By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO―In a unanimous decision the Supreme Court ruled that police cannot routinely confiscate cell phones and use the information found on them as evidence in criminal cases without first obtaining a search warrant. Law enforcement officials have denounced the decision even though the NSA has assured them it already has a record of everything that has been sent and received on American cell phones over the past decade.
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House Speaker John Boehner plans to sue President Obama declaring: “I believe the president is not faithfully executing the laws of our country, and on behalf of the institution and our Constitution, standing up and fighting for this is in the best long-term interest of the Congress.” President Obama retorted, “It’s impossible to execute laws when Congress doesn’t pass any.”
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What do the liberal Democrat Charlie Rangel and conservative Republican Thad Cochran have in common? They both needed African American voters to win their primaries!
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North Korea has threatened to take “a strong and merciless countermeasure” if the new Seth Rogen and James Franco comedy about two journalists attempting to assassinate Kim Jong Un is released. The United States plans to retaliate by jamming North Korea television programming with episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
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ISIS, a brutal fundamentalist Sunni Islamic group, now occupies wide swaths of Iraq and Syria. Syria has bombed a border town ISIS holds, and the Iraqi government has approved of the Syrian action and welcomes Iranian aid in its war against ISIS. Israel has offered to help moderate Arab states suppress the Islamic insurgents, and, Saudi Arabia, which had been covertly funding ISIS, now condemns it. In an unrelated story, Mayan astronomers have announced that they have rechecked the positions of the planets and stars and have found that their prediction of the end of the world in 2012 was two years premature.
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Baron is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted via lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com. San Diego Jewish World points out to new readers that this column is satire, and nothing herein should be taken literally.