Growing marriage support in Michigan, Arizona and Virginia
advocate.comMichigan, Arizona and Virginia all have constitutional amendments in place that ban same-sex marriage — and they also all have majority support for marriage equality.
Polls in these unlikely states have found that all three show a majority of citizens supporting same-sex marriage, even though voters in these states passed anti-marriage-equality amendments in 2004, 2008 and 2006, respectively.
A recent poll of Michigan voters found that 56.8% of Michiganders support marriage equality, according to The Detroit News. That’s a sharp reversal from last year, when just over 44% of Michiganders supported marriage equality. …
Support for marriage equality is even spreading south of the Mason-Dixon line to Virginia. A recent Washington Post poll found that 56% of Virginians support the freedom to marry — a 10% increase from support in 2011. …
Even Arizona, where the legislature is currently considering a bill that would forbid transgender people from using the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity, is feeling the push toward marriage equality. Although Arizona voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in 2008, 55% of voters now favor marriage equality, according to a Rocky Mountain Poll released Wednesday and published at TalkingPointsMemo.
I’m baffled and thrilled by the momentum of this movement. Public opinion is changing quickly, and it’s ridiculously exciting.
“A Saudi student living in Michigan was questioned in his home by FBI agents after neighbours saw him carrying a pressure cooker and called the police. Talal al Rouki had been cooking a traditional Saudi Arabian rice dish called kabsah and was carrying it to a friend's house. According to reports in a Saudi newspaper on Friday, the FBI are increasingly vigilant about 'pressure cooker' home-made bombs after the Boston bombers used one to make an explosive.”
—FBI Surrounds House of Saudi Student After ‘Pressure Cooker Sightings’
“An FBI agent said: ‘You need to be more careful moving around with such things, Sir’”
I mean, really, what was he thinking carrying a household item around in public so carelessly?
Man Accused of Plotting Mosque Bomb Plot Only Gets Sentenced to Halfway House
themuslimguy.comA man suspected of plotting to blow up the nation’s largest mosque in Michigan will soon be living at a Howard Center-run facility in Burlington for people with serious mental illnesses, U.S. District Judge William Sessions III ruled Monday.
Roger Stockham, 65, has been in federal custody since Jan. 24, 2011, after police, acting on a tip, arrested him in Dearborn, Mich., outside the Islamic Center of America.
Stockham’s van was later found loaded with explosives, according to court documents. He suffers from a bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, court records said
Stockham’s case involving his conduct in Michigan was heard in Vermont because he was on release conditions from an earlier federal case in Vermont when the Michigan incident occurred.
According to court documents, Stockham made similar threats in 2002 to blow up the Veterans Administration hospital in White River Junction and kill then-President George W. Bush and injure federal Judge J. Garvan Murtha.
Sessions said Monday he was convinced Stockham could be released into the community after reading a report from a federal prison psychiatrist that said Stockham did not pose a risk as long as he stayed on his daily medications.
“If you don’t take the medications you’re going to be coming back to court immediately,” Sessions told Stockham. “If you take the medications, all signs are you will do very well.”
Chicken People of Tumblr
I figure I would let you know about this story of a guy in my state who has been given criminal charges for keeping chickens.
What should have been a mere zoning issue exploded into a full criminal case, and now he owes just over $900, and could end up spending 30 days in jail, because he has 11 chickens.
This is ridiculous, the city is wasting time and money to make an example of him because he choose to stand up for himself and not bow down to the demands of his neighbors.
