James Obergefell has lived with the love of his life for 20 years before they married two weeks ago.

They also hoped to be buried next to each other, to spend eternity together, but the state of Ohio and his spouse's relatives won't let him - because he married another man, John Arthur.

Last week, the two men sued Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and the Cincinnati doctor responsible for approving death certificates. Obergefell and Arthur asked a judge to overturn existing Ohio law - which doesn't recognize same-sex marriage - to allow Obergefell to be listed as surviving spouse on Arthur's death certificate and for it to show that Arthur's marital status at death as married.

That's what U.S. District Magistrate Judge Tim Black did late Monday afternoon, granting a temporary restraining order - but noting it was specific to Obergefell and Arthur only.
Without that official designation as Arthur's spouse, Obergefell told Black, he won't be able to be buried with him in Spring Grove Cemetery. Arthur's family plots are in that cemetery and his grandfather previously stipulated in documents that only the family's direct descendents and their spouses can be buried in the family plot. With Black's ruling, Obergefell can be buried next to Arthur.

SNIP

Arthur has ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that has no known cure and is fatal, and is "days maybe weeks if we are lucky" from death, Obergefell testified.

SNIP

Black found that the Ohio Constitution on the issue "violates rights secured by the ... United States Constitution in that same-sex couples married in jurisdictions where same sex marriages are valid who seek to have their out-of-state marriage accepted as legal in Ohio are treated differently than opposite sex couples who have been married in states where their circumstances allow marriage in that state but not in Ohio."

U.S. Senator Wants Resolution Authorizing War With Iran If `Nothing Changes' In Two Months

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on Tuesday that he plans to introduce a resolution authorizing war with Iran if "nothing changes" regarding the Islamic Republic's nuclear program by the end of the year.

"If nothing changes in Iran, come September, October, I will present a resolution that will authorize the use of military force to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb," Graham told a "cheering" audience at a conference put on by the right-wing group Christians United for Israel, according to CQ Roll Call.
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But experts and former top officials have been warning that ratcheting up pressure and rhetoric against Iran -- particularly after Iranians just elected the most moderate presidential candidate available to them -- would be counterproductive. link

"If we do not seize this unique moment in our constitutional history to reform our surveillance laws and practices, we will all live to regret it," Wyden said during a keynote address on the National Security Agency's data collection programs hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

"The combination of increasingly advanced technology with a breakdown in the checks and balances that limit government action could lead us to a surveillance state that cannot be reversed," he added
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But Wyden claims "there is nothing in the Patriot Act that limits this sweeping bulk collection to phone records." He said the government could use its authority under the law to collect and store sensitive information such as medical records or credit card purchases, or "develop a database of gun owners or readers of books and magazines deemed subversive."

"This means that the government's authority to collect information on law-abiding American citizens is essentially limitless," he said. link

This is the White House's statement on the Amash Amendment:

"In light of the recent unauthorized disclosures, the president has said that he welcomes a debate about how best to simultaneously safeguard both our national security and the privacy of our citizens," the statement said. "However, we oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our intelligence community's counterterrorism tools. This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process."

I seriously don't know whether to laugh or cry at that last sentence.

Bank fraud, money laundering and breaking into people's houses and stealing their stuff is no problem if you are a bank.

It turns out the bank sent someone to repossess the house located across the street from Barnett's house, but by mistake broke into hers instead.  "They told me that the GPS led them to my house," Barnett said. "My grass hadn't been mowed and they just assumed." She called the McArthur Police about the incident, but weeks later, the chief announced the case was closed. Barnett said that according to the bank president, this was the first time something like this has happened. She presented him with an $18,000 estimate to replace the losses, but the president refused to pay.  "He got very firm with me and said, `We're not paying you retail here, that's just the way it is,'" link

"I said a lot of things in the last 30 years that I'm not particularly proud of. I mean there have been things that I've said that I wish I could take back," McCaskill said at an event in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday night sponsored by BuzzFeed. "It was gratuitous and hurtful and I have apologized to both President Clinton and Hillary Clinton for saying it."

She conceded that her decision to endorse Barack Obama in the 2008 election was controversial, but she's now thrown her support behind Hillary Clinton.

"I couldn't be more enthusiastic for her to be president now," the Missouri Democrat said in an interview with BuzzFeed's John Stanton, "and I can't wait to work as hard or harder for Hillary Clinton."

McCaskill attributed her Obama endorsement to a conversation with her children, who she said, "got in my face a little bit."

"It was impressive that my kids were able to crystallize the notion that I was worried about the implications of endorsing Barack Obama not because I didn't think he'd be a wonderful president and inspiring for our country and do something that no other candidate could do for the United States of America," she said, "but I was worried about endorsing him because of my career."

WASHINGTON -- Republican lawmakers are threatening to withhold salary representing less than one-sixteen thousandth of multimillionaire Secretary of State John Kerry's net worth.

The House Appropriations Committee's measure demands Kerry's agency implement recommendations of a U.S. investigator for Afghan reconstruction. If the State Department doesn't report progress, he loses a quarter of his salary for three months next year. link

It's called GOVERNMENT SALAMI. (link)

What a difference a month makes. With yesterday's 14-5 thrashing of the Toronto Blue Jays, the Blue Studs of Chavez Ravine have now won 21 out of their last 26 games, and have further moved into first place for the first time this season, a half-game ahead of the D-Backs.

Meanwhile, the defending World Series champion San Francisco Giants have been in a tailspin, having lost 19 of their last 26 games over the last four weeks.

And oculus, all's well with the world, because your San Diego Padres are once again comfortably ensconced where they've spent the better part of their 44-year history -- in last place. Glad you could prevail upon them that they were playing way over their heads, and really had no business flirting with any pretentions of somehow making the NL playoffs this season.

And for that state of affairs, you might as well stand in line to blame Mayor Bob Filner, since it looks like he's apparently to be blamed for quite a number of things -- and not just harrassment.

However, Griffith is best remembered for, and was forever haunted by, his tragic nationally televised March 24, 1962 title bout with then-world welterweight champion Benny Paret, whom he brutally beat to death after the Cuban-born Paret had earlier that morning taunted him openly at the pre-fight weigh-in with a vile slur, "maricón," a Spanish slang word that's roughly the equivalent of the pejorative "faggot."

Even the most hardened boxing fans were unprepared for what they witnessed later that evening at Madison Square Garden: a brutal late-round beatdown that author Norman Mailer -- who was ringside that night -- once likened to "a baseball bat demolishing a pumpkin." From Sports Illustrated (April 2, 1962):

"Suddenly, Emile battered Paret with a plangent right. This time, Griffith resolved to finish him. He began belaboring the suffering Paret with right uppercuts, one after another, an unrelenting fusillade, Emile's hand banging against Benny's jaw as remorselessly as the clapper of a great, dark bell. Paret sagged back against the middle turnbuckle. Griffith's punches drove his head out between the top and middle strands.

[...]

"Benny was helpless, bleeding from his nose and a cut on his right cheek; his puffed eyes were closed. Still Griffith punched him, with mounting and maniacal rage, as though determined, literally, to wipe out both Paret and the memory of his taunt. There were, in all, about 15 uppercuts, followed by several hooks. Then Referee [Ruby] Goldstein was tugging at Griffith from behind, pulling him off. As Emile, berserk, struggling passionately in Goldstein's embrace, was dragged away, Paret, now obviously senseless, crumpled slowly and collapsed. The doctors fluttered into the ring and crouched about him like ravens."

Mortally wounded with blood clots forming in his brain, Benny Paret was rushed to Manhattan's Roosevelt Hospital, where he soon lapsed into a coma from which he never emerged, and died ten days later. The subsequent inquiry by the New York Boxing Commission later absolved referee Ruby Goldstein, who had been widely criticized for failing to halt the bout earlier, when Paret looked to be an obviously defeated fighter.

As for Griffith, he retired from the ring in 1977, and 15 years later barely survived a vicious gay-bashing outside a Times Square bar, in which his assailants were never caught. In the critically acclaimed 2005 documentary about his life, "Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story," Griffith's shown warmly reconciling with and embracing Benny Paret, Jr., son of the late fighter he had killed 43 years earlier, when the son was but an infant.