A tasty Tzatziki dip will spread a lot of cheer in a Christmas dinner table.

I think Sarah Silverman has a special called, "Jesus is Magic".  

Funny story.
Like 3 weeks ago at was at my Indian friend's house and while I was using the facilities I noticed a poster of the last supper right in front of me.  All the men in the poster were black.

So I asked my Hindi friend, WTF ?  He just laughed and said someone gave to to him.  Well I ran that through my data base and said, 'Who, you ain't got no black friends ?'  There were several other friends there who didn't know what we were talking about, but are are catholic.  So I told them about the poster.  

My fiend then said, what the hell am suppose to do with it, to which i said roll it up and put it in Corey's trunk, he's catholic and he will never throw anything jesus away, he will have that poster till the day he dies.  My friend looked at Corey and said, 'well ?'  Corey just shrugged his shoulders and said "yeah".

I mean, sheesh! All I said was that Edward Snowdon's Christmas message left me flat, because it's a variation of the same theme that's been harped on now for months. Christmas to me is about hope and the promise of a better tomorrow as we turn the page on another year. All your post did was confirm for me the reason why a number of regulars here decided to take an extended break from TL. Maybe I should, too.

Yes, I get it that the NSA has behaved disreputably and abominably and yes, I don't like it any more than you do. But apparently unlike you, I've long ago spoken my piece about Mr. Snowden, and I don't need to relentlessly self-validate my own personal views on these matters, as though I've got something to prove.

I can be just as serious as any one person here, but I also know how to put politics aside and not let it dominate my every waking thought. Personally, I'd much rather focus on positive energy and messaging this holiday season, whereas you seem determined to not let anyone enjoy Christmas until they're as miserably suspicious as you are. And speaking as a three-time cancer survivor who appreciates the opportunity to enjoy another round of holidays with family and friends, that's a helluva way to live, y'know?

So, whatever. Happy Holidays, if you can ever get past your own doom and gloom. Clearly, I got better things to do.

Conservative Utah may have to eat this one. The Latter Day Saints clearly overplayed their hand in California's Prop. 8 battle, a disastrous Pyrrhic victory which ultimately hurt their cause much more than ever helped it. They punched themselves out politically by taking it to the U.S. Supreme Court, leading to a shocking collapse in public support for their increasingly dubious cause along the way, and they had nothing left to withstand the resultant public backlash once SCOTUS ruled against them.

And please excuse my Schadenfreude, but what a deliciously and marvelously ironic moment this is, given that five years later, the Homo Huns stole a day's march on their opponents to overrun the morally decayed Mormon Citadel itself, and are now repainting that bastion's pillars of pious rectitude in the gentle watercolor tones of the rainbow itself.

We are indeed fortunate and privileged to have borne witness to so many profound and positive social changes in our country during our own lifetimes, and the fight for LGBT equality is certainly one of them. Somewhere, I can't help but think that its political forebears Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams and Harvey Milk are raising a glass in toast to an arduous road less traveled, but one whose destination is nevertheless well worth the journey.

you forgot this part of the article:

The main dispute between Judge Pauley and Judge Leon was over how to interpret a 1979 Supreme Court decision, Smith v. Maryland, in which the court said a robbery suspect had no reasonable expectation that his right to privacy extended to the numbers dialed from his phone.

"Smith's bedrock holding is that an individual has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information provided to third parties," Judge Pauley wrote.

But Judge Leon said in his ruling that advances in technology and suggestions in concurring opinions in later Supreme Court decisions had undermined Smith....

.... "five justices appeared to be grappling with how the Fourth Amendment applies to technological advances" in a pair of 2012 concurrences in United States v. Jones. In that decision, the court unanimously rejected the use of a GPS device to track the movements of a drug suspect over a month. The majority in the 2012 case said that attaching the device violated the defendant's property rights.

In one of the concurrences, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that "it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties."