The Ninth Circuit\u27s \u3ci\u3ePerry\u3c/i\u3e Decision and the Constitutional Politics of Marriage Equality

In Perry v. Brown, the Ninth Circuit ruled that California’s Proposition 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause. Reacting to the state supreme court’s recognition of marriage equality for lesbian and gay couples, Proposition 8 was a 2008 voter initiative that altered the state constitution to “restore” the “traditional” understanding of civil marriage to exclude same-sex couples. The major theme of the Yes-on-Eight campaign was that the state should not deem lesbian and gay unions to be “marriages” because schoolchildren would then think that lesbian and gay relationships are just as good as straight “marriages.” Proposition 8 intended that gay and lesbian couples be carved out of civil marriage and relegated to a separate institution, domestic partnerships. The court properly viewed this official status segregation with suspicion—a suspicion that was confirmed by the proponents’ open denigration of lesbian and gay marriages and their inability to tie taking away marriage rights to a genuine public interest. The original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause was that the Constitution does not tolerate class legislation—namely, laws that separate one class of citizens from the rest and bestow upon its members a less esteemed legal regime and, with it, an inferior status. This is exactly what Proposition 8 did. Hence, Judge Reinhardt was strictly enforcing the original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, as applied to the facts before him

Why They Say No (Casi— No ): Countries that Reject Legalized Casino Gambling

Most world venues have legalized casino gambling. Indeed, the numbers of venues has been growing rapidly. In 1986, seventy-seven nations permitted legal casino gambling; in 1996, 109; while recent reports indicate 132 countries have casinos. Nonetheless, there are several cases of jurisdictions rejecting the legalization of casinos. This article seeks to find common reasons for the rejections, and examines the following ten venues: Bhutan, Brazil, Japan, Liechtenstein, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, and Norway. The study utilizes a framework from the book The Last Resort: Success and Failure in Campaigns for Casinos, by John Dombrink and William N. Thompson. The authors developed a “Veto Model” for explaining why American states rejected casinos in the decades before 1990. Major veto factors influencing casino campaign outcomes included: (1) the economic conditions and state experiences with gambling, (2) the position of political and business elites, and other gaming interests; (3) campaign sponsorship; and (4) whether the dominant issue in a campaign was economics or crime and social problems. For successful campaigns (e.g. Atlantic City, 1976), all factors had to be supportive of casinos

Social Feeding Behavior of Hyphantria Cunea Larvae (Lepidoptera: Arctiidae) in Multiple Choice Experiments

The response of fall webworm larvae, Hyphantria cunea, to identical feeding stimuli presented in a series of multiple choice tests was studied in the laboratory. Instead of responding independently, all larvae in 61 % of the trials were observed to aggregate at one of two identical feeding stations

Lunar beneficiation

Natural concentrations of industrially valuable minerals are far less likely to be found on the Moon than on the Earth. But that is all the more reason for devising beneficiation processes to concentrate and extract the useful mineral components in lunar rocks and soils. As an example of a useful mineral that can be beneficiated, it has been estimated that ilmenite abundance accounts for 15 and 20 percent of the volume of the Apollo 11 and 17 basalts and 2 and 5 percent by volume in the Apollo 11 and 17 soils. Reduction of lunar ilmenite with hydrogen imported from Earth appears to one of the more practical schemes for obtaining lunar oxygen. While the reported concentrations are significant, a more highly concentrated ilmenite extract would improve the efficiency of the reduction process. The topics covered include electrostatic concentration, magnetic concentration, lunar soil sizing, and electrical sizing

Beneficiation and extraction of nonterrestrial materials, part 2

A review of options for processing extraterrestrial materials was dominated by industrial materials scientist who tried to identify which processes utilizing space materials could be implemented in the near term. The most practical process seem to us to be the extraction of lunar oxygen and the extraction of metals and ceramics from the residues of the reduction process. The growth of space activity will be accompanied by increased demand for liquid oxygen for each round trip to the Moon. The oxygen and the intermediary product water will be needed for the life support at the base. The reduced metals and ceramics may be considered byproducts or may develop into primary products. Some of the same processes would be directly applicable to recovery of products from asteroids. We also discussed other processes for directly utilizing asteroid metals. Some of the topics covered include beneficiation and oxygen extraction methods, metallurgy, and extraterrestrial cement