Rick Santorum’s sweep of the races in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri on Tuesday didn’t just revive his campaign for the GOP nomination. It also made war with Iran in the near future more likely than it was two days ago.  

The GOP has been in an unfamiliar place for most of the early election season. With the economy improving, their traditional advantage in the realms of defense and foreign affairs will be critical to their prospects in the fall election. But President Obama’s successes in the “war on terror” and in Libya have left them searching for a foreign-policy foothold.

Enter the Iran factor. It’s been an on-again, off-again issue for a long time. As the ex-GOP Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren writes in this trenchant essay, Iran has been perpetually been “two or three years away from obtaining a nuclear weapon” for the last three decades. Each time the issue flares again, war hawks claim that Iran is right on the verge of having nuclear weapons, and that it poses a danger so immense that we have no choice but to act.  

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared the controversial Proposition 8 unconstitutional Tuesday morning, marking a major victory in the fight for marriage equality.

The panel of three judges stated that California’s ban on same sex marriage “served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California.” 

The ruling upholds the decision of former San Francisco Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in August 2010, who found the proposition unconstitutional. Judge Walker ruled that Prop 8 violated due process and equal protection under the laws as defined by the 14^th amendment.  Despite his ruling, the ban has remained in place pending appeals. The American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the sole sponsor of the court case, said it will now urge the 9th Cicruit to lift the stay on same-sex marriages.

ProtectMarriage, the proponents of Proposition 8 in the Perry v. Brown case, vowed to appeal, clearing the way for a potential Supreme Court ruling as early as next year.  Prop. 8 backers could also ask a larger panel of the 9^th Circuit to rehear the case.

Theodore B. Olson and Theodore J. Boutros, lawyers for the foundation, said during a press conference following the decision that they expected the ruling to be upheld if it went to the Supreme Court because the case was in line with Supreme Court law and precedent.

A common, condescending position on hunger and malnutrition in the U.S. holds that poor families simply need to learn the value of cooking and eating healthfully. A new survey from anti-childhood hunger organization Share Our Strength flies in the face of some of these assumptions, as Daniel Meyer of The New York Times pointed out. The survey, “A Report on Low-Income Families’ Efforts to Plan, Shop for and Cook Healthy Meals,” concluded that eating healthy is a priority for most low-income families and 8 out of 10 families cook at home at least five times per week.

And yet, this story may still leave a bad taste in your mouth, considering that the survey was funded by ConAgra Foods--purveyor of Slim Jims and frozen dinners like Kid Cuisine. 

The survey was conducted by Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters program, which teaches techniques for, and the benefits of, healthy family meals.  According to their website, Share Our Strength donated $500,000 in grants in 2010 to provide summer meals to children and helped 100,000 individuals at risk of hunger “get more from their food resources.” One of the organization’s largest sponsors is the ConAgra Foods Foundation, the philanthropic branch of the corporation.

Though officials at Arizona State University claim that they are blocking access to Change.org, the popular online petition site, because it was found to be a source of spam e-mails, students point to a notable coincidence: Change.org is also currently hosting a petition calling on the university to decrease the cost of tuition. 

After Arizona State University student Eric Haywood used Change.org to circulate a petition called, "Arizona State University: Reduce The Costs Of Education For Arizona State University Students," the university began blocking e-mails from the site. 

“Although the individual who sent the email may not consider himself a spammer, he acquired a significant number of ASU email addresses, which he used to send unsolicited, unwanted email, which is the definition of spam,” ASU spokeswoman Julie Newberg told the Downtown Devil.

Mitt Romney has a point. The firestorm over his comment that he isn’t concerned about “the very poor” is nonsense, and this is one of the rare cases where the full context does change everything. For two reasons. 

First, it’s hardly news that the poor are a low priority for the GOP. Politicians go where the votes are, and few votes are in play among the poor as defined by Romney—that is, the poorest five percent of the population. It may be politically dumb to say it out loud. But do we really want politicians to be more hedged and calculating in every comment?

More importantly, Romney went on to admit the need for a “safety net” and promised to fix it “if it needs repair."

Oh, really?

Romney’s callousness makes for a great sound bite. But what about his endorsement of a role for government? What exactly did he mean by repairing the safety net? And what is the proper scope of that net? Why not focus on those questions? 

Today in New York, a U.S. district court heard arguments to determine whether a landmark suit against agricultural giant Monsanto will be allowed to go forward.

Last March, the Public Patent Foundation filed claims challenging the validity of 23 of Monsanto's patents on behalf of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGTA) and 82 other farming associations. Monsanto filed to dismiss the case, but a judge agreed to hear oral arguments from both sides. The claimants' suit said that they were bringing the action "to protect [farmers] from ever being accused of infringing patents on transgenic seed."

This refers to the Monsanto's longstanding practice of suing small and organic farmers who are accused of using its patented seed varieties. The agro-giant acknowledges that since 1997, it has filed suit against farmers 145 times and has settled another 700 alleged infringements out of court. 

Those targeted by lawsuits include farmers who purchased seeds from Monsanto and then violated their contracts by saving seeds for the next year’s planting—in a 2003 case, a farmer who purchased $24,000 of seeds from Monsanto was forced to pay $780,000 for such a violation, sending him into bankruptcy. But contamination of non-GMO seed also occurs naturally as a result of wind and animal activity, leaving organic farmers open to allegations that they are also infringing on Monsanto patents.

The Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Jones last week was hailed by the ACLU as a “victory for privacy” and has largely been interpreted as an encouraging sign that the courts are willing to wade into the murky waters of technology and privacy.

But the case also highlighted the fact that the government is already actively engaged in using new technologies to spy on citizens, and the narrow ruling does not present a challenge to many of these activities.

In a unanimous decision published last Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that the government’s warrantless installation of a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s vehicle and the subsequent monitoring of its movements for 28 days were unconstitutional.

The narrow opinion of the majority of the court, led by Justice Scalia, focused largely on the physical intrusion that resulted from the installation of the device.

The case demonstrated that the government is more than willing to argue for unthinkable powers. In a powerful exchange during oral arguments, Justice Breyer summarized the government’s desired outcome: “If you win this case, then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States. . . [Y]ou suddenly produce what sounds like '1984.'”

But while the ruling will limit the warrantless installation of GPS tracking technologies, many modern surveillance methods that rely on built-in GPS systems and other technologies are left untouched.

The 43rd annual Cairo International Book Fair was supposed to take place last January, but there was a revolution instead. So it's back this year, having opened this week for a 15-day run.

How is the post-revolutionary book fair different? Unlike previous years, there is no list of banned books that publishers may not display. Tunisian publishers were named guests of honor, to pay homage to the country that began the wave of revolutions across the Arab World last year, and the fair's opening ceremonies were led by the Egyptian and Tunisian ministers of culture.

There was a brief debate about whether the whole event should be moved to February, to avoid holding it during the anniversary of the revolt that toppled Egypt's dictator Hosni Mubarak a year ago, but in the end the fair went on as planned. One of the largest in the Middle East, it brings together over 700 publishers and nearly 100 secondhand booksellers from 29 countries.

Earlier this week, a group of lawmakers introduced a bill in the House that would seek to ameliorate the living conditions of egg-laying hens.

H.R. 3798, the Egg Products Inspection Act Amendments of 2012, is the result of a joint effort of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the United Egg Producers (UEP).

Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of HSUS, said in a press release that the resolution is “historic and unprecedented,” reflecting a degree of cooperation between animal rights activists and industry representatives hitherto unseen.

Chad Gregory, Senior Vice President of UEP, noted that the changes will require $4 billion in sacrifices, but that the move is necessary and that the industry is a willing partner: “This has been an incredibly grueling process, but we’re here today excited to recognize and celebrate this monumental achievement.”

For years, HSUS has lobbied for state-level regulation of industrial egg production. A complex web of varying state regulations—reflecting radically different conceptions of animal treatment and welfare—was very costly for the UEP, which represents 88 percent of U.S. egg production. Looking to standardize regulation and to appease its critics, UEP began working with HSUS in July 2011.

The primary purpose of the legislation is to phase out the use of battery cages—tiny confines that currently house over 280 million hens in the U.S.

These cages can be as small as a piece of printer paper, leaving no room for a hen to extend her wings, stand up or stretch. Stacked in tiers, battery cages prohibit hens from engaging in their natural behavior. As a result, hens can become crazed, pecking violently at neighboring birds and themselves.

Curing the symptom rather than addressing the cause, many egg producers cut off hens’ beaks to prevent them from mauling others, instead of allowing them greater space to roam.

This piece originally appeared at Save the Post Office.

The plans for reforming the Postal Service are no secret. Its leaders have detailed them clearly in white papers, speeches and appearances before Congressional committees: eliminate the layoff protections in union contracts, cut the career workforce by nearly half while tripling the number of non-career workers, reduce service standards for first-class mail, do away with Saturday delivery, give management control of workers’ benefit plans, consolidate away over 250 processing plants and close 15,000 post offices.

What we don’t see very often are the players making this all happen.  We assume the Postmaster General is making the decisions, but he is merely the front man. 

Behind him are the USPS Board of Governors, the mail industry stakeholders and the corporate class as a whole.  Cutting the workforce, closing post offices and plants and moving toward privatization through outsourcing and divestiture of assets — these are all part of an effort to shape the postal system in ways that serve the interests of an elite business class rather than the good of the country as a whole.  The free-market ideology and greed for profits that drove efforts to undo the New Deal are driving the “postal reform” movement today.