According to an overwhelmingly controversial ruling from the New York Court Of Appeals, the viewing of online child pornography is not a crime. “The purposeful viewing of child pornography on the internet is now legal in New York,” Senior Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick stated in a majority decision for the court. The ruling came in relation to the case regarding James Kent, a Marist College professor sentenced in 2009 after authorities discovered over 100 images of child porn had been viewed on his computer, the remnants of which were stored in his cache files. According to MSNBC, the ruling makes an effort to distinguish...

Two teenagers are being charged with sodomizing a 10 year old deaf boy on a school bus in Atlanta. But it gets worse… According to the child’s attorney Tommy Maddox, the molestation and sodomy took place repeatedly over the course of the school year and evidence suggests that the bus driver was aware of it. “He was just violated in every way you can imagine,” Maddox said. “Back in January the 14-year-old was on top of him and he screamed and that’s when it stopped. He didn’t know he could scream.” According to the Atlanta Journal, “The Atlanta Area School for the Deaf declined to...

Human rights activists are outraged over the 2010 death of Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas, a 42-year-old immigrant, after a new shocking video has been released of him begging and pleading with the border agents who tasered and beat him. “This shocking new footage of the death of Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas raises serious questions about the disturbing pattern of violence, death and, possibly, murder at the hands of the Border Patrol,” said Arturo Carmona, executive director of Presente.org. More than a dozen border agents can be seen hovering over Hernandez-Rojas as he screams, “No! No! Dejenme! [Leave me alone!] No!...

Aspen, CO – During a snow storm this past fall, several cows apparently froze to death after wandering into an abandoned ranger’s station in search of shelter. Now the problem has become how to get rid of the carcasses before they thaw, and three options have been proposed: blowing the cows up, burning down the cabin, or hauling them out by helicopter or truck. Because helicopters would be too expensive and trucks would harm the natural wilderness in the area, it appears that the only viable options are burning down the cabin or blowing the cows up with explosives. “Obviously, time is of the essence because we...

Chevron is apparently trying to get out of paying an $18 billion judgment to 30,000 Ecuadoran rainforest residents, for creating “one of the world’s largest oil-related environmental disasters,” aka Chevron’s Chernobyl in the Amazon. Yes, this is bigger than the BP f*@k up, only it happened 19-years ago and they’ve been trying to keep it on the down-low ever since. Chevron attorney, Doak Bishop of King & Spalding, said, “The plaintiffs are really irrelevant. They always were irrelevant. There were never any real parties in interest in this case… There will be no prejudice to [the rainforest...

Holy F*cking Sh*T! This is probably one of the most disturbing videos we’ve ever witnessed. Special needs student Andre McCollins was restrained and tortured with 31 electric shocks in one day at the Judge Rotenberg Center for the disabled. To make matters even more horrific, this video was sealed by a Massachusetts judge for EIGHT YEARS! According to their website: “The JUDGE ROTENBERG CENTER (JRC) is a special needs school in Canton, Massachusetts serving ages 3-adult. For 39 years JRC has provided very effective education and treatment to both emotionally disturbed students with conduct, behavior, emotional, and/or...

South Korea has strict laws banning the “unauthorized” capture of whales and dolphins, and the Jeju District Court recently imposed heavy fines on a company reportedly using “illegally captured” dolphins in a show. The South Korean court has ordered the company, which stages shows on holiday island of Jeju, to release five dolphins, in addition to imposing a $9,000 fine and issuing suspended jail sentences for an employee and the company’s president. “The defendants operated a for-profit company with illegally captured dolphins… it’s expected they would continue to take advantage if the...

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton is attempting to revamp the city’s outdated human-rights protection laws by drafting an ordinance to outlaw discrimination against the LGBT community. The gap in the current anti-discrimination laws was brought to light in February after a lesbian couple was told they had no “grounds for a lawsuit” against the manager of District American Kitchen & Wine Bar who had them removed from the premises after customers “saw them kiss.” Currently, LGBT citizens in Phoenix are unable to file complaints with the Equal Opportunity Department for things such as housing, public accommodations,...

A new discovery in the bacteria world may solve the problem of the increasing amount of plastic found in the oceans. Yet, it may not all be good news. After studying some of the plastic debris from the Sargasso Sea, an area in the North Atlantic, researchers found that the tiny organisms burrow into the plastic and “live in pits.” They appear to be feeding on the plastic items as well. “They look like you took a hot barbecue briquette and threw it into the snow,” said Tracy Mincer, a marine microbiologist of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “You see this melting bit all around the...

LGBT Issues- Ohio inched closer to marriage equality on Tuesday when Mike DeWine, Ohio Attorney General, approved a petition for an amendment that would “redefine marriage in Ohio as ‘a union of two consenting adults, regardless of gender.’” The state’s 2004 constitutional amendment currently restricts marriage as being between “one man and one woman.” In order to put the amendment on the ballot, the Freedom to Marry Coalition (FTMC) must now gather “385,253 valid signatures of registered Ohio voters.” Something the coalition’s co-founder Ian James hopes to do by November 2013...

LGBT Issues – Chile – Following the murder of Daniel Zamudio, who was beaten and tortured by a group of neo-Nazis because of his sexual orientation, the UN is urging Chile to pass stricter hate crime laws. In addition to calling for new anti-discrimination laws in the South American country, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, has said that “Chilean lawmakers should make violence based on sexual orientation or gender identity ‘an aggravating factor’ in prosecutions.” Although Chile passed an anti-discrimination law in November of 2011 that included “measures against...