Daily Links: 12/15/17 – Trump court-blocked on contraception law

• It’s Federal Judge Blocks Trump Law time! Today’s target: Trump’s rule allowing employers not to provide contraception coverage.

• Canadian federal government bans intelligence agencies from using or sharing information obtained from torture … unless it’s “absolutely necessary” because of terrorism or something. I’m sure that’ll never be abused.

• Oh, look, it’s another high-profile Christian official arrested for diddling children.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Australian government introduces new laws to punish people who leak or report on classified documents with up to 20 years in prison.

• German court is the latest to rule that mass communications surveillance is illegal.
  (via @Snowden)

• Meanwhile, the US official in charge of protecting whistleblowers from retaliation was kicked out of his office. But keep talking about those “proper channels” whistleblowers are supposed to use.
  (via @Snowden)

• The Trump admin. bans the CDC from using terms like “fetus”, “transgender” and “diversity” – as well as “evidence-based” and “science-based” – in their official budget documents. The censorious pettiness and sheer stupidity of this is hard to put into words.
  (via @sarahjeong; RT: @Popehat)

• Kudos to the RCMP (the Canadian equivalent of the FBI) for deciding to review 25,000 closed sexual assault cases from 2016 after identifying problems with previous investigations.

• Finally, fresh off smashing their own expensive coffee machines, Trumpinos are now triggering the libs by giving Starbucks their money to make baristas call out “TRUMP MAGA DECAFF CAPP”. I swear, if these people didn’t exist I’d have to invent them.
  (via @fark)

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