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...March 8, the Supreme Court agreed to consider whether certain types of offensive protests are guaranteed First Amendment protection. A case to be argued this fall, Snyder v. Phelps, involves the fiercely anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kans., members of which wave signs that read "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" at military funerals. The group and its leader, Pastor Fred Phelps, believe that U.S. troops die in combat because America condones homosexuality. Albert Snyder, the father of a Marine killed in Iraq in 2006 whose funeral was protested by Westboro parishioners, sued the group for inflicting intentional emotional...
...March 8, calling it "among the most important unfilled posts in the Obama Administration," Department of Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano announced the President's selection of retired Army general Robert Harding to run the Transportation Security Administration. Obama's first nominee, Los Angeles airport police official Erroll Southers, withdrew his name in January amid intense Republican opposition...
...world's most populous democracy is moving to increase the proportion of its female lawmakers. On March 9, the upper house of India's Parliament passed a bill--first proposed nearly 15 years ago--that would reserve one-third of seats in the national and state legislatures for women. Opposition was intense: some lawmakers protested the vote, and seven members of Parliament were suspended for disorderly behavior. Ultimately, the bill passed with a large majority...
Maybe Green Zone will be the breakthrough. Set in the first months of the U.S. occupation, the film has a churning urgency and a fierce verisimilitude, courtesy of director Paul Greengrass (United 93) and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd (The Hurt Locker). Shot in Spain, Morocco and the U.K., the film straps you into a Baghdad state of mind. It's hell at 130°, with dust and dread tarping the streets as if to smother anyone who'd attempt to escape. Murderous intent abounds on both the U.S. and Saddam-loyalist sides; life is cheap, and the stakes are high...
...first NCAA men's basketball tournament, held back in 1939, had only eight teams. What a boring bracket. America's obsession with college basketball has helped the tournament, more colloquially known as March Madness, grow into a 65-team sports celebration. Every year die-hard fans and clueless cubicle dwellers alike navigate the maze of March Madness seeding brackets trying to predict the winner in their office pools. Last March, President Obama's bracket received as much scrutiny as his economic policies. The tournament season has grown so mad, in fact, that a cottage industry has sprouted around...