Judge writes that death sentences in the state have turned into “one no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of death .”

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in California on Wednesday ruled that "systematic delay" in California's death penalty system has made it unconstitutional.

In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney wrote in part that "arbitrary factors, rather than legitimate ones like the nature of the crime or the date of the death sentence, determine whether an individual will actually be executed."

Carney also vacated the death sentence of the death row prisoner who brought the case, Ernest Dewayne Jones.

Summarizing his 29-page ruling, Carney, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush in 2003, wrote:

[F]or most, systemic delay has made their execution so unlikely that the death sentence carefully and deliberately imposed by the jury has been quietly transformed into one no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of death. As for the random few for whom execution does become a reality, they will have languished for so long on Death Row that their execution will serve no retributive or deterrent purpose and will be arbitrary.

That is the reality of the death penalty in California today and the system that has been created to administer it to Mr. Jones and the hundreds of other individuals currently on Death Row. Allowing this system to continue to threaten Mr. Jones with the slight possibility of death, almost a generation after he was first sentenced, violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Read the order:

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“I also remind people of a time in the past around World War II where this country unwisely closed its borders to people who are fleeing the Holocaust in Germany.”

Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont invoked America's history of turning away Jewish refugees during the lead up to and after the start of the second World War while urging compassion for unaccompanied undocumented minors surging across the border on Wednesday.

Leahy has in the past spoken about compassion for those at the border, calling it "nothing short of a humanitarian crisis" and arguing the United States has a "moral and legal obligation to protect those fleeing violence — especially when they are children and families."

"I also remind people of a time in the past around World War II where this country unwisely closed its borders to people who are fleeing the Holocaust in Germany," Leahy said Wednesday on the Senate floor. "They came here, they were turned back, sent back, many of them to certain death in the death camps. That was a sorry part of our history. Usually our history reflects what we see in the Statute of Liberty, a beckoning torch, but now the refugee crisis has come back to our border."

Here's the video of those remarks:

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Later in his speech, Leahy again invoked the Holocaust.

"Where are those principles? We forgot them at the begin of the Holocaust. Look at the people who died. The number of Jews who went to the ovens because we forgot our principles."

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DO NOT PROCEED if you are allergic to concrete.

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In light of the crisis at the border, some CHC members worry the president won’t go as far as they would like him to on the immigration executive actions he’s promised to take.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The Congressional Hispanic Caucus went to the White House Wednesday with a pretty clear message for President Obama: Don't back down.

With the crisis at the border consuming Washington, Republicans are urging the president to support changes to a 2008 law that would speed up deportations for the thousands of children coming in from Central America while at the same time blaming Obama's immigration policies for the crisis in the first place.

But members of the CHC are nervous the president won't be as bold on the immigration executive actions he has promised to take because of the current attention to the border crisis.

"They've been weaved together to such a point that the children on the border are now the cannon fodder for fighting the president on anything he might want or any executive order he might take," said Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva. "It panics people. They worry about their elections and it's being exploited well politically. Ideally they are separated. I don't think right now, given the context and the atmosphere, it's going to be pretty hard."

Democratic Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, one of the most vocal advocates for Obama using executive authority to reduce or slow deportations of undocumented immigrants already in the United States, argued that Democrats had been far too willing to let Republicans make the first move on immigration policy and that Obama's executive orders needed to be "broad, expansive, and generous."

"That's the problem with Democrats … Republicans have determined how it is Democrats proceed on formulating public policy when it comes to immigrants," he said. "We don't do it when it comes to the LGBT community, we don't do it when it comes to the environment, we don't do it when it comes to workers' rights, we don't do it when it comes to the rights of women. Why on immigration can't we just stand solidly on our principles and say, here are our values?"

"We can't just go at the next election, 'Oh, we're not as bad as the other guy,'" he added.

The CHC has also taken a hard stance on crisis at the border, clearly stating it will oppose any supplemental funding if changes are made to a 2008 anti-trafficking law. The law treats children from Central America differently than those from Mexico by allowing them to be transferred to the care of HHS while they wait for their immigration cases to be heard.

"Members of the Hispanic Caucus feel they should have their day in court," said Rep. Joaquín Castro. "We hope that [Obama] agrees… These kids are fleeing from horrible and violent situations in their home countries, and for those reasons we hope they have their day in court."

The administration seemed open to changes to the law but asked for an additional almost $4 billion in supplemental funds to deal with the border crisis. House Republicans are working on their own bill that will likely include changes to the trafficking law. Additionally, Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar introduced a bill to modify the 2008 law to treat Central American children the same as those who come from Mexico, which would expedite their court hearings and likely send many of them back to their home countries.

Cuellar's support for changes to the law is a clear split from his colleagues in the CHC. But the Hispanic Caucus did score a win on Wednesday after Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced she too would not support a bill that made changes to the trafficking law. In fact, Pelosi supports expanding the law to extend to Mexican children coming to the border.

"I do think the bill that was introduced is exactly the wrong way to go," she told the New York Times. "Is the only immigration bill we're going to have one that hurts children?"

Emergency request filed on Wednesday goes to Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Same-sex couples, accompanied by their friends and family members, line up to get marriage licenses at the Salt Lake County Government Building in Salt Lake City, Utah, December 23, 2013.

Jim Urquhart / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Utah officials are asking the Supreme Court to put an order that the state recognize the marriages it granted to same-sex couples on hold while it appeals the case.

The "emergency application" goes to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, but state officials have asked her to refer the request to the entire court if she is "disinclined to grant the requested relief."

Both the trial court judge who had ordered the state to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples granted following the December 20, 2013 ruling that the state's ban on such marriages is unconstitutional and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to issue a stay of the ruling during the appeal. Both courts, however, gave state officials a window to seek a stay from a higher court before the order goes into effect.

The 10th Circuit's temporary stay "window" ends at 10 a.m. July 21. As such, it is likely that either Sotomayor or the full court will act before then on the request or, more likely, to extend the stay temporarily while considering Utah's request.

Read Utah's request to the Supreme Court:

The Justice Department announced major changes to the way federal drug crimes are punished this year. But the rules for existing convicts might be different — and many White House allies are angry.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Earlier this year, the Obama administration Justice Department announced sweeping reductions in the sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, an announcement that was heralded in the press and by advocates, liberal and conservative alike.

But when it comes to people already in prison for those very same drug offenses, the Justice Department is taking a very different stance: Officials have recommended a policy that would keep tens of thousands behind bars under the old guidelines, a decision that has set off a firestorm among advocacy groups on both sides of the aisle.

The sentencing rules for federal drug crimes were established in the 1980s, sending thousands to prison for long sentences with the goal of reducing drug crime — a policy demonstrated to disparately affect minorities, and the subject of intense advocacy in recent years. The Justice Department announced its support earlier this year for new guidelines recommended by the U.S. Sentencing Commission that will lower the sentences for future offenders by an average of 11 months versus sentences handed down today.

Since that decision, however, the department has asked the commission, an independent board that creates sentencing guidelines for federal courts, to make thousands of drug offenders currently serving time exempt from those rule changes. On Friday, the commission will vote on the issue. Sources familiar expect the ruling to come sometime in the mid-afternoon.

In the balance: Whether 50,000 drug offenders serving time will be able to petition a judge to review their sentences according to the new standards.

That number represents around 25% of the total federal prison population — approximately 210,000 convicts — a daunting figure that has made even the advocates for change in the Justice Department blanch.

"The Justice Department is being very pragmatic here," said Doug Berman, a professor at Ohio State law school and a leading expert on the Sentencing Commission and its decisions. Inside the department, there are fears about what allowing 50,000 prisoners to have their sentences reevaluated will mean.

For instance, Georgia U.S. attorney Sally Quillian Yates, who represented the Justice Department at June sentencing commission hearing on retroactivity, argued evaluating years-old specifics in cases could prove challenging. "That...would require a tremendous amount of administrative assessment," she said of one hypothetical involving gun possession. "And in the cost and benefit analysis, and in weighing these factors we don't think that that's an appropriate use of resources."

The Justice Department is urging the commission to adopt guidelines requiring drug cases involving a gun in any way or a more nebulous "obstruction of justice" to be ineligible for review by a judge. Justice Department officials have admitted some offenders worthy of sentence review could fall through the cracks, though they've said that's a necessary evil given the limited resources available. The Justice Department plan would cut the number of prisoners eligible for retroactivity from 50,000 to about 20,000.

Behind that proposal, say observers, is the messy politics of actually dealing with the impacts of the drug war that a growing bipartisan chorus say they want to see ended. The challenge of retroactivity has pit the Obama administration — the most open to changes in law since the drug war began — against many of its allies who say the Justice Department's caution in the face of retroactivity makes them question the administration's commitment to the cause.

Berman said the department's plan reflects the difficult politics of retroactivity. While it's relatively easy to champion a change to sentencing for future drug offenders, reducing the sentences of thousands convicted for drug crimes means reexamining and in some cases unwinding the efforts of federal prosecutors who often measure their effectiveness with the number of people they've put behind bars and the amount of time they've put them there. That's not an easy ask and, as the Justice Department's ongoing efforts to prevent that reexamination from happening in the first place shows, one that administration officials are wary of embracing.

"There are some members of the commission who say, 'let's go for full retroactivity and let the chips fall where they may,'" he said. "There are others who are like, 'You know what? Enough is enough and let's go forward and not backward.'"

A Justice Department official declined to directly respond to the critics of the department's retroactivity proposal, but pointed to Holder's June testimony before the sentencing commission. Holder said full retroactivity would pose a risk to public safety.

"Not everyone in prison for a drug-related offense would be eligible. Nor would everyone who is eligible be guaranteed a reduced sentence," he said. "But this proposal strikes the best balance between protecting public safety and addressing the overcrowding of our prison system that has been exacerbated by unnecessarily long sentences."

But the department's recommendations have set off a wave of outcry in the very active advocacy community around criminal justice issues — pitting many of the Obama administration's biggest supporters against them.

The NAACP, National Council of La Raza, several prominent LGBT groups, and three progressive senators have all petitioned the sentencing commission to ignore the Justice department, warning that the exceptions desired by the Obama administration will adversely affect minority convicts. NAACP lawyer Kim Keenan said her group's letter full retroactivity is the only way to address "the past unconstitutional and disparate treatment of minorities."

The administration allies say the Justice Department's concerns about resources don't jibe with the Obama administration's promise to make addressing the impacts of the drug war a priority.

"I don't think that money should be the factor that prevents justice from prevailing. So if that's the only argument that there is I don't think that's fair to the communities that are being impacted," said Meghan Maury, a top lawyer at the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce, which also submitted a letter to the commission calling for full retroactivity. "If the number is one dollar or $1 million, justice shouldn't be run by money."

White House opponents are also angered by the Justice Department request. Leaders in the conservative movement to reduce drug sentences in the hopes of spending less money on the drug war are also petitioning the commission to ignore the administration request and vote for full retroactivity. In its letter to the commission, the American Conservative Union warned that following the Justice Department guidelines would be an "injustice." Republican Sen. Rand Paul, perhaps the right's most vocal supporter of ending the drug war as we know it, joined the letter signed by progressive Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy and Sheldon Whitehouse that doesn't directly call out the Justice proposal, but calls anything less than full retroactivity "would create new inequities in our system."

Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a group that straddles the fence when it comes to the White House, having counted on the two most polarizing billionaires in politics — George Soros and the Koch brothers — for financial support, also opposes the Justice Department proposal. Mary Price, FAMM general counsel, said it's impossible for the Obama administration to reconcile a push for new sentence guidelines while pulling back from retroactivity.

"It is pretty stunning," she said. "Everything that has been coming out of that department, and I'm talking from the Attorney General on down, has been about reducing the amount of people [subject to long drug sentences.]"

Price noted that Holder supports the Smarter Sentencing Act, a stalled bipartisan legislative push to make the crack cocaine vs power cocaine sentence reductions passed in 2010 retroactive. "The (Justice Department) has been ahead of everybody" on sentence reductions for future offenders, she said. The department's retroactivity stance "is a case of 'golly, what are you thinking?"

Not all the critics claim the Justice Department is being too harsh with its proposed retroactivity exemptions. The National Association Of Assistant U.S. Attorneys, a group that has publicly opposed every attempt at drug sentence reduction in Congress and at the executive level, submitted a letter to the commission that warned the Justice Department was on dangerous ground endorsing any retroactivity at all. "Allowing an individual sentenced under a plea agreement to have his sentence reduced retroactively prevents the government from obtaining benefits gained through concessions during bargaining, while allowing defendants to make considerable gains without risk," wrote the association's executive director.

Rarely would the offenders at issue be released right away. FAMM and other groups say the average sentence reduction for existing offenders would be 23 months, meaning prisoners currently behind bars who make their case for retroactivity to a judge would still have to serve out their existing sentences minus two years (plus whatever sentence enhancements prosecutors successfully added to the prison term, none of which would be altered by full retroactivity.) The expected window of current inmates affected by retroactivity spans the next 30 years.

This isn't the first time Price and the other groups have taken on the Justice Department and Holder over full retroactivity. In 2011, Holder personally testified at a sentencing commission hearing examining whether or not to make new crack vs power cocaine sentences retroactive. Holder spoke to the need for retroactivity but said it should be limited "beyond current commission policy." That is, many crack offenders should be exempted from the new guidelines, in Holder's words, to protect public safety. In the end, the commission voted unanimously to grant full retroactivity, ignoring Justice Department recommendations.

No one observing the commission is ready to expect the same result this week. The commission is a political body — members are picked by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Three of the seven commission members must be federal judges and no more than four can be members of the same political party. Commission hearings surrounding retroactivity can be a raucous affair (for a relatively unknown Washington commission of elder jurists, that is) and politics play a part. Most see the commission as leaning to the conservative side of the ideological spectrum, which means they might be open to the Justice Department argument that 50,000 sentence revisions are just too much for the system to handle.

Berman, the professor, says Holder's testimony in 2011 about safety and Yates' testimony in June about resources are cover for larger forces roiling the Justice Department and the larger movement to reexamine the war on drugs: Prosecutors don't like the idea of their sentences being shortened, and politicians don't want to risk the blowback if any of the prisoners whose sentences get shortened commit violent crimes down the road.

How the commission splits the difference could have wide-ranging effects, he said.

"You see this from the law enforcement folks especially: 'We're debating the challenge of giving these folks a kind of extra justice. And these aren't people who deserve that extra justice. Maybe we can concede that they got slammed a little hard before. But you know what? They've got no one to blame but themselves,'" Berman said. On the other side, Berman said, "Those are people's mothers and brothers and sisters and mothers" serving time under rules that have changed.

How the sentencing commission decides Friday could determine which of those two arguments become the basis for retroactivity going forward.

For advocates, the internal battles in the Justice Department and among law enforcement over retroactivity are a distraction from the issue at hand, which they say is simple fairness.

"Sentences should take into account the crime and the role of the offender," said Antonio Ginatta, advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "If [sentences] are too long going into the future, they're too long looking back at the past."

“Great things can happen when you have the courage to be yourself.”

Michael Sam, the first out gay NFL player, received the Arthur Ashe Award for courage at the ESPY Awards on Wednesday night. He received a standing ovation as he took the stage and delivered this powerful acceptance speech while fighting back tears:

"To anyone out there, especially young people feeling like they don’t fit in, and would never be accepted, please know this, great things can happen when you have the courage to be yourself," he said.

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He needs to shut that whole thing down.

Former Republican Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri, who was the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri before his candidacy was completely derailed by comments about "legitimate rape," defended those comments Thursday on MSNBC.

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill trounced Rep. Todd Akin by more than 15 percentage points on her way to re-election in 2012; Akin struggled after saying in an interview that women's bodies could naturally prevent pregnancies in the case of "legitimate rape."

Now Akin is back and on tour promoting his book Firing Back, in which he explains he was actually correct when said women's bodies prevent pregnancies in cases of rape.

In a 10-minute-long interview on MSNBC Thursday again not only rushed to defend his comments — "legitimate rape is a law enforcement term" — but also attacked both Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Throughout the course of the interview, Akin mentioned "rape," "rapist," and "raped" more than 20 times.

Here's a supercut of the brutal interview:

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If.

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Republican Sen. John McCain is already saying there will be "profound repercussions" if the Malaysian passenger airliner that crashed in Ukraine near the Russian border was shot down by Russia or Russian separatists.

The plane crashed Thursday with 280 passengers and 15 crew aboard the flight. McCain emphasized the hypothetical nature of his comments, which he made on both CNN and MSNBC Thursday.

"Thus far, we really don't know what caused it," McCain said. "But the fact is they were able to, quote, separatists, were able to shoot down an aircraft at 21,000 feet shows that there was capabilities. I do not want to leap to any conclusions because we, as you mentioned, it could be an explosion, it could be all kinds of reasons."

The Arizona senator then said if it was a missile which brought the plane down, the United States would be in a position to arm the Ukrainian government.

"But if it was a missile that took this plane down, then it has to be a very sophisticated weapons system. And the Ukrainians do not have that capability. So if it is the case, we're going to have to act and act in the most stringent fashion including real sanctions, including giving the Ukrainians the ability to defend themselves, which we have not done so far."

McCain said if there was involvement from Russia or Russian separatists then the incident would also open the door to sanctions and it be just "the beginning."

"If, if — I keep emphasizing if — it was a missile that was launched, either by Russia, or the quote separatists which in my view are indivisible it would have the most profound repercussions. It would open the the gates for us assisting...finally...giving the Ukrainians some defensive weapons, sanctions that would be imposed as a result of that. That would be the beginning."

The facts of what happened in the incident are still not known.

“The United States will offer any assistance we can to help determine what happened and why, and as a country, our thoughts and prayers are with all of the families of the passengers wherever they call home.”

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Hours after the crash of a Malaysian airliner in Ukraine, President Obama said the "first priority" for the United States will be determining whether American passengers were aboard.

The flight, downed near the Ukraine-Russia border, carried 280 passengers and 15 crew members. The president was speaking in Delaware when he made the comments.

"Obviously the world is watching reports of a downed passenger jet near the Russia-Ukraine border," Obama said. "And it looks like it may be a terrible tragedy. Right now, we are working to determine whether there were American citizens onboard. That is our first priority, and I have directed my national security team to stay in close contact with the Ukrainian government. The United States will offer any assistance we can to help determine what happened and why, and as a country, our thoughts and prayers are with all of the families of the passengers wherever they call home."

Obama has been briefed on the airliner's crash; according to the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Obama have already spoken about the crash.

“It would appear the plane was shot down by a blast of wind from Howard Stern’s ass.”

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MSNBC's Krystal Ball was the victim of a phone prank by a Howard Stern fan pretending to be a member of the U.S. military in Ukraine who witnessed the Malaysian Airlines flight 117 crash.

"Well, I was looking out the window and I saw a projectile flying in the sky and it would appear the plane was shot down by a blast of wind from Howard Stern's ass," the man said.

"So it would appear the plane was shot down, can you tell us anything more from your military training of the sort of missile system that may have been coming from?" Ball asked.

"Well, you're a dumbass aren't you?" the caller replied.

After an awkward pause, MSNBC went to a commercial break. Ball explained what happened when she returned to the air, "We thought we had an eyewitness on the scene. That individual was not actually an eyewitness."

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“I sensed a greater openness than the total lack of openness they had before,” Rep. Brad Sherman says.

Heinz-Peter Bader / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Rep. Brad Sherman Thursday insisted Secretary of State John Kerry told Jewish lawmakers that he is open to a package of triggered Iran sanctions, despite strong denials from the State Department.

"There was a discussion of a triggered sanctions bill and by what was said or what was not said I came away thinking that there was a bit more openness toward triggered sanctions," said Sherman, one of the top Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee known for his hawkish stances on Israel and Iran issues. Sherman said the members at the Thursday breakfast meeting were discussing sanctions that would go into effect if negotiations with the Iranians over their nuclear program fell through.

"I sensed an opening toward that approach," Sherman said. "I sensed a greater openness than the total lack of openness they had before. There was a candle in the dark room — one candle, not a big one."

"I stand by what I said and I stand by the sentence that said what I didn't say," Sherman said, referring to a line in an Al-Monitor report about the meeting that identified Sherman as one of the lawmakers that did not say Kerry himself floated the idea of sanctions.

According to a staffer for member of Congress who was in the room, Kerry "didn't object to the idea of legislation with delayed sanctions" when asked about it by a member.

"My boss got the impression that Kerry was open to that kind of legislation," the staffer said. "It was in response to a member's question."

A member of Congress who attended the breakfast said that Kerry had acknowledged that triggered sanctions might be a "useful prod" to the Iranians.

"A member, I think it was Eliot [Engel], put forward the idea of triggered sanctions and in particular triggering the sanctions contained in the Royce-Engel bill," the member said. Kerry clarified that nothing would go into effect during negotiations, but said that such sanctions "might be a useful prod to the Iranians," the member said.

"Congressman Sherman said, 'that's huge,'" the member said. "The Secretary said, hey, I want to discuss with the White House what our administration policy is on this."

The State Department has strongly denied the report, accusing the members in the room of "projecting" and imagining Kerry saying what they wanted him to say.

"Not #breakingnews that sometimes Members hear & project what they want to hear," tweeted deputy State Department spokesperson Marie Harf. "Will keep consulting, but SecKerry opposed to new sanctions."

"It should come as no surprise that members of Congress attending breaksfast this morning raised their own proposals for triggered sanctions," tweeted State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, who called the Al-Monitor report "inaccurate" in the daily press briefing on Thursday. The administration has been firmly set against new sanctions on Iran during the negotiating process and has successfully beat back legislative attempts to sanction Iran during negotiations, such as the stalled bill authored by Senators Kirk and Menendez.

"No, this was not wishful thinking, but it was a Secretary of State who, when Sherman mentioned 'hey this is huge,' decided to indicate that administration policy would be determined in future discussions," said the member who was in the room. "And apparently by the afternoon the administration had not changed its policy."

Sherman said that he doubted the meeting with Kerry would result in any new sanctions action on the Hill because Congress is almost in recess.

"I do not think that the article and the comments will be decisive in causing a triggered version of Royce-Engel to be adopted," he said. "One could imagine doing something in September, but this is not a fast-moving Congress."

The world powers that negotiated an interim deal with Iran in November are expected to announce an extension of the talks this weekend, as the sides have been unable to come to an agreement by the July 20 deadline.

“Apparently..and I say apparently because we don’t have all the details yet I want to be sure of what I say.”

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Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday the Malaysian airliner that crashed Thursday in Ukraine near the Russian border "apparently had been shot down."

The flight crashed Thursday with 280 passengers and 15 crew members on board.

Unlike President Obama, who merely offered that airliner's crash "looks like it may be a terrible tragedy" when speaking in Delaware, Biden said the plane, "Apparently had been shot down. Shot down. Not an accident. Blown out of the sky."

Biden was speaking at the annual Netroots Nation conference, the large gathering of progressive leaders and activists held in Detroit Thursday.

"A Malaysian aircraft, heading from western Europe to Kuala Lumpur as it crossed or was near the border of Ukraine and Russia...apparently..and I say apparently because we don't have all the details yet I want to be sure of what I say. Apparently had been shot down. Shot down. Not an accident. Blown out of the sky."

The vice president said he spoke for 30 minutes with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, as well as was "in contact" with President Obama and the White House national security team.

Biden then said if any American citizens were on board the flight, they would be the first concern of the United States, noting the administration was working "every minute" to determine wheter U.S. citizens were on the plane.

"This is truly a grave situation. Nearly 300 lives have been lost. The families need consolation and our prayers. And there are many questions that need to be answered and we'll get those answers and take the next steps accordingly."

Biden said President Poroshenko accepted help from the United States including that of experts within the National Transportation Safety Board.

"It is important to get the bottom of this sooner than later because the possible repercussions that could flow from this beyond the tragic loss of life."

“I think you can probably see there are lots of Israelis gathered around who are cheering when they see these kinds of Israeli strikes.”

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A few minutes later, the reporter, CNN's Diana Magnay, tweeted this and then deleted it about 20 minutes later:

Via Twitter: @dimagnaycnn

LINK: Israel Launches Ground Offensive In Gaza

Update: Up to 108 delegates reportedly were aboard Flight MH17, including Joep Lange, a prominent HIV researcher, and Glenn Raymond Thomas, WHO’s Geneva-based spokesman.

The reports were unconfirmed by conference or airline officials.

Those headed to the conference in Melbourne included medical researchers, health workers, and activists.

Joep Lange was one of the passengers killed in the jetliner crash in Ukraine on Thursday, the Kirby Institute confirmed in a statement.

Lange, a former president of the International AIDS society, headed the Department of Global Health at the University of Amsterdam.

"Joep had an absolute commitment to HIV treatment and care in Asia and Africa," Professor David A. Cooper, director of the Kirby Institute said. "The joy in collaborating with Joep was that he would always bring a fresh view, a unique take on things, and he never accepted that something was impossible to achieve. Our joint work in Bangkok, the HIVNAT centre, will stand as his legacy."

In addition to Lange, his partner Jacqueline was also killed in the crash, the statement said.

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The state is fighting to put an order that Utah recognize those marriages on hold during legal proceedings.

Michelle Berrett-Muir, left, and Romy Berrett-Muir, right, displaying their marriage license after being one of the first same-sex couples to receive one at the Salt Lake County Clerk's Office in Salt Lake City on December 20, 2013.

AP Photo/Kim Raff, file

WASHINGTON — Utah same-sex couples who married last winter have asked Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to allow a ruling to go into effect that would force the state of Utah to recognize those marriages.

Utah officials asked Sotomayor on Wednesday to put a trial court ruling that ordered the state to recognize those marriages on hold while the state appeals the case to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The case is separate from the main case challenging the constitutionality of Utah's ban on same-sex couples' marriages, Kitchen v. Herbert. This second case, Evans v. Utah, asks whether the state must recognize the marriages of the couples who married before the Supreme Court issued a stay of the trial court order in the main case in January.

The trial court said they must, and it refused to issue a stay of that order during the appeal to the 10th Circuit. The state then went to the 10th Circuit asking for a stay during the appeal, and it was again rejected. The 10th Circuit issued a temporary stay of the trial court's order until 10 a.m. July 21, however, so the state could seek Supreme Court review. They did so, and Sotomayor can decide the issue on her own or refer the matter to the full court.

Although Sotomayor requested a response from the plaintiffs by 10 a.m. Friday, the couples who had sued the state responded Thursday night, arguing that this situation is different from when the Supreme Court issued the stay of the main marriage case in January.

"The question before this Court when asked to grant an emergency stay in Kitchen was whether Utah should have to continue issuing additional marriage licenses beyond those that were already issued," they couples' lawyers wrote. "There is no similar claim of irreparable harm here ...."

In the state's Wednesday filing, it argued that a stay should be granted in part because if the trial court decision is upheld on appeal at the 10th Circuit, then "there is at least a reasonable probability that certiorari will be granted [by the Supreme Court] and at least a fair prospect of reversal."

That is so, the state argued, because it would be wrong for the trial court in the main case to be able to change the law by striking down the ban and change state practices by refusing to issue a stay in that case, which led to same-sex couples being allowed to marry, and then for the second lawsuit to then force the state to recognize those marriages while the appeal of the main case is still happening.

"Here, every single interim marriage performed as a result of the district court's Kitchen injunction directly challenges the sovereignty of Utah and its people," lawyers for Utah wrote. "A federal intrusion of this magnitude not only injures the State's sovereignty, it also infringes the right of Utahans to government by consent within our federal system."

The state also argued that a stay should be granted in the second case because "if Kitchen is ... reversed, Plaintiffs' marriages will be void under Utah law."

The ACLU, which represents several of the same-sex couples who married, responded Thursday night by stating that the couples have "valid" marriages that "must be recognized" — regardless of the ultimate outcome of the Kitchen case.

"The plaintiffs here are already legally married, and the question is whether the Constitution protects that existing marital relationship," the ACLU lawyers wrote.

Countering the Utah officials, the couples' lawyers wrote that "[n]one of the relevant considerations for granting certiorari is present in this case." Even if the Supreme Court did take the case, they wrote, "Defendants cannot establish that they are likely to succeed in their attempts to retroactively invalidate legal marriages for perhaps the first time in this nation's history."

The ACLU argued that the marriages likely would continue to be recognized regardless of the outcome of Kitchen, adding that even if the state succeeded in its appeal of the main marriage case, "[the state] would be able to fully enforce the State's marriage bans without invalidating the finite number of marriages that already took place."

Here is the ACLU's brief:

A street value of $2.7 million, carried by someone with a Mexican government job in the United States.

In this file photo, anti-narcotics police chemists test cocaine.

Mariana Bazo / Reuters

WASHINGTON — On the morning of April 25, Jose Moreno Serrano pulled his Dodge SUV into a border checkpoint in Arizona, ostensibly on his way to work at the Mexican Consulate in nearby Yuma.

Using his consulate VISA and SENTRI pass — essentially a "fast pass" for frequent border crossers — Moreno quickly moved through security and into the United States at 7:42 a.m.

Less than an hour later, Moreno was arrested by federal officials for transporting 100 pounds of cocaine, hidden in a secret compartment in his SUV.

With a street value of more than $2.7 million, the bust was a significant haul for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security. The arrest of Moreno — a low-level, consulate employee — highlights how deeply entrenched the drug cartels have become on both sides of the border.

Moreno, whose job at the consulate involved working with Mexican nationals involved in the U.S. criminal justice system, would later tell investigators "he was being paid $4,000 for the delivery," which was his second that week.

But court documents show DHS agents had opened an investigation into Moreno in the fall of 2013 and began keeping tabs on his comings and goings across the border.

Sometime between December and March, DHS agents placed a GPS tracking device on Moreno's SUV, at which time they discovered two hidden compartments built into the undercarriage of the vehicle.

Moreno remained under surveillance until the morning of April 25, when according to a DHS source familiar with the case, he deviated from his normal route to work. That aroused the suspicions of the two agents who were following Moreno.

Shortly after 7:45 a.m., the agents, identified in court documents as E. Tolman and F. Gonzalez, pulled Moreno over. They informed him they were conducting an "extended border search" — a legal doctrine that provides law enforcement with more leeway than under traditional search and seizure rules — of his vehicle.

Inside the hidden compartments agents found "several black taped packages … the combined gross weight of the packages is 45.85 kilograms/101.1 pounds," according to the court documents.

According to a Mexican government official Moreno, who worked in a non-diplomatic capacity, had his temporary contract with the consulate terminated after his arrest, and the Mexican government is not providing him with assistance in his pending legal case.

Between 2005 and 2011, 233,000 pounds of cocaine were seized along the southern border.

Smoked.

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A representative from the North Carolina Growers Association, a group that provides guest worker labor, punched a labor organizer in the face last week.

The fight started after the union liaison for the growers association, Paul Saffle, read aloud the names of workers he said had applied for benefits through a union group, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee.

A division of the AFL-CIO, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee has been advocating for changes to working conditions for the people who work through the North Carolina Growers Association over the past several years. The Growers Association provides workers, in part, who come to the U.S. from countries like Mexico on visas to work seasonally.

While Saffle was reading the names, he was approached by Oscar Sanchez, an organizer for FLOC, who first attempted to correct Saffle's pronunciation of the one of the worker's names, but then pressed the issue further.

"What are you going to fix, man? What are you going to fix?" Sanchez said, based on a translation of the video by BuzzFeed.

That's when Saffle threw the punch, landing square on Sanchez's right cheek.

"It's clear that you were threatening me," Saffle said.

"I didn't threaten you," Sanchez responded. "I'm relaxed."

One American was on the flight, Obama says.

Maxim Zmeyev / Reuters

WASHINGTON — None of the passengers on the Malaysia Airlines flight shot down over eastern Ukraine used a U.S. passport to check in, according to internal Obama administration emails about the incident.

However one American citizen did die on the flight, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki confirmed: Quinn Lucas Schansman, a dual citizen of the United States and the Netherlands.

The emails contradict widely circulated rumors that that there were 23 Americans on the flight.

Excerpts from the emails show that the administration knew on Thursday that no one had used a U.S. passport to check into Flight MH17, which crashed in Ukraine on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with nearly 300 people on board. The administration is still trying to figure out whether there were dual nationals on the plane.

According to the U.S. official who provided the excerpts to BuzzFeed, the administration has had the flight manifest since midday on Thursday, the day the plane crashed. It has not announced the absence of American citizens on the manifest out of respect for next-of-kin, in case it turns out that some on the plane did hold dual citizenship, which takes more time to confirm, the official said.

According to the emails, no American next of kin went to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on Thursday, the U.S. Consulate in Amsterdam reported.

On Thursday, reports of 23 Americans on board the plane were repeated widely in the media.

U.S. government officials on Thursday held off on confirming any numbers of Americans on board.

"We don't have any additional details at this point on American citizens," State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters in the daily press briefing on Thursday. "We're looking to, of course, obtain that information. As soon as we have it available, we'll make it available to all of you."

President Obama spoke about the crash during an appearance in Delaware, saying that it was the administration's "first priority" to determine if Americans were on board.

A White House spokesperson referred BuzzFeed's questions to the State Department. Spokespeople for the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The plane is believed to have been shot down by pro-Russian separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, according to preliminary intelligence assessments reported by CNN. Intercepted audio purportedly of a conversation between separatists regarding the plane shows that they thought they were shooting down something else and were surprised to find they had downed a civilian plane.

LINK: Malaysia Airlines Plane Carrying 298 People Shot Down Over Ukraine, Officials Say

LINK: 100 AIDS Researchers And Activists Were Aboard Plane

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Court also upholds earlier ruling that couple married in California cannot sue Tulsa County clerk for recognition of their marriage.

Mary Bishop and Sharon Baldwin, plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex couples marrying.

Courtesy of Holladay and Chilton

WASHINGTON — Oklahoma's ban on allowing same-sex couples to marry in the state is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The judges of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals also, however, decided that the lower court was correct in finding the a same-sex couple married in California could not sue the Tulsa County clerk for recognition of their marriage.

Following up on its earlier decision invalidating Utah's ban on same-sex marriage couples, the same three-judge panel ruled on the Oklahoma case in Friday's decision.

Although it dismissed the claim by the couple married in California, it did so because, like the trial court, it agreed that the couple had no standing to sue the particular person they sued, the Tulsa County clerk, because there was no evidence provided that the clerk does anything to recognize such marriages. The court added a caveat, however, with Judge Carlos Lucero — a Clinton appointee to the bench — writing:

No matter how compelling the equitable arguments for reaching the merits of the non-recognition claim, however, its fate must be determined by the law, and the law demands dismissal. The frustration that may be engendered by the court's disposition today should be tempered, however. Although it would not be appropriate to definitively opine on the matter, it is fair to surmise that the court's decision in Kitchen casts serious doubt on the continuing vitality of Part B.

The court stayed its ruling pending any petitions seeking Supreme Court review of the case, meaning no marriages for same-sex couples in Oklahoma immediately under the ruling.

In agreeing with the court's decision, Judge Jerome Holmes — a George W. Bush appointee — stated that he agreed with all of Lucero's opinion for the court. He wrote separately concurring in the decision, he stated, "to clarify the relationship between animus doctrine and same-sex marriage laws and to explain why the district court made the correct decision in declining to rely upon the animus doctrine."

Judge Paul Joseph Kelly, who was appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush and dissented from the earlier decision striking down Utah's marriage ban, also dissented from Friday's decision in the Oklahoma case. He wrote that, in addition to the couple who wed in California lacking standing, that he believed the couple wishing to marry in Oklahoma also lacked standing. As such, he would have dismissed the appeal. Even if he reached the appeal, applying a similar reason to the reason he dissented in the prior case, he would uphold the validity of Oklahoma's marriage ban.

Read the opinion: