Today we'll take a look at the status of DOMA and the latest news coming out of the Supreme Court. Then, most drug busts at the US-Mexican border involve American citizens, Bridal Brokerage helps take the financial pain out of cancelled weddings and much more.
Do defenders of Prop 8 have legal standing to do so?
When it comes to Prop 8, one major issue for the Supreme Court is the question of whether the parties defending the ban on same-sex marriage have legal standing to do so? The question came up because not one single elected official in California chose to defend the initiative.
Reporter John Myers, political editor for the ABC affiliate in Sacramento, has been looking into what this might mean for other initiatives.
DOMA's impact on same-sex couples' access to health care
Yesterday the Supreme Court heard arguments on Prop 8, and today, the high court will shift its attention to gay rights. The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, is on the docket today.
RELATED: A guide to the Supreme Court arguments on the Defense of Marriage Act (Audio)
It was signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 and bars legally-married same-sex couples from receiving tax benefits. It also prevents gays and lesbians from sponsoring their spouses for green cards.
Above all though, Kyle Cheney, healthcare reporter for POLITICO, says DOMA is all about health insurance.
Bridal Brokerage eases the financial pain of canceled weddings
Weddings are one of the most stressful and expensive events you can plan, so what happens if couple’s have to call off their wedding?
While it’ll still be hard to inform would-be guests that plans have changed, now their may be some help dealing with the money already shelled out for catering, location, flower and a host of other traditions. Enter Bridal Brokerage, a company that sells canceled weddings to couples looking to throw their celebrations at a discount.
Founder Lauren Byrne says she first had the idea for the business years ago, when a friend of hers who was committed to be in a destination wedding found out the wedding had been called off.
"The wedding had been called off and she'd already bought her plane ticket and her dress, and everything, and was so disappointed and we were just joking around about how great it would be if one of our other engaged friends would just use her wedding," said Byrne on Take Two. "A light bulb went off and I sat on the idea for about three years before I even told anybody about it."
Thanks to help from the University of Virginia business school, where Byrne is a student, she was able to get the initial funding and technical help to get the business off the ground.
"There's a program there that helps you start your own business instead of taking a traditional internship," said Byrne. "I pitched in a concept competition and did really well and so the school funded me to start it. I didn't take any capitol, and it was a very small budget in the beginning. Very much bootstrapping and Facebook ads and Google ads to get our name out there."
Here's how it works. A bride or groom hoping to sell a wedding can log onto the Bridal Brokerage site and fill out a form with details about their cancelled wedding. People looking to purchase a cancelled wedding package fill out a similar form, asking for information such as location, date, budget, etc. Bridal Brokerage's reps then work to match people looking for wedding packages with those looking to sell.
"We have weddings that are fully packaged, so you can buy the whole package, or with our new service you're able to go in and see vendors in your area that are ready to give you a discount for the date that you're looking for," said Byrne. "On the vendor side [the discount] can be up to 50 percent. On the wedding side, we have one that's almost 60 percent off."
Byrne says when she started the business, she assumed most of her clients would be people who caught their would-be spouses cheating or who got cold feet after already planning the event. However, she says many clients simply have family members who have become ill or other reasons why they might need to delay the wedding for months or a year. Still, there are people who have to call off a wedding due to the ending of a relationship.
"We don't get all of the stories, but some of them are pretty hard to hear," said Byrne. "Some people say, 'Well, we'll just get wedding insurance,' but that doesn't actually cover cold feet. If they decide they don't want to go through with it we're happy to be an option."
The changing depictions of homosexuality and gay marriage on TV
Since about the 1970s, from Archie Bunker to "Modern Family," American television has grappled with homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Alex Cohen talks with The Washington Post's Krissah Thompson about that history and how television has both challenged and reflected the country's views on the issue.
Dodger Stadium makeover ready for opening day (Photos)
The L.A. Dodgers open the 2013 season against the Giants this coming Monday at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers' ownership spent the off-season giving the stadium a $100-million makeover. KPCC's Brian Watt says it's all part of a strategy to cultivate fan loyalty.
The Los Angeles Dodgers open their 2013 regular season against the San Francisco Giants on Monday, April 1, at Dodger Stadium. Fans with tickets to Friday's exhibition game against the Angels will get the first public look at major renovations at the stadium.
"We’ve tried to think of every one of our fans," said Dodgers President Stan Kasten. "We’re trying to reach out and keep Dodger Stadium looking and feeling like it’s always felt, but have it work in a more of 21st century way."
Kasten said fans will be looking for more highlights on the field. Here are some highlights of the stadium:
- New high-definition video boards in left field and right field that keep the unique hexagon shape of both scoreboards.
- A new sound system directed to minimize echoes in the stadium and sound migration outside the stadium.
- Better cell phone reception and a new Wi-Fi network. Kasten says the improved cell phone network will be ready by April 15, and the stadium-wide Wi-Fi network will be ready by June: "Then we will have the most extensive cell and Wi-Fi system in baseball," said Kasten.
- Expanded and renovated restrooms for women and men.
- Wider concourses and additional locations for wheelchair acess on all levels.
- More concession stands and more soft-serve ice cream.
- New field level entry plazas to create standing-room areas with a view of the game.
- A new home team clubhouse, expanded and enhanced training/conditioning areas and new batting cages for the Dodgers and the visiting team.
"Dodger Stadium is so unique you really have to get your head into this building," said Janet Marie Smith, Dodgers vice president of planning. She's also an architect who has worked for the Boston Red Sox, Baltimore Orioles, and Atlanta Braves.
"Knowing baseball parks doesn’t mean you understand Dodger Stadium," Smith said.
Smith said the stadium is built into a hillside, so fans enter at different levels, and there’s no real main entrance. Rather than try to change that, Smith said the renovation celebrates it by giving each gate a unique feature. Fans will remember where they came in and where they should exit not just by the name over the gate but also by "the oversized bobblehead, the retired number, the baseballs, or the 9-foot high 'LA' " that sets it apart.
Kasten said all the renovations are geared to make just hanging out in the stadium more fun for fans, but he asked for their patience during the first homestand.
"We are going to learn the best way possible during our homestand," he said. "We are going to look at lines through our concession areas."
Kasten said the Dodgers have sold about 31,000 season ticket packages. On the field, the Dodgers need to win. If it were only so easy to “renovate” a team into the World Series. But, Kasten and the team ownership are spending money to make that possible too. Once the players hit the field, we’ll find out how that pays off.
Sports Roundup: Miami Heat's hot streak, Tiger Woods, and more
It's time to get a get a little exercise and take a run through the world of sports with Andy and Brian Kamenetzky. They've covered the Los Angeles sports scene for over a decade for the Times and ESPN.
Most drug busts on US-Mexico border involve American citizens
Illegal immigration at the US/Mexico border has dropped to its lowest level in 40 years, but drug smuggling continues to be a problem. Now a recent report by the Center for Investigative Reporting has found that most people caught with drugs at the border are American citizens, not Mexican nationals.
“The numbers there were pretty startling to us. Three out of four people that the US Border Patrol busts with drugs are US citizens, but there's a wide variety in the amount of drugs that they're caught," said Andrew Becker, of the Center for Investigative Reporting. "A significant number are people that are caught with a small amount, a joint, a few joints, as well as people who have been busted with well over 1,000 pounds of marijuana."
RELATED: See the full report by the Center for Investigative Reporting
The Border Patrol’s own records also reveal that U.S. citizens are more often caught with large amounts of drugs than non-U.S. citizens. In addition, when a person’s immigration status is noted, U.S. citizens are involved in drug trafficking 60 percent of the time. In cases of marijuana busts of 1,000 pounds or more, the percentage rises above to more than two-thirds.
Who are these Americans who have resorted to drug trafficking? It’s reported that smugglers are increasingly younger and older americans that tend to be driven by a variety of motives that include drug addiction and unemployment.
But do the rewards outweigh the risks? In some cases, not really, Becker cites a case in which a trafficker was paid only $300 dollars to transport about 100 plus pounds of marijuana.
In another case involving U.S. Naval Academy grad Todd Britton-Harr, he admitted to have made five smuggling runs to Detroit and back each time carrying roughly 1,000 to 1,500 pounds of marijuana. Britton-Harr admitted that he began trafficking to help pay off a business partner’s debt to drug traffickers.
American citizens are not the image many people have when you mention drug smugglers along the US-Mexico border. Instead, most people likely think of Mexican nationals, or mules being the ones taking the risk across the border.
CIR’s reporting questioned whether this inaccurate picture of smugglers as purely Mexican nationals or members of drug cartels could be rooted in the misleading picture propagated by Border Patrol press releases. The investigation revealed the Border Patrol reported on Mexican nationals in an estimated 38 percent of press releases, compared to the 30 percent mentioning a United States citizen. However, the Border Patrol has responded that they only write reports based on the amount of drugs seized and if the method of trafficking was unusual. Smaller amounts do not warrant a press release.
“One caveat to say with the data, it is an imperfect data set, we analyzed more than 80,000 seizures, half of those seizures they didn't catch anything, like there was an abandoned drug load,” said Becker. “Having a sense of who was involved in that, we really don't know, so the conventional wisdom is that those are people coming from south of the border, Mexico, who are bringing those drugs in, but we just don't know.”
LA Archbishop Gomez keeps Mahony's promise to push for immigration reform
President Obama said he expects Congress to introduce an immigration reform bill next month. The Los Angeles Archdiocese has played a key role in advocating for change. Before he was stripped of his duties for mishandling sex abuse cases, Cardinal Roger Mahony was a leading voice on immigration reform.
In 2010, Cardinal Mahony spoke to a crowd of thousands at the Washington mall at a rally in support for immigrant’s rights.
Mahony promised the Catholic Church would stand beside immigrants in the fight for immigration reform. This was just one of many examples of his bringing his activism out to the street.
“Cardinal Mahony was very clear that he was going to use the pulpit and he was going to use the airwaves,” says Angelica Salas, the executive director of CHIRLA, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “He was going to march with us, he was going to use whatever public space there was in order to get the word out.”
Salas says that Mahony’s successor, Archbishop Jose Gomez, might not be speaking at rallies as much and certainly maintains a lower public profile, but he is very active in pushing for immigration reform.
“I was in a meeting with President Obama a couple of weeks ago at the White House with religious leaders,” Gomez says. “And we all came out of the meeting with the conviction that now is the time and that the president is committed to work on immigration reform. So we are enthusiastic about the possibility of an immigration reform law soon.”
Gomez is the chairman of the Immigration Committee of US Catholic Bishops, which makes him a key voice on immigration matters not only in the church, but also in Washington as well. Both he and Salas agree that this is a moment when there’s a real chance to see an actual immigration reform bill come out of Congress, especially with the President as committed as he is.
“Lots of things have also changed even within the Obama administration,” Salas says. “In 2010, I had the opportunity to meet with President Obama in much the same way that Archbishop Gomez did and at that time we were in a very different situation in which for the first time we were seeing deportations exploding. Something we were shocked to our core about. And so it was a different kind of engagement with our president."
But since then, she has seen a change in tone from Washington.
"Since that time and after a lot of pushing, he has provided deferred action for childhood arrivals, (Obama) has opened up opportunities for prosecutorial discretion," Salas says. "I think that his entire team at every single level is now committed to making sure that immigration reform gets across the finish line.”
Public opinion on immigration has also shifted substantially since Mahony took up the cause more than 20 years ago. Now, according to a recent USC/LA Times poll, about two-thirds of Californians support providing undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. According to Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant, Gomez’s low key lobbying might be a better fit for the times.
“Stylistically, it may be time for a less activist role and more of a practical approach towards crafting this legislation,” Madrid says. “It gets you a lot farther in the end.”
A final difference between Mahony and Gomez is the fact that Gomez was born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico. Gomez says this gives him a real insight into the plight of immigrants.
“The fact that I’m an immigrant allows me to see what people go through when they come to this country,” he says. “In my case, it’s a little different since my family was here in what is the United States since 1805, in what is now Texas. So I have family on both sides of the border.”
But look behind the stylistic differences, and both Gomez and Mahony are very much in sync when it comes to the changes they’re looking for in immigration laws.
“We know that we have around 10, 12 million undocumented people in the United States,” Gomez points out. “And we need to find a way to allow them to become legal and then residents and then citizens.”
Gomez also acknowledges the need to address Republican concerns over border controls, but he says it’s also important to look beyond the borders.
“Part of our suggestion is to try to really study the roots of the problem,” Gomez says. “So finding a way to help the Latin American countries and other countries solve the economic crisis they have and provide more jobs is essential.”
If comprehensive immigration reform passes, Salas says that other religious groups will have played a part, but the Catholic Church played the lead role.
“I would say the standard bearers have been the Catholic Church,” she says. “You have to give the Catholic Church credit for also being in this modern version of the fight for immigrant rights, for being very much in the front and center for a long time.”
Gomez says he will devote his energies to making sure the church as a whole and the L.A. Archdiocese remain central in the push for immigration reform. And it may be necessary, for even if a comprehensive reform bill comes out of the Senate, it will encounter stiff resistance in the House of Representatives.
And there, finding a bipartisan solution, may require more muscle from the Catholic Church, and an act of God.
Study: Brain scans can predict which criminals will strike again
Rates of recidivism, criminals committing more crimes after they are released, are always a top concern for prison officials. But now there may be a way to predict which felons might be likely to get arrested after they get out of prison.
Scientists at the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, New Mexico, recently led a new study on the brain and how it controls impulse and decision-making. We'll speak to neuroscientist Kent Kiehl.
California's Sierra snowpack falls short by about 50 percent
It's been a dry winter the last couple months here in California. Great for garden parties, but not so great for the Sierra snow pack. According to scientists' preliminary surveys, the snow pack is about half of normal for this time of year.
That could mean less water for the state's cities and farmers through the dry summer months. Here to explain is Frank Gehrke, head of the Snow Surveys Program with the California Department of Water Resources.
Why some things become 'Contagious' online
If you're looking for your 15 minutes of fame or if you have a product that you're trying to sell, one way to help is to have a video that goes viral. But how do you predict what will work?
Why do some things get passed around and around and around? We speak to Jonah Berger, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the new book "Contagious, Why Things Catch On."
Florida Gulf Coast University's 'Dunk City' goes viral
The talk of the NCAA Basketball Tournament has to be the improbable fortune of Florida Gulf Coast University. They became the first 15 seeded team to make it to the Sweet 16.
The self-proclaimed team from "Dunk City" features a game plan filled with high energy and outrageous slam dunks, but their fame has even created a trickle down effect. FGCU student Malik Adigun, known by the rap handle Black Magic, along with a couple of classmates created the Dunk City rap and video
And just like the team, the video has gone viral:
In just a few days its been viewed almost 500,000 times, and has spawned a sequel, Dunk City part 2:
Facebook red equal sign: Does changing your profile pic do any good?
During yesterday's Supreme Court hearing on gay marriage, maybe you noticed that many people changed their online Facebook profile pics to a red and pink equals sign.
It's an image going viral, created by the LGBT rights group the Human Rights Campaign as a twist on its traditional blue and yellow logo. On its own Facebook page, the picture has garnered more than 140,000 shares.
But it's not like the Supreme Court Justices are counting up these pics and using them to decide the cases on Prop 8 and DOMA.
Marcia Stepanek teaches social media strategy at New York University and is the author of the forthcoming book, "Swarm: The Rise of the Digital Anti-Establishment."
She says that there's a value to this kind of viral groundswell. "While you might says it's slacktivism to just change your profile pic, it's a sign to further political involvement down the road."
Stepanek also explains that efforts like this helps to connect people who never would have met otherwise offline. "It's like wearing a campaign button. It may not do much, but it shows quiet solidarity and to say it's OK and wave the flag."