The Guardian asks: "Why Does a FISA Court Decide if Twitter Can Talk About its Dealings with FISA?" And then drops mic.
University of Colorado study finds "no differences in children raised by same-sex couples and different-sex couples." Key finding: studies that observe same-sex couples who raise children after their heterosexual relationships ended generally don't control for the heartbreak and stress children suffer as a result of divorce and/or separation (which is where a lot of "gay couples raise worse children" malarkey comes from). As more gay couples marry, we'll have more "apples-to-apples" data; I expect studies will find that gay marriages raise children about as well as heterosexual marriages do, given that they are, after all, human beings.
Over a dozen community groups file complaint with IRS that WalMart uses charitable funds essentially for business purposes. Specifically, they allege that WalMart's charitable foundation "appears to target its donations and influence its grantees primarily to assist Walmart to achieve...expansion goals" in New York, Chicago, Boston and other American cities. Yep, that sure doesn't sound like "charity" to me -- charity is supposed to help other people, not you. WalMart's spokeshack denies the allegations, though her denial would have been more effective if it came first, rather than after her irrelevant hackspeak.
Center for Responsible Lending report finds that predatory loans harm communities in the long term. Most consumers have more than one kind of predatory loan, and these loans tend to cause stress that leads to more predatory loans -- and surprise! Predatory loans seem to find lower-income folks more easily than they find than other folks. The long-term effects? More predatory debt means more property repossessed and foreclosed upon, more foreclosures means lower property values and less equity for borrowers, and ultimately folks hit with predatory loans have a harder time getting better loans and (even) jobs. The good news? The CARD Act and Dodd-Frank (mainly through the CFPB) have restrained predatory loans somewhat. The bad news? Republicans are anxious to gut these laws with every breath they take.
Finally, maybe Scott Walker has a weakness after all: Mr. Walker tells a story about British Prime Minister David Cameron telling him that he was concerned about President Obama's "leading from behind mentality," but the Prime Minister's office says, flatly: "The Prime Minister did not say that and does not think that." And now, finally, his Republican opponents and eventual Democratic opponent have a weapon to use against him: how can a man be President when he doesn't even understand what his allies are saying to him?
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