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WASHINGTON, May 11, 2012 (Reuters) — Two big cases addressing marriage rights for gays and lesbians are on track to reach the U.S. Supreme Court as soon as this year, keeping the focus on an issue President Barack Obama reignited with his endorsement this week. Civil unions supporters rally in downtown Denver before the Colorado House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Colorado Civil Union Act in Denver May 3, 2012. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

The cases Office Project Key, originating on opposite coasts, go to the heart of a question that has churned for two decades: whether states and the federal government may refuse to recognize same-sex marriage.

How the high court would rule is impossible to know. In the court’s most recent gay-rights case, the justices in 2003 struck down state anti-sodomy laws as an improper intrusion on private activity.

Lawyers for California same-sex couples are urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to end its involvement, which would clear the way for a request for the Supreme Court to settle the issue.

Each day the government does not recognize the couples “is a day that can never be returned to them,” lawyer Ted Olson wrote in a court filing in March.

Obama got both sides of the marriage debate fired up on Wednesday when he said he believes gays and lesbians should be able to marry. The comments to ABC News completed the president’s self-described evolution on the subject and thrust the issue into his 2012 re-election campaign.

The California case tests whether the state’s same-sex marriage ban, which voters approved in 2008 after 18,000 same-sex couples had obtained marriage licenses, violates due-process and equal-protection rights.

After a three-judge panel ruled for gay marriage in the 9th Circuit in February, backers of the ban asked that an 11-judge panel rehear the case. Should the court refuse, the backers are expected to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.

Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage Office Project Key, a group that opposes same-sex marriage, struck a confident note in an interview. Lawyers for gays and lesbians, he said, need to prove that “our entire common law history going back to England was wrong.”

The second major case is from Massachusetts, where gays and lesbians can legally marry but are ineligible for the federal benefits of marriage.

Seventeen married or widowed men and women suing for benefits won a 2010 ruling that is now on appeal. A decision is likely in the next several months from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, with the high court a possible next step.

Other cases in earlier stages are challenging laws that restrict same-sex relationships. A New York widow is suing over the tax treatment of her late wife’s estate. The two were married in Canada in 2007.

Mary Bonauto, a lawyer for the Massachusetts plaintiffs, said it was hard to gauge how Obama’s support for same-sex marriage might affect legal proceedings. “When you have the conversation, then you have the opportunity to change discriminatory laws,” said Bonauto Buy Windows 7 Product Key, director of the civil rights project for the legal group GLAD.

(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Howard Goller and Eric Walsh)

A quick summary of Facebook’s ad business, via its new SEC filing: More people equals more money.

Essentially, Facebook’s ad revenues rose at the same rate as its usage numbers: Over the first three months of the years, its monthly active users rose by about a third replica watches, and so did its ad revenue.

Duh. Right? Basically. Except there are a couple points worth noting.

Facebook says it hasn’t increased the number of ads it is showing users — presumably a temptation during the runup to an IPO.
Overall, Facebook’s price per ad has stayed the same in the last year. But that’s only if you look at a worldwide average. In the U.S and Canada, the social network says it has raised prices. And in Europe replica watches, prices are down because of “continuing weak economic conditions in that region.” In Asia and the rest of the world, where Facebook is growing faster, prices are lower to begin with.
Facebook also acknowledged, for the first time, that just like (almost) everybody else in the ad business replica watches, it sells more stuff at the end of the year. Ad revenue dropped 8 percent from the last quarter of 2011 to the first quarter of 2012. And it showed a similar drop the year before. (The exception to the seasonal drop? You guessed it: Google’s Q4 2011 number was just a touch lower than its Q1 2012 total.)

[Shutterstock/Anton Balazh]

BERLIN, May 10, 2012 (Reuters) — Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected calls from her centre-left opponents in Germany and Europe for economic stimulus policies that rely on new debt, warning parliament on Thursday that “growth on credit” would just tip Europe deeper into crisis.

Since the election of Socialist Francois Hollande as French president on Sunday, Merkel has come under pressure to relax the austerity measures that Machines Tattoo, as leader of Europe’s biggest economy, she has prescribed as the remedy for the euro zone debt crisis.

But Germany’s centre-right leader, standing her ground Eyebrow tattoo supply, told the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) in a speech that reducing debt and encouraging growth were “twin pillars” of European policy Tattoo Machine Supplies, rather than two alternative paths.

“Growth through structural reforms is sensible, important and necessary. Growth on credit would just push us right back to the beginning of the crisis, and that is why we should not and will not do it,” she said.

Emboldened by Hollande’s victory, Germany’s centre-left opposition is calling for a “growth pact” for Europe to be added to the German-led fiscal pact for budgetary discipline which has been signed by 25 European Union countries but has yet to be formally ratified by many parliaments.

Speaking after Merkel, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, parliamentary leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), accused the government of “political lethargy” and said Germany had weathered the euro crisis well because it had introduced “a blend of austerity and growth policies”.

(Reporting by Stephen Brown; Editing by Noah Barkin)

A senior industrial officer with the Health Services Union (HSU) says he was fired on Wednesday after encouraging delegates to speak out about the union leadership.

Senior officials at the union's East branch have been holding crisis meetings over the latest developments concerning allegations of rorts and corruption.

Officials at the union's Sydney offices have been debating whether to put the organisation into voluntary administration.

Andrew Lillicrap says he went to speak to his acting state secretary Peter Mylan about delegates' concerns and was fired on the spot.

He was told he was being fired for a number of reasons, including not filling in a time book.

But Mr Lillicrap has told The World Today he was let go because members want to place the union in voluntary administration.

“I believe it is in member's interests to discuss these things. It is not something that can be ignored Best Tattoo Inks,” he said.

“It is clearly a major issue for the union and to try and fob it off or ignore it or to dismiss it is just stupidity.”

He says the saga is having a negative impact on staff, as well as the broader union movement.

“The staff are absolutely horrified at the goings on and just seriously down about the state of the union,” he said.

“We are copping a hiding from the members, in the public's eye we have lost a lot of credibility.

“The union movement at large has suffered. Many of the staff are very committed and decent people who are committed to a cause and for them to see their union be brought into disrepute like this just mortifies them.

“Certainly they were quite upset yesterday [Wednesday] when I was escorted out of the office. This just can't keep going on.”

Ambulance officer Warren Boon saw Mr Lillicrap walk off the premises. He says the delegates got up and marched out with him.

“The whole room was in shock. It was something I have never seen before in my 19 years as a member of the HSU,” he said.

“The entire way it was done was shambolic and insulting. It was insulting to Andrew and it was insulting to the members present.”

He says it sums up what is going on in the union internally.

“Things are being played out at levels and members aren't really being kept in the loop and the irony it is a union doing something like this Tattoo Machine Equipment,” he said.

“It is just so ironic. If one of our members was treated this way we would be up in arms.”

'Absolutely disgusted'

Steve Frazer Tattoo Machine Power Supply, another ambulance officer who was at the meeting, says it is a strange day when a union sacks one of its most senior industrial officers for representing the views of his delegates.

“I was appalled and I was absolutely disgusted. He'd been dismissed and terminated by the executive of the HSU for telling us to speak our mind,” he said.

“I've been a member of the HSU for over 30 years now. I joined when I was 19 and I found the union to be fantastic and it has helped me and so many others and to see it dissolve into where it is now, I am absolutely horrified.”

The World Today's calls to Mr Mylan to discuss the sacking were not returned.

But The World Today understands several dozen union councillors were meeting Thursday discuss the issue today.

HSU East branch acting deputy secretary Gerard Hayes shares their anger.

“Yesterday's sacking of Andrew was outrageous, certainly unexpected and clearly I think totally inappropriate,” he said.

“I think a person who is one of two people who are undertaking the peak industrial work to be let go straight away makes no sense at all.”

Internal dispute

Mr Hayes wants the branch put into voluntary administration.

He says six of the eight executives of the HSU East branch want the union to appoint its own administrator before the New South Wales Government or a Federal Court judge appoints one.

But he says a meeting cannot be held until next week.

“Obviously going forward there will be an administrator coming in and those decisions will be taken out of our hands, so it is a matter of being a little bit mature in this and … showing some good faith towards the membership,” he said.

At stake is the union's own internal, eight-month investigation into the allegations of corruption and rorting going back to the mid-1990s.

The investigator, Ian Temby QC, is due to hand that full report back to the union's leadership soon.

But if an administrator is appointed they would get it instead.

“I think that would be very unwise for anyone to sit on any reports. There is no room for any lack of transparency,” Mr Hayes said.

The NSW Government was expected to pass new laws on Thursday allowing an administrator to be appointed and the Federal Court is set to discuss the same issue when the hearing resumes on Friday.

The World Today understands the Federal Government and NSW Government have been in “good faith” discussions over the fate of the HSU East branch.

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Rick Santorum might need a delegate miracle, and he shouldn’t expect any help from the Republican National Committee in working one.

The Santorum camp is pressing for Texas to change its delegate-allotment scheme from proportional to winner-take-all, which would allow Santorum a chance at snagging 152 delegates en masse, making up some of his deficit to Mitt Romney, and depriving Romney of any delegates in the May 29 contests. The Santorum campaign circulated a delegate-strategy memo on Thursday claiming that the Texas GOP is in the process of making this change.

But an RNC official tells ABC News that to change its delegate rules the Texas GOP would need to obtain a waiver from the RNC’s executive committee, and the official said that’s unlikely.

RNC bylaws gave states an Oct. 1, 2011 deadline to finalize primary dates and delegate plans. Texas already obtained a waiver for that deadline, as its primary was repeatedly delayed by a federal court case over redistricting; however, that waiver only applied to Texas’s primary date Herve Leger sale, not its delegate-allocation rules.

The Texas GOP, meanwhile, appears to be officially uninterested in pursuing such a change, despite the push by some Santorum supporters in the state and elsewhere. A Texas GOP spokesman told ABC News that, as of now, the party’s proportional delegate-allocation plans stand.

With 155 total delegates, Texas will be second only to California in representation at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., this August.

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Barack Obama

Even as Americans grow skeptical of various Democratic policies, President Obama’s approval rating hovers at a robust 63 percent. People like him so much, in fact Tattoo Supplies, that many say they voted for him—even when they didn’t.

In the 2008 election, Obama won 53 percent of the votes; John McCain got 46 percent. But two new polls, conducted by the Wall Street Journal/NBC and the New York Times/CBS, show Obama winning by a much wider margin.

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When respondents were asked by the WSJ whom they voted for in the 2008 presidential elections, 41 percent said they voted for Obama, compared with 32 percent for McCain. Factor out the 18 percent who said they didn’t vote, and you’ve got Obama beating McCain by 11 points, 50 percent to 39 percent.

The gap in the New York Times poll is even wider. In it Tattoo Supplies, 48 percent of respondents said they voted for Obama, compared with 25 percent for McCain. Again, subtract the 19 percent who say they didn’t vote, and you’ve got Obama winning by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, with 60 percent to McCain’s 32 percent.

What gives? Are people really lying about having voted for Obama?

Yes, they are. It’s common for more people to claim they voted for a president than actually did. In the 1930s, George Gallup found that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was more popular in post-election polls than he was on Election Day. The same was true after the 2000 election, in which George W. Bush lost the popular vote. By 2004, polls showed Bush having won in a landslide.

But the disparity between declared Obama voters and actual Obama voters is especially wide. The gap is usually in the single digits, and it waxes and wanes with the president’s popularity. The New York Times poll, conducted periodically since Obama’s inauguration, shows the gap between Obama and McCain steadily growing. In February, he led McCain 42 percent to 28 percent. In April, it was 43-25. By June, his lead had grown to 48-25. “Even by the standards of historical numbers, that’s a large gap,” says Adam Berinsky, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The main explanation for the gap, say pollsters, is people who didn’t vote at all saying they did. These people tend to say they picked the winning candidate. Just look at the Times and Journal polls, where about 80 percent of respondents said they voted in the 2008 election. In fact, turnout was about 61 percent. (A 20 percent gap is pretty standard.) Pollsters attribute the disparity to the social discomfort of having to admit, even to a stranger on the phone, that you didn’t vote. Exacerbating the discomfort is the fact that the question “Who did you vote for?” usually comes at the end of a survey—after you’ve just spent 30 minutes telling the pollster what you think of Obama. What are you going to do, admit you never voted?

Another reason is forgetfulness. If you’ve read this far, you’re probably pretty interested in politics, and maybe you have indelible memories of Election Day 2008 seared into your hippocampus for all time. But most Americans don’t pay close attention to politics. Plus, people do a poor job of reporting past behaviors. Studies show that patients have a hard time remembering when they visited the doctor, let alone what their doctor told them. Same with voting. Say you normally vote but can’t quite remember whether you voted in the most recent election. You might well say you did. And because you like how Obama’s doing so far, you figure you probably did vote for him.

Then there’s the group of McCain voters that either regrets their pick or would rather not admit it to a pollster. They might feign forgetfulness, which would account for the 7 percent of respondents who say they voted for “someone else” or won’t say for whom. Or they might just say they picked Obama. But outright dishonesty probably accounts for little of the gap.

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Entry luxury crossovers are only a few weeks from getting a new competitor Replica Missoni Dresses, and the Infiniti EX35 will be priced to sell. The base EX begins at a reasonable $31,300 Cheap Bandage dresses, and includes a 297 HP 3.5L V6 Replica Christian Audigier Clothing, five speed automatic, and six air bags. Infiniti also offers a RWD EX Journey for $34,850, and leather-trimmed seats, moon roof Herve Leger sale, and front and rear sensing systems come standard. AWD is a $1,400 option on both models. Infiniti also offers several option packages that will bring the little CUV over the $40 Missoni Dresses sale,000 mark, but that’s the standard top end for much of the segment.

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[Source: Infiniti]

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Reports are surfacing once again hinting at possible future collaboration between Mercedes-Benz and Aston Martin. Earlier reports had forecast that the two firms could share engines and even platforms Buy Bandage dresses, the aborted Lagonda crossover concept reportedly having been based on the Mercedes GL-Class. Additional reports had further suggested that Daimler was looking at buying stake in Aston, however neither bit of gossip has materialized into anything tangible as of yet.

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