Nadal blast past Ferrer in Mexican Open final

Spain?s Rafael Nadal serves to Spain?s David Ferrer es during the final round match at the Mexico Open in Acapulco, Mexico, Saturday, March 2, 2013. (AP Photo/Christian Palma)

Spain?s Rafael Nadal serves to Spain?s David Ferrer es during the final round match at the Mexico Open in Acapulco, Mexico, Saturday, March 2, 2013. (AP Photo/Christian Palma)

Spain?s Rafael Nadal returns the ball to Spain?s David Ferrer during the final round match at the Mexico Open tennis tournament in Acapulco, Mexico, Saturday, March 2, 2013. (AP Photo/Christian Palma)

Spain?s David Ferrer returns the ball to Spain?s Rafael Nadal during the final round match at the Mexico Open tennis tournament in Acapulco, Mexico, Saturday, March 2, 2013. (AP Photo/Christian Palma)

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) ? Rafael Nadal blasted past top seed and defending champion David Ferrer 6-0, 6-2 in Saturday's final of the Mexican Open in a powerful performance that indicated he has quickly returned to near his best after a long-term knee injury.

Ferrer was a three-time defending champion and had won 19 straight matches in this event, but he could find no answer to Nadal, losing to his Spanish compatriot in just one hour and five minutes.

The women's final was similarly one-sided with Italy's Sara Errani beating Carla Suarez-Navarro of Spain 6--0, 6-4.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-03-02-TEN-Mexican-Open/id-d7b3e75036944dc380063308d4401a30

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Harlem Shake protesters push for change in Egypt

Youth activists gathered in front of the Muslim Brotherhood's headquarters in Cairo to dance the Harlem Shake in protest of Egypt's ruling party. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

By Charlene Gubash, Producer, NBC News

CAIRO -- It is the latest Internet phenomenon that has the world laughing, but in Egypt the Harlem Shake has caught the imagination of revolutionaries who are using it as a new way to challenge the country's new Islamist rulers.

"It?s a funny way to protest how [the Muslim Brotherhood] have taken control of the country,? said law student Tarek Badr, 22, who was one of more than 100 thrusting their hips in front of the political movement?s Cairo headquarters on Thursday. "People won?t be silent. They will protest in all ways and this is a peaceful way."

One of his fellow white-clad protesters wore a Mickey Mouse head mask.

The unusual protest captured the attention of Egypt?s protest-weary press corps -- who almost outnumbered the gyrating protesters -? as well as a dozen stern-faced members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The movement's figurehead Mohammed Morsi was named president in June after the country's first democratic election in decades.

Organizer Noor al Mahalaawi, a 22-year-old engineering student, and three friends started a group that they have dubbed the "Satiric Revolutionary Struggle".

Charlene Gubash / NBC News

A protester wearing a Mickey Mouse mask dances the Harlem Shake in Cairo on Thursday.

The group intends to stage innovative weekly protests in front of the party headquarters, which will be posted on its increasingly popular Facebook page.

"People are very supportive,? Mahalaawi said. ?It?s a change from violence to sarcasm and it?s peaceful. There has been enough blood, enough arrests, enough trials.?

He said the message to the party was that many Egyptians ?do not like their way of rule? with human-rights violations every day."

After their Harlem Shake ended, participants took up the new revolutionary chant: ?"The people want the fall of the ?Murshid? [the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood]."

An impromptu conga line snaked through crowd shouting, "Leave, leave, leave.?

One onlooker, wearing red velvet devil horns, cheered them on. "The Muslim Brotherhood are the friends of the devil," explained Iman Abdul Munim, a women?s rights activist.

A handful of the Muslim Brotherhood's supporters somberly kept guard. They ushered journalists and onlookers off the thin strip of grass in front of the gated building.

"It?s not allowed to stand here," said Wala?a Mohamed Omar, a 35-year-old telecom employee, who heard about the event and came to protect party headquarters. "I have not been paid to do this, I came for the sake of God."

Move over, PSY and Carly Rae Jepsen: There's a new video craze that has exploded online. The Harlem Shake involves massive dance parties breaking out to a catchy beat seemingly out of nowhere. TODAY's Matt Lauer reports, and the TODAY anchors and staff show off their Shake skills.

He was visibly unamused by the Harlem Shake antics, but conceded: ?Everybody is free to express themselves as they wish. We are all Egyptians and don?t differ. We respect our opinion and theirs. That is what the two-year revolution was all about.?

But in Egypt, the rise of Islamists to power has changed the fabric of society, now sharply split between fundamentalists, who favor the implementation of Islamic law, and moderates who want secular government.

Many young Egyptians feel their freedom is under siege and the Harlem Shake protest is one small way to reclaim it. "It is all about freedom of expression," insisted Mohamed Mostafa, a 19-year-old law student. "We are free people and we will do what we want."

Despite the end of the military state, Egypt?s police were accused in January of a?return to Mubarak-era abuses after a video showed riot police?stripping and beating a middle-aged man.

And a series of missteps by Morsi -- including a bid to grab sweeping powers even before the dust had settled on the country?s constitution ??has brought protesters back onto the streets.

On Tuesday, a coalition of leftist and liberal parties known as the National Salvation Front announced it would boycott upcoming parliamentary elections, claiming Morsi is driving through an Islamist agenda and breaking a promise to govern on behalf of all Egyptians.

Anis Mili / Reuters

Students from Tunis Carthage Private University dance the Harlem Shake on Wednesday in Tunisia.

The Harlem Shake protest idea has also taken on elsewhere. In Tunisia, the Harlem Shake dance became a rallying cry for high school and university students after the Minister of Education Abdellatif Abid threatened? to expel Tunisian high school students at a high school where it was performed and to sack complicit staff.

Tunisian Salafists - Islamic extremists - clashed with students on Wednesday as they tried to film the dance at a university.

Related:

Egypt's liberals ponder return to military rule

Meet Omar, the face of Egypt's 'unfinished revolution'

Egyptians fear decades of Muslim Brotherhood rule, warn Morsi is no friend of US

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 1, 2013 6:56 AM EST

Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/01/17144225-how-the-harlem-shake-is-being-used-to-push-for-change-in-egypt?lite

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From fresh blood, absurdist short fiction with plenty of bite ? The ...

Photo: Courtesy of Knopf

Karen Russell?s new lemon-colored book is batty in the best of ways.There aren?t too many writers who, still in the young, fresh dawns of their careers, feel compelled to throw caution to the wind. Reputations have been ruined with ill-timed forays into the experimental. It becomes clear, somewhere between the Japanese farm-girls mutating into swollen, furry-faced silkworms and the Antarctic tailgaters risking death to cheer on microscopic krill against behemoth baleen whales, that Karen Russell couldn?t care less.? In her new collection of stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, she has no fear of failure. And if the short story is dying, she is determined to have it go out with a big, bizarre bang.

But before delving further, the obligatory backstory: A native of Miami, Russell is a wunderkind of sorts who has astonished literati with her disarming oeuvre of fantasy, inventive prose, and off-kilter observation. Her debut short story collection, Lucy?s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was critically acclaimed, and her 2012 novel, Swamplandia!, was mired in a Pulitzer-Prize controversy when the prize committee?forced to choose between Russell, David Foster Wallace, and Denis Johnson?grumpily decided to recuse themselves from their only job: to give an award to somebody.

But Russell has returned. Her new octet of short stories, with or without Pulitzer imprimatur, is a liberation of sorts, her first work situated outside the humid frontier of Florida. There?s something of a circus in Russell?s brain, and all the acrobatics and pyrotechnics come pouring out on page: Gulls hoard trinkets of the future in a damp tree hollow, great harvests of bone rise chalk-white in a prairie expanse, and vampires feel the pangs of unrequited love while they slake their thirst with tart Italian lemons.

Given these cursory descriptions, it?s clear why Russell is primarily known for the outlandish nature of her work.? She has an imagination that resembles the twisted lovechild of Hayao Miyazaki and H.P. Lovecraft, and it conjures entire landscapes and mythologies within twenty or thirty pages. In fact, Vampire?s short stories often read like excerpts from some lost sci-fi epic or chapters in a larger novel.

This imagination is Russell?s greatest strength and most glaring weakness. When she is at her best, she provides a devastating blend of intellect, understanding, and symbolism. But in a handful of stories the gimmick dominates the narrative, and it becomes apparent that such imagination is only useful when coupled with insight. Stories like ?Reeling for the Empire,? wherein Japanese girls are able to coil colored thread within their silkworm bodies, are beautifully written but serve no purpose other than pure entertainment. No more, no less.

This dichotomy is most evident in the middle of the collection, with two stories that indicate Russell?s interest in the underbelly of the American Dream.? The first is the sublime and near-perfect ?Proving Up,? which won the 2012 National Magazine Award for Fiction. A haunting exercise in Gothic execution, the story is set in a late 19th-century dystopic heartland, where a federal Homestead Act mandates that in order to own a piece of land a family must build a claim shanty on the wanted land, maintain residency through drought and famine for five years, somehow grow a sustainable crop, and possess a glass window on their property. This last caveat is the ?wink in the bureaucrats? wall,? which, given the scarcity of glass in the area, is ?a whimsical clause that has cost lives out here.?? It?s a damning indictment of government?s disconnect with reality, an ingenious dig at the na?ve yet sinister consequences of political games, and Russell never plays her hand too heavily.

The second story, ?The Barn at the End of Our Term,? features a doting, slightly neurotic Rutherford B. Hayes reincarnated as a ?skewbald pinto with a golden cowlick and a cross-eyed stare.? His stable also houses an introspective Woodrow Wilson, a feisty Eisenhower, and an overly ambitious Andrew Jackson. It?s Animal Farm meets 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It?s also Russell becoming a slave to her equine premise, relying on one (good) joke, and milking it for all it?s worth.

It?s the difference between these two stories?the former a profound yet concise commentary, the latter more of a half-boiled idea jotted down in one-liners?that Russell needs to avoid more consistently. Part of the problem is an identity crisis: Should she succumb to her wily gifts and entertain the masses, or cater to the somber definitions of ?literature? that win awards, magazine covers, and whispered salvos of highbrow adulation? It?s a fine line, and in an ideal world, Russell will find a sturdy middle ground. Though she displays the same sentence-by-sentence mastery as her famed idols?George Saunders and Flannery O?Connor?she is not like them. She is, in many ways, better.

Take, for example, her uncanny precision. She?ll pry you with finely calibrated stabs of description and insight, and entire characters are captured, released, in a single turn of phrase. The tension and layers of a story often unspool like a sudden sigh. It?s a literary acupuncture of sorts, and Russell operates with deft hands.

If there is a further method to her madness, it is a refreshing focus on youth. In Vampire?s stories, adults are the louche figures of grown-up decay?needy, flawed, and broken. They are white noise, a house of mirrors in which children wander unseen and ignored. Russell?s stories bring these adolescents to the fore. In ?The Seagull Army Descends Upon Strong Beach, 1979? teenaged Nal works constantly to supplement his defeated mother?s income; his belle d?amour, Vanessa, ?rumbles around the house like its last working part.? Even Beverly, the forty-something protagonist of ?The New Veterans,? tries ?to wear her face proudly, like a scratched medallion,? but, ?still feels like an old child.? Russell?s eccentric touch is by no means the happy magic of our childhood, but it is almost certainly the witchcraft of our adolescent interiors.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove is an only slightly flawed addition to Russell?s burgeoning legend, and her voice promises depths that have yet to be explored.? She need only temper her novelty with the more enduring traits of restraint and self-awareness; if she is to realize her full potential, she must better moderate her prodigious imagination so that her beautifully sketched characters aren?t suffocated by her zany premises. Regardless, in an era of insufferably self-serious authors, it?s inspiring to encounter a writer who can craft a powerful tale about a soldier?s magic tattoo and glistening trapezius muscles. And let?s acknowledge the most important fact?she?s 31 years old. She?s got time, and so do we.

Source: http://chicagomaroon.com/2013/03/01/from-fresh-blood-absurdist-short-fiction-with-plenty-of-bite/

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President Obama blasts GOP on cuts

President Barack Obama speaks about the sequester after a meeting with congressional leaders at the White House??

Declaring ?I am not a dictator,? President Barack Obama urged Americans on Friday to help him pressure Republicans to help halt painful automatic government spending cuts. Obama acknowledged that the $85 billion ?sequestration? would not be the end of the world but warned that it would slow the tepid recovery and cost jobs.

"This is not going to be an apocalypse, I think, as people have said," the president underlined. "It's just dumb. And it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt individual people and it's going to hurt the economy overall."

Obama spoke in the White House briefing room shortly after meeting with Republican House Speaker John Boehner, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The talks failed to yield a breakthrough to prevent the cuts from going in force by midnight.

"If Congress comes to its senses a week from now, a month from now, three months from now, then there's a lot of open running room there for us to grow our economy much more quickly," Obama said.

Apparently stung by criticisms that he has overhyped the possible damage from sequestration for political gain, Obama pointed to government workers?notably the janitors who mop the Capitol floors?who will get a pay cut as well as small businesses that rely on dwindling government contracts, and warned of a "ripple effect" through the broader economy.

"I don?t anticipate a huge financial crisis, but people are going to be hurt," the president said. "We?re not making that up, that?s not a scare tactic."

Obama said some Republicans have privately signaled they would accept tax revenue increases as part of a compromise to replace sequestration, while some Democrats agree with his calls to overhaul Medicare.

?So there is a caucus of common sense up on Capitol Hill, it?s just it?s a silent group right now,? the president said. ?In the coming days and in the coming weeks I?m going to keep on reaching out to them.?

?I am prepared to do hard things and to push my Democratic friends to do hard things. But what I can?t do is ask middle-class families, ask seniors, ask students to bear the entire burden of deficit reduction," he said. "It's not fair, it's not right."

Obama said Republican leaders like House Speaker John Boehner face resistance to a grand bargain from rank-and-file GOP lawmakers who like to ?paint horns on my head.?

Obama, pressed by a reporter on how much responsibility he bears for the standoff, tried to turn the tables: ?What more do you think I should do??

"I know that this has been some of the conventional wisdom that's been floating around Washington that somehow, even though most people agree that I'm being reasonable, that most people agree I'm presenting a fair deal, the fact that they [Republicans] don't take it means that I should somehow do a Jedi mind-meld with these folks and convince them to do what's right," he said. (His "Jedi mind-meld" drew swift derision on Twitter, chiefly from conservatives, for mixing the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises.)

Obama has accused Republicans of refusing to raise "a dime's worth" of new tax revenues by closing loopholes that chiefly benefit the wealthiest Americans and rich corporations in order to reduce the deficit. Republicans have countered that revenues raised that way should not go to pay for government spending but to lower tax rates, which they say will create jobs.

"I?d like to think that I?ve still got some persuasive power left " Obama said.

But "I?m not a dictator, I?m the president," he emphasized, saying it was beyond his power to "force Congress to do the right thing" unless the American people help squeeze congressional Republicans.

Rachel Hartman contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-discuss-sequestration-11-35-m-163015466--politics.html

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HP EliteBook 2170p

If you spend more time on the road than in the office and prefer to pack lightly, the HP EliteBook 2170p ($1099 list) may be your ideal travel companion. It's a Windows 8-equipped business ultraportable that packs a solid punch into a tiny yet surprisingly resilient chassis.Between its enterprise-friendly hardware, classy design, and well-rounded feature set, this little machine can play a big role in your business affairs.

Design and Features
Think of the EliteBook 2170p as the smaller counterpart of the HP Elitebook 8460p. It employs the latter's design cues but does so in a much smaller chassis.Consequently, the Elitebook 2170p's compact frame deftly blends solid construction with classy looks. Its sturdy body was designed to withstand the rigors of business travel, so you can jam it into a stuffed suitcase without worry. Moreover, it need not even be a large suitcase since theElitebook 2170p's magnesium alloy chassis measures 0.04 by 11.5 by 7.6 inches (HWD). At 2.39 pounds is imperceptibly heavier than some slate tablets but slightly lighter than the the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (2.93 pounds), though that system packs a larger 14-inch display.

An elegant silver finish on the chassis adds panache to what could have otherwise been a drab, purely business affair. Although the utilitarian black plastic finish on the underside isn't as handsome as the rest of the Elitebook 2170p's exterior, it conveniently features a socket that can readily be attached to most of HP's docking stations.

The Elitebook 2170p's 11.6-inch display has a maximum resolution of 1,366 by 768, which is sufficient for watching videos at 720p. It's a small screen?smaller than the Lenovo ThinkPad X230t's 12.5-inch screen?and that may turn off those who prefer more expansive screen real estate for, say, opening multiple windows. However, the X230 is over a pound heavier and is an inch larger in all dimensions. At any rate, text and images alike look crisp on the Elitebook 2170p's matte-finished screen. Conversely, the system's pair of front-firing speakers don't have too much oomph, so those planning on listening attentively on a conference call will need to choose between a finding quiet room or a pair of headphones.

The Elitebook 2170p's raised tiled keyboard sports black matte-finish keys. Like the rest of the system, the keyboard is wonderfully constructed, feeling appropriately sturdy but not excessively rigid. Typing is a breeze and makes for a pleasantly comfortable endeavor. In addition to being brightly backlit, its spill-resistant lets liquids ooze out through a drain built into the underside.

The touchpad sports a smooth, friction-free finish that allows your fingers to effortlessly scroll and pinch-zoom through Windows 8's tiled interface. Two sets of right- and left- click buttons abut the top and bottom edges of the trackpad, with the top pair designed to be used in conjunction with a pointstick lodged in the keyboard's center. At the same time, though, the inclusion of four buttons on an already tiny trackpad makes it even more cramped.

For such a compact system, the Elitebook 2170pfeatures decent port selection, although both of its USB 3.0 ports don't sport the blue marking that typically distinguishes USB 3.0 ports from their slower USB 2.0 counterparts. The right side also sports an fullsize Ethernet port, a VGA output, and a five-in-one card reader (SD/MMC). The left side, meanwhile, houses another USB 3.0 port, a headphone jack, and a DisplayPort input.The Elitebook 2170 p does not feature an HDMI port. This isn't necessarily a fatal flaw, though, since DisplayPort is more prevalent on business displays.

The Elitebook 2170p 7,200rpm 500GB HDD comes with a light amount of preloaded software, most of which is useful like the CyberLink Media Suite. The Elitebook 2170p is covered by a three-year warranty on parts and labor.

Performance
Armed with a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U processor and 4GB RAM, the Elitebook 2170p's performance landed in the middle of the business-class pack.While its PCMark 7 score of 2,759 points edged past the ThinkPad X230t (2,627 points) and the Asus X46CA-XH51 (2,628 points), SSD-equipped systems like the HP EliteBook Folio 9470m (4,669 points) had no trouble breezing by. Similarly, its Cinebench R11.5 score of 2.32 points trumped the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon($1,499 list) (2.25 points) and came within striking distance of the Asus S46CA-XH51 (2.36 points) while falling short of the EliteBook Folio 9470m (2.62 points) and, to a greater extent, the ThinkPad X230t (3.09 points).

Since its focus is more on productivity than on media creation, the Elitebook 2170p unsurprisingly displayed a modest capacity in this area. It completed our Handbrake video-encoding test in 1 minute 30 seconds, eight seconds shy of the Editor's Choice Dell Latitude 6430u (1:22) but nonetheless significantly quicker than the HP 9470m (2:45). The amount of time it took to complete our Photoshop CS6 test (6 minutes 19 seconds), on the other hand, was conspicuously overshadowed by both the HP 9470m (5:51) and Dell 6430u (5:08).

You don't typically purchase a business-class system with high-end gaming in mind (sadly), so it came as no surprise that the Elitebook 2170p joined the rest of the group in failing to crack the 30 frames-per-second (fps) playability barrier in our gaming benchmark test. This is a system more concerned with spreadsheets than 3D rendering, so its muted performance in our 3DMark11 test (1,091 points in Entry-level settings, 199 points in Extreme settings) was understandable, and roughly on par with the HP 9470m (1,083 and 211 points, respectively).

The Elitebook 2170p's extended 6-cell 48WHr battery protrudes from the rear of the system by half an inch. Despite its "extended" designation, however, it lasted an unremarkable 4 hours 47 minutes on our battery rundown test, falling short of both the HP 9470m (5:36) and even more so of the Dell 6430u's excellent battery life (7:40). While it won't last an entire workday, it's a removable battery, so bring an extra battery along if you plan on working for long periods of time on the road.

The HP EliteBook 2170p is a well-designed business ultraportable with a terrific keyboard and a solidly resilient chassis. Battery life is a little short for a system designed for portability, but 2170p has the computing power to serve as your primary PC plugged in. It's a reasonably priced ultraportable whose compact size and good feature set make it worthy of consideration.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the HP EliteBook 2170p with several other laptops side by side.

More laptop reviews:
??? HP EliteBook 2170p
??? Asus Zenbook Prime Touch UX31A-BHI5T
??? Toshiba Satellite C875-S7340
??? Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2
??? Dell XPS 10
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/HnipQQKj8GI/0,2817,2415997,00.asp

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Obama urges justices to overturn gay marriage ban

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Obama administration wants the Supreme Court to overturn California's gay marriage ban, outlining a broad legal argument that could ultimately be applied to other state prohibitions across the country.

The administration's friend-of-the-court brief, filed Thursday evening, unequivocally calls on the justices to strike down California's Proposition 8 ballot measure, although it stops short of the soaring rhetoric on marriage equality President Barack Obama expressed in his inaugural address in January. Still, it marks the first time a U.S. president has urged the high court to expand the right of gays and lesbians to wed.

The brief is not legally binding, though the government's opinion could carry weight with the Supreme Court when it hears oral arguments on Proposition 8 in late March.

California is one of eight states that give gay couples all the benefits of marriage through civil unions or domestic partnership but don't allow them to wed. The brief argues that in granting same-sex couples those rights, California has already acknowledged that gay relationships bear the same hallmarks as straight ones.

"They establish homes and lives together, support each other financially, share the joys and burdens of raising children, and provide care through illness and comfort at the moment of death," the administration wrote.

The brief marks the president's most expansive view of gay marriage and signals that he is moving away from his previous assertion that states should determine their own marriage laws. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, signed off on the administration's legal argument last week following lengthy discussions with Attorney General Eric Holder and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.

In a statement following the filing, Holder said "the government seeks to vindicate the defining constitutional ideal of equal treatment under the law."

Obama's position, if adopted by the court, would likely result in gay marriage becoming legal in the seven other states: Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island.

In the longer term, the administration urges the justices to subject laws that discriminate on sexual orientation to more rigorous review than usual, as is the case for claims that laws discriminate on the basis of race, sex and other factors.

The Supreme Court has never given gay Americans the special protection it has afforded women and minorities. If it endorses such an approach in the gay marriage cases, same-sex marriage bans around the country could be imperiled.

Despite the potentially wide-ranging implications of the administration's brief, it still falls short of what gay rights advocates and the attorneys who will argue against Proposition 8 had hoped for. Those parties had pressed the president to urge the Supreme Court to not only overturn California's ban, but also declare all gay marriage bans unconstitutional.

Still, marriage equality advocates publicly welcomed the president's legal positioning.

"Obama again asserted a bold claim of full equality for gay Americans, this time in a legal brief," said Richard Socarides, an attorney and advocate. "If its full weight and reasoning are accepted by the Supreme Court, all anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendments will fall, and quickly."

The National Organization for Marriage, a leading supporter of the California ban, rejected Obama's arguments. Spokesman Thomas Peters said he expects the Supreme Court to uphold the votes of more than 7 million Californians to protect marriage, spokesman Thomas Peters said.

The president raised expectations that he would back a broad brief during his inaugural address on Jan. 21. He said the nation's journey "is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law."

"For if we are truly created equal, than surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well," he added.

Obama has a complicated history on gay marriage. As a presidential candidate in 2008, he opposed the California ban but didn't endorse gay marriage. He later said his personal views on gay marriage were "evolving."

When he ran for re-election last year, Obama announced his personal support for same-sex marriage but said marriage was an issue that states, not the federal government, should decide.

Public opinion has shifted in support of gay marriage in recent years.

In May 2008, Gallup found that 56 percent of Americans felt same-sex marriages should not be recognized by the law as valid. By last November, 53 percent felt they should be legally recognized.

Gay marriage supporters see the Supreme Court's hearing of Proposition 8, as well as a related case on the Defense of Marriage Act, as a potential watershed moment for same-sex unions.

In a well-coordinated effort, opponents of the California ban flooded the justices with friend-of-the-court briefs in recent days.

Among those filing briefs were 13 states, including four that do not now permit gay couples to wed, and more than 100 prominent Republicans, including GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman and Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Two professional football players who have been outspoken gay rights advocates also filed a brief in the California case. Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe and Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo urged the court to rule in favor of same-sex marriage.

The Supreme Court has several options to decide the case that would be narrower than what the administration is asking. The justices also could uphold the California provision, as opponents of gay marriage are urging.

One day after the Supreme Court hears the California case, the justices will hear arguments on provisions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman for the purpose of deciding who can receive a range of federal benefits.

The administration abandoned its defense of the act in 2011, but the measure will continue to be federal law unless it is struck down or repealed.

In a brief filed last week, the government said Section 3 of the act "violates the fundamental constitutional guarantee of equal protection" because it denies legally married same-sex couples many federal benefits that are available only to legally married heterosexual couples.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Follow Mark Sherman at http://twitter.com/shermancourt

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-03-01-Obama-Gay%20Marriage/id-5dfe887dbc9340dd806f5a004a1d2669

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Lindsay Lohan to Seek Extensive Psychotherapy, Set Up Youth Foundation, Lawyer Claims

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/02/lindsay-lohan-to-seek-extensive-psychotherapy-set-up-youth-found/

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