsurprising that California campuses have become notably involved in the Occupy movement.  The brutal police responses to protests on these campuses have made California’s involvement even more well-known.

Some earlier California demonstrations over tuition resulted in scuffles with the police that involved the use of pepper spray and tasers. One woman even underwent reconstructive surgery after a UC Berkeley police officer hit her with a nightstick. However, these incidents received far less attention than those more recently associated with the Occupy movement, such as the infamous pepper spray incident at the University of California, Davis.

Police lined up before nonviolent student demonstrators at UC Davis and doused the sitting group of protestors with pepper spray. Police told Sacramento’s KTXL TV station that the students were given until 3 p.m. Friday to remove their tents from the campus.  When the students refused to leave, the pepper spraying began as the students sat down crossed-legged with locked arms.

During the incident, surrounding protestors gathered together and moved forward shouting “Shame on you! Shame on you!” repeatedly, eventually forcing policemen backwards.

A video of an officer spraying orange-colored pepper spray into the faces of sitting students circulated heavily on both television and the Internet, prompting outrage as well as a wave of cartoon parodies.

UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi apologized for the police’s use of pepper spray before students, faculty and community members began chanting slogans and pressing for her to step down.

“I’m here to apologize. I feel horrible for what happened Friday,” Katehi told the crowd. “If you think you don’t want to be students of the university we had on Friday, I’m just telling you, I don’t want to be the chancellor of the university we had on Friday.”

However, UC Davis is not the only college campus that has experienced chaos resulting from the Occupy movement. Harvard University, not too far away from Boston College, is experiencing it as well.

Harvard’s student protesters are primarily concerned with the roles the university and some of its alumni have played in the recent financial crisis. On November 9th, the students set up tents in Harvard Yard near the statue of school benefactor John Harvard to protest what they say is a growing wealth gap in the country, and the university’s perceived role in creating that inequality.

After being denied access to Harvard Yard, outside protestors made their way to the grounds of Harvard Law School for an Occupy Harvard rally. Some carried signs that read, “We Want a University for the 99 percent.”

University police and security guards have imposed a lockdown on Harvard Yard since the November 9 campus protest, which involved more than 350 participants supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement begun in Manhattan in September 2011. In an e-mail to the Harvard community, executive vice president Katie Lapp and University provost Alan Gerber said that even though the administration respects the right of community members to protest, the lockdown would continue as long as the students’ encampment— around 23 tents— remains.

“Securing access to the Yard is necessary for the safety of the freshman and others who live and work in the Yard, for the students who will be sleeping outdoors as part of the protest, and for the overall campus,” Lapp and Garber wrote.

New York University historian Robert Cohen said to the International Business Times that the Occupy movement on college campuses is accelerating quickly compared with the student movements of the 1960s and early 1970s which included rallies against the Vietnam War, and in support of minority and women’s rights.

Angus Johnston, a historian at City University of New York, noted, “What we have had up until now is something very similar to the early 1960s, where you had not a huge number of activists but a  committed core who were working really hard but weren’t getting huge amount of traction from media or fellow students.”

Time will tell whether the notable rise in US campus activism and media attention paid to students will result in actual changes, or only Youtube videos and passionate blogs.