Naeu WATCH: Days before election, Graham, Harrison debate for final time
In a case invo
stanley cup lving two Kentucky counties, McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky, the court said framed copies of the Ten Commandments on display in the cou
stanley cup nties ; courthouses were unconstitutional.The court then decided, in Van Orden v. Perry, that a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol was constitutionally acceptable.The court majority argued that there was a difference in the two displays.The First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and religion and non-religion, wrote Justice David Souter for the majority. In the Kentucky case, the counties had a predominantly religious purpose.The Texas monument, on the other hand, has been used as part of a display that communicates not simply a religious message, b
stanley cup ut a secular message as well, said Justice Stephen Breyer.The intention behind the monument, a 1961 donation from the Fraternal Order of Eagles, was meant to be non-religious, Breyer said.The court said some displays of the Ten Commandments are acceptable if they are portrayed neutrally and in the context of paying tribute to the U.S. legal history, like the display in the Supreme Court courtroom.Voting was mostly along liberal-conservative lines, but Breyer joined Justices Souter, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O ;Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in voting against the constitutionality of Kentucky displays.The ruling is the latest Urjn Chicago officer who fatally shot Laquan McDonald says murder charge against him is political
The two weeks of talks come amid increasingly dire warnings about the warming of the planet. In mid-November, the Nobel Prize-winning scientists on the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report stating that greenhouse gas emissions must begin to decline by 2015 and be cut at least in half by 2050 to avert global disasters like drought, rising seas and mass species extinctions.And last week, the U.N. Development Program released a report warning that rising temperatures, if not held in c
stanley cup heck, will cause large-scale humanitarian disasters: displacing millions of people through flooding and threatening others with starvation and lack of drinking water.Against this backdrop, the Bali conference aim is to begin negotiations for an emissions-reduction treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012. The protocol, which 175 nations agreed to in 1997, requires 36 industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5 percent b
hoka elow 1990 levels by 2010.The United States and Australia, howeve
adidas samba r, never agreed to the treaty.The U.N. hopes to begin a process that will bring in both the United States and developing countrieswhich are not required to make any emissions cuts under Kyoto. The goal is to complete the negotiations by 2009 to give countries time to ratify and implement the treaty by 2012.Some U.N. leaders were cautiously optimistic. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, told reporters he expects
