Mother Jones magazine on Tumblr

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A dentist acted legally when he fired an assistant that he found attractive simply because he and his wife viewed the woman as a threat to their marriage, the all-male Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The court ruled 7-0 that bosses can fire employees they see as an “irresistible attraction,” even if the employees have not engaged in flirtatious behavior or otherwise done anything wrong.

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— Not The Onion: This is the legal reality of fireable hotness in America today.

The risk to same-sex marriage is now “very great” in the Supreme Court.

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We learned something new today. Er.

(via)

Shit that people who have read our Trayvon Martin explainer would never say.

But conservatives are saying this a lot.

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Trayvon Martin updates:

Koch brothers may have had a hand in Florida self-defense law.

Glenn Beck website calls Trayvon the “aggressor”, suggests he’s a criminal.

NRA pushes “stand your ground” in all 50 states.

Sanford police chief gets “no-confidence” vote.

The Trayvon Martin Killing, Explained.

(photo via)

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That [unintelligible] makes all the difference.

Did George Zimmerman utter a racial slur at 2:21 of his police call? Read and listen for yourself.

UPDATE: FBI, DOJ, and Florida governor announce investigations into the death of Trayvon Martin. →

All it took was a month or so.

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GOOD FRICKING QUESTION.

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Apparently a defendant who claims self-defense doesn’t have to prove it — only say so. Holy shit, indeed.

"A license to carry a concealed weapon does not make you a free-lance policeman."

— From Florida’s guidelines for gun-permit holders. Apparently George Zimmerman didn’t read them.

This is one of the draft blackout screens for Wikipedia’s planned outage tomorrow in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate twin, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). But the biggest fights of the SOPA/PIPA war are already over, and the entertainment industry seems to have lost. Siddhartha Mahanta and Nick Baumann explain how Reddit, Wikipedia, and BoingBoing took on one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies—and won.  

Important story you may have missed: Adam Serwer explains what Monday’s Boston terror case verdict case means for civil liberties:

[B[y convicting Mehanna of material support for terrorism based on his online activities, the prosecution may have established a path through which the government can throw people in prison on terrorism charges for expressing abhorrent opinions, even if the individual in question has no direct ties to a terrorist organization.

Full story here.

20,000: Number of American inmates who are in prison for crimes they did not commit (conservative estimate) →

Stat of the day. More here.

Your Lunchtime Must-Read: How a rapist’s confession forced Rick Perry, champion of Texas justice, to pardon a dead man.

Update: Looks like we posted this twice. It’s that good, people.