Much as I wish to defend the gay community, I also want to defend freedom of conscience, expression and religion. The law suit against the bakery was well-intended. It sought to challenge homophobia. But it was a step too far. It pains me to say this, as a long-time supporter of the struggle for LGBT equality in Northern Ireland, where same-sex marriage and gay blood donors remain banned.

The equality laws are intended to protect people against discrimination. A business providing a public service has a legal duty to do so without discrimination based on race, gender, faith and sexuality. However, the court erred by ruling that Lee was discriminated against because of his sexual orientation and political opinions. His cake request was refused not because he was gay, but because of the message he asked for. There is no evidence that his sexuality was the reason Ashers declined his order.

In my view, it is an infringement of freedom to require businesses to aid the promotion of ideas to which they conscientiously object. Discrimination against people should be unlawful, but not against ideas.

So he goes to the authorities and demands that the government punish you for your resistance. The Attorney General takes you to Court, demanding that you pay large fines. You may be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys fees. Ridiculous, right? Would never happen in America. It is happening right now. And if this religious service is a same-sex wedding don’t expect the ACLU’s help.

Of all of the principles the left is suddenly willing to sacrifice on the altar of same-sex marriage – free speech, free exercise of religion, the rule of law, the right to vote, etc – perhaps the most surprising and least reported is that it is now effectively demanding compulsory participation and support of religious services. The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are perhaps best known for their stand for “separation of church and state.”

But today these organizations and their allies oppose Religious Freedom Restoration Acts and any other conscience protection for those who do not wish to participate in a same-sex wedding. They would have the government fine – even potentially imprison – those who will not participate in certain religious services.

Not every same-sex wedding is a church wedding, but some are. If Christian videographers, wedding coordinators, musicians, and other creative professionals – let alone pastors themselves – are required to provide their services for same-sex weddings, some will even have to be physically present, even participating in religious worship where they believe the prayers prayed, hymns sung, and scriptures read in support are actually blaspheming their own God.

Of the same-sex marriage agenda, Erick Erickson has coined the phrase, “You will be made to care.” But in some cases this is insufficient. You must participate. Even if the left must use the power of the government to fine you if you refuse, you will be made to worship their god.

Events from the last week have exposed the system as an illusion of choice and a farce. They have reinforced at least one study showing the US is an oligarchy rather than a democratic republic. The Wyoming democratic caucus took place on Saturday, purportedly to allow voters to have their voices heard in the race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

Sanders lost the Wyoming caucus by winning it with a 12 percent margin. Wait, what?

How does one lose by winning 56 percent of the votes? This happens when the political process is, according to the New York Post, “rigged” by superdelegates. The Post summed up this “strange” phenomenon: “Under the Democratic Party’s oddball delegate system, Sanders’ winning streak — he has won seven out of the past eight contests — counts for little. “In fact, despite his win, he splits Wyoming’s 14 pledged delegates 7 to 7 under the caucus calculus.”

“Clinton, meanwhile, also gets the state’s four superdelegates — who had already pledged their allegiance to her in January. So despite ‘losing,’ she triumphs 11-7 in the delegate tally.” Even media pundits on MSNBC openly called the process rigged: The superdelegate process is complicated, as we’ve noted before, but they have one essential function: to prevent candidates like Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic nomination.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s non-establishment campaign walked away with zero delegates. They were all “awarded” to Ted Cruz. “How is it possible that the people of the great State of Colorado never got to vote in the Republican Primary? Great anger — totally unfair!” Trump said on Twitter. “The people of Colorado had their vote taken away from them by the phony politicians. Biggest story in politics. This will not be allowed!” In an interview on Monday, Trump was even more frank. “The system is rigged, it’s crooked,” he said.

The First Amendment is our most basic right in America. It’s first one on the list. The right includes, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”. Lately every time people attempt to peacefully do that, the government sends down their henchmen to arrest them. That’s how they handle the petition, the grievances.

Now Capitol police have decided to arrest yet another 85 people, this time senior citizens, for peacefully assembling at the Capitol to protest our rigged elections. One has to wonder… are the cops sent down to arrest peacefully elderly protesters even remotely starting to feel like schoolyard bullies? Like a goon squad? Like the expendable bad guys in a cartoon who “are going to do what the establishment, the oligarchy, wants from them?”

Like anti-American scum? Because they quite obviously aren’t “serving and protecting” the American people here. They are a Gestapo serving and protecting their masters at “the Capitol,” the elite who uphold and proliferate our corrupt, tyrannical system.

The past Paschal Re-enactments were held in a school courtyard which became more cramped each year due to the growing popularity of the important event. For this reason the organizers decided to move the event this year to the more spacious location of Mitzpeh Beit Orot, between Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives, near Emek Tzurim, which faces Judaism's holiest and most relevant site for the occasion, the Temple Mount.

The re-enactment will take place next Monday, just four days before the prescribed time of the Paschal Offering. Event organizers say they want to offer a taste of an exciting, authentic Jewish experience, "with its smells, sounds, and colors that have been lost to us these 2000 years, and to thus arouse a longing to renew this Temple ritual in our day."

Performer Mordechai Yitzhar and his band will be on hand to sing the Hallel accompanied by silver trumpets, just as was the practice in the days of the Temple.

Yesterday tremors were also felt as far as 500 miles away at the national park in India where the Royal couple Kate and William were visiting. Today The Japanese Red Cross Kumamoto Hospital confirmed admitting 45 injured patients, including five with serious problems after a quake of magnitude 6.2 to 6.5 and a series of strong after shocks ripped through Kumamoto city.

Several buildings were damaged or destroyed and at least six people are believed to be trapped under homes in Mashiki and local reports said one woman was rescued in critical condition. Scientists say there has been an above average number of significant earthquakes across south Asia and the Pacific since the start of the year. The increased frequency has sparked fears of a repeat of the Nepal quake of 2015, when 8,000 people died, or even worse.

Christianity's two most important leaders, still officially divided by a thousand-year schism, will be speaking with an increasingly unified voice that has gone beyond the realm of religion to confronting pressing issues such as climate change and humanitarian crises around the globe.

The visit, which comes on the heels of Francis' historic meeting with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, is evidence of an increasingly important Catholic-Orthodox partnership that has been strengthened by shared concern for Christians being exterminated by Islamic extremists in the lands of Jesus' birth.

Francis has called these indiscriminate attacks on Christians - Catholic, Orthodox and others - an "ecumenism of blood," and it wouldn't be surprising if he uses the term again on Lesbos when he meets with refugees fleeing Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.

"The ecumenical patriarch and popes for the last generation have increasingly begun to speak together on issues of common concern," said George Demacopoulos, chair of Orthodox Christian studies at the Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York. "What you have here is a more specific case: You have the uniqueness of Pope Francis and the ecumenical patriarch at a tipping point in historical and European events."

Yesterday he even took the unprecedented step of revealing the taxes he’d paid over the past six years. Leaders of other parties have responded by summarily publishing their own HMRC returns. In contemporary Britain, where one’s extramarital affairs are more readily discussed in public than one’s tax affairs, this is jaw-dropping stuff.

That will be entertaining for those who like to point fingers, perplexing for those too busy to engage in the detail – and miss the wider truth revealed by the leak which forced all this into public discussion. Because at root, the Panama Papers are not about tax. They’re not even about money. What the Panama Papers really depict is the corruption of our democracy.

Following on from LuxLeaks, the Panama Papers confirm that the super-rich have effectively exited the economic system the rest of us have to live in. Thirty years of runaway incomes for those at the top, and the full armoury of expensive financial sophistication, mean they no longer play by the same rules the rest of us have to follow. Tax havens are simply one reflection of that reality. Discussion of offshore centres can get bogged down in technicalities, but the best definition I’ve found comes from expert Nicholas Shaxson who sums them up as: “You take your money elsewhere, to another country, in order to escape the rules and laws of the society in which you operate.” In so doing, you rob your own society of cash for hospitals, schools, roads…

But those who exited our societies are now also exercising their voice to set the rules by which the rest of us live. The 1% are buying political influence as never before. Think of the billionaire Koch brothers, whose fortunes will shape this year’s US presidential elections. In Britain, remember the hedge fund and private equity barons, who in 2010 contributed half of all the Conservative party’s election funds – and so effectively bought the Tories their first taste of government in 18 years.

What have the super-rich got for their investment in British politics since 2010? Cuts in personal taxes, invitations from George Osborne to advise on overhauling corporation taxes, the security of knowing that their tax havens will be treated with due leniency.

In my politics lessons, we were taught that Britain was a representative democracy. But what 30 years of plutocracy have brought is an era of un-representative democracy. With a few exceptions, our politicians no longer resemble, nor do they work for us. Amid a crisis in the rental market, you have a housing minister, Brandon Lewis, who runs a private rental portfolio. You have a former investment banker, Sajid Javid, now claiming to do his best by the steel industry. And you have a super-rich prime minister who vows he’ll take on tax havens, all the while blocking any serious attempt to do so.

Gavin Bray, a 22-year-old studying international business at Leeds Beckett, barely raised his eyebrows at the news. “As millennials we’re used to [it]” he said. “It started with the tuition fees and now most of us won’t even be able to get a mortgage without the help of our parents. I still love this country, and I am still grateful I was able to grow up here. But this is just one of many reasons I feel I have no future here and will be moving abroad after I graduate.”

His biggest concern is that we have crossed a point of no return. “I fear society won’t have the capability to apply enough pressure into forcing change which may lead to even further secrecy measures and protection. Because it is tax avoidance not evasion it’s not illegal but it is certainly immoral. The beauty of it is the rich still use the society they refuse to contribute fully to. It makes me very happy that these morally inept people have finally been caught out on a grand scale.”

Jose Vinals, the chief of the organization’s financial stability division, said there are several contributing factors, including a huge “loss of market confidence” that would drag down the markets. The IMF report, addressing global financial stability, said “financial and economic stagnation” looms unless governments find a way to avoid the “pernicious feedback loop of fragile confidence, weaker growth, low inflation and rising debt burdens.”

The Telegraph called it the “bluntest warning to date on the costs of policy inaction,” and outlined how investors can “lose faith in policymakers’ ability to revive the global economy.” Vinals predicted the resulting slowdown could knock 4 percent from the world’s output, “relative to current expectations over the next five years,” and he noted a $1.3 trillion corporate debt in China poses “potentially serious challenges to financial stability if defaults pushed banks over the edge.”

Under the scenario he sees possible, Vinals said stocks in the UK, US, Eurozone and China all would lose “a fifth of their value over two years.”

The report by Human Rights Watch and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic was released as the United Nations kicked off a week-long meeting on such weapons in Geneva. The report calls for humans to remain in control over all weapons systems at a time of rapid technological advances. It says that requiring humans to remain in control of critical functions during combat, including the selection of targets, saves lives and ensures that fighters comply with international law.

"Machines have long served as instruments of war, but historically humans have directed how they are used," said Bonnie Docherty, senior arms division researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a statement. "Now there is a real threat that humans would relinquish their control and delegate life-and-death decisions to machines." Some have argued in favor of robots on the battlefield, saying their use could save lives.

But last year, more than 1,000 technology and robotics experts — including scientist Stephen Hawking, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak — warned that such weapons could be developed within years, not decades. The UN meeting of experts on the issue, chaired by Germany, continues talks that took place in April 2015 and May 2014.

The Daily Mail has the story (3/29/16): “Former [British] science chief: ‘MMR fears coming true’”. “A former Government medical officer responsible for deciding whether medicines are safe has accused the Government of ‘utterly inexplicable complacency’ over the MMR triple vaccine for children.” “Dr Peter Fletcher, who was Chief Scientific Officer at the Department of Health, said if it is proven that the jab causes autism, ‘the refusal by governments to evaluate the risks properly will make this one of the greatest scandals in medical history’.”

“He added that after agreeing to be an expert witness on drug-safety trials for parents’ lawyers, he had received and studied thousands of documents relating to the case which he believed the public had a right to see.”

“He said he has seen a ‘steady accumulation of evidence’ from scientists worldwide that the [MMR] measles, mumps and rubella jab is causing brain damage in certain children.” “But he added: ‘There are very powerful people in positions of great authority in Britain and elsewhere who have staked their reputations and careers on the safety of MMR and they are willing to do almost anything to protect themselves’.”

The new device is being built by Cellebrite, the Israeli company that is thought to have helped the FBI crack the iPhone 5c belonging to San Bernadino terrorist Syed Farook. Mobile telephones and other personal electronic devices have drastically increased the instances of distracted driving, leading to accidents and deaths.

In fact, according to German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, the dispatcher involved in the Bad Aibling rail accident which killed 11 people in Germany was apparently distracted by a game on a smartphone. The idea was proposed by a draft legislation in New York, which would require drivers to submit their phones for testing, if pulled up by authorities.

"Reports indicate that 67 per cent of drivers admit to continued use of their cell phones while driving despite knowledge of the inherent danger to themselves and others on the road," the draft law said.

The study is the first broad look at how fast food may expose the public to certain chemicals, called phthalates, that are used to make plastics more flexible and durable. The chemicals, which don’t occur in nature, are common in cosmetics, soap, food packaging, flooring, window blinds, and other consumer products. The Centers for Disease Control says "phthalate exposure is widespread in the US population."

Though the health consequences of encountering these substances aren’t fully known, scientists have increasingly focused on their effects on health and development, particularly for pregnant women and children. Research in rats has shown that they can disrupt the male reproductive system, and there’s evidence for similar effects in humans. The latest research suggests that fast food is a significant source of the chemicals, which may leach into food from machinery used in processing or packaging, or from gloves worn by workers.

Ami Zota, assistant professor of environmental and occupational health at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health said that for people interested in reducing their exposure, “common-sense approaches will take you a long way. Eat organic when you can. If you can’t, still try to eat fresh vegetables,” she said. "Try to eat low on the food chain."