Lots of good news this week and I’m going to be out of pocket most of the day so enjoy and behave yourselves!
• Married same-sex couples now qualify for Medicare benefits.
• A UN court has halted Japan’s annual whale hunt, saying it’s “not done for scientific purposes.”
• After their daughter’s wedding was called off at the last minute, Atlanta’s Carol and Willie Fowler donated the reception to the homeless:
Fowler had this message for other families:
“Events are canceled, and sometimes for unknown reasons. Do no allow that opportunity to go to waste. Call up your favorite charity. Give them an opportunity to use that for people that will not have an opportunity, perhaps in life.”
Awesome. Apparently this happened last fall but it’s just now hit my radar.
• A Saudi Arabian college student injured in the Boston marathon bombings has sued Glenn Beck for defamation. Beck repeatedly claimed on the air that Abdulrahman Alharbi was linked to the bombings, even criticizing federal authorities for not pursuing this false lead.
It’s about damn time people started suing these assholes for the lies they spread.
• Archaeologists in Egypt have found a 3,3000-year-old tomb that once had a 23-foot-high pyramid.
• New dwarf planets were discovered in Pluto’s neighborhood, and astronomers named one Joe Biden for some weird reason.
• They’ve found water on one of Saturn’s moons.
• A 10-year-old California girl traveled to the Vatican to beg our hippie pope to save her dad from being deported and amazingly it worked.
• The new CEO of software giant Mozilla resigned after his anti-gay views and support for California’s Prop 8 sparked backlash from dating sites like OKCupid and web developers.
• While still below its peak levels, membership in the UAW grew slightly last year.
• West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin vetoed the legislature’s 20-week abortion ban, calling it unconstitutional.
• Willie Nelson got his armadillo back.
• For the first time in 10 years, an entire month passed with zero U.S. troops dying in combat.
• Paris elected its first-ever female mayor. And she’s a socialist, too — a real one, not a made-up one.
• The mayor of Kansas City, Mo., has launched a Women’s Empowerment initiative called WE, designed not just to help women-owned businesses get city contracts but more importantly to increase the number of women on city commissions and boards.
• A federal appeals court has backed two San Francisco gun ordinances, one banning hollow-point bullets and one requiring firearms to be stored in a locked container or use trigger locks.
• Obamacare has led to the largest expansion in health coverage for Americans in the past 50 years, with more than 9.5 million previously uninsured people getting coverage.
• Congratulations to Gabrielle Turnquist, a Florida 18-year-old who is the youngest person to pass the UK’s bar exam.
Good News, Tennessee Edition:
• The Kingsport Police Dept. is using a Nissan Leaf for its codes enforcement vehicle.
• Tennessee death row inmate Nickolus Johnson has been granted a stay of execution.
• A bill that would have allowed for-profit entities to operate charter schools in Tennessee was killed.
This week’s video: Check out this pistol-packing hockey player. I ask you: who the fuck is so stupid they are actually wearing a dang gun while they’re playing hockey? Either this guy took one too many pucks to the head, or the whole thing is a hoax.
