Officials of the New York Public Library (which has branches in the boroughs of Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island) say that it’s all right for patrons to view porn on the library’s computers. According to a report in the New York Post, library officials said that the First Amendment protects the rights of patrons to look at whatever they want — including pornography — at the city’s 200 branch facilities.

With the dramatic increase in cell phone use over the past several years, the once-common 1-800 toll-free business number has gone largely by the wayside. But one savvy company has found a creative — albeit unsavory — new use for discarded toll-free numbers. According to the Associated Press, over the past dozen or so years a little-known Philadelphia company called PrimeTel Communications has gained control of nearly one-quarter of all 1-800 toll-free numbers in the U.S. and Canada — an estimated 1.7 million numbers — and is using many of them to direct callers to a phone-sex service.

A judge in Montana has rejected a lawsuit on behalf of homosexual couples seeking the same legal rights and protections afforded married couples, explaining that a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as only between a man and a woman prohibits such rights for same-sex partners.

Four hundred years after its introduction to the English-speaking world, the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is still one of the most popular and trusted Scripture translations among the American people, a survey from a research group with the Southern Baptist Convention has found. The poll, conducted by LifeWay Research during the 400th anniversary year of the KJV, found that 62 percent of American adults own a copy of the classic of both Western Protestant Christianity and English literature.

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is at it again. Over the past year or two America’s latest cultural craze, known by her ridiculous stage name “Lady Gaga,” has been doing her level best to help complete the transformation of the rock music genre into little more than a template for gutter-level, hyper-sexualized shock theater. With her bizarrely androgynous plasticized getups and mindless songs auto-tuned to robotic perfection, Ms. Gaga has managed — with the help of a veritable army of cosmetologists, choreographers, costumers, and techno-geeks — to land at the “top of the pops” and become the cultural phenomenon of the moment.

America’s premier purveyor of overpriced coffee has become the target of a boycott launched by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a nationwide group battling for traditional marriage. On March 21 the group announced the launch of DumpStarbucks.com, a website encouraging individuals to stop purchasing their daily latte or French roast brew at their local Starbucks because the Seattle-based company has made an official endorsement of same-sex marriage. The website also invites individuals to add their names to a petition sent to Starbucks, voice their concern to their local Starbucks, find local alternatives to the coffee shop, and inform friends about the boycott through Facebook and Twitter.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), an aggressive pro-homosexual activist group, has launched a campaign targeted at silencing conservative, Christian, and pro-family commentators who offer the media perspective that is often at odds with political efforts to normalize homosexual behavior. According to a GLAAD press release, the group’s Commentator Accountability Project is supposedly aimed at educating the media “about the extreme rhetoric of over three dozen activists who are often given a platform to speak in opposition to [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] people and the issues that affect their lives.”

An Oregon couple has won a $3 million settlement from a Portland hospital they sued after doctors missed diagnosing their daughter’s Down’s syndrome before she was born, thereby depriving them of the opportunity to abort her. As reported by the Oregonian newspaper, Ariel and Deborah Levy insisted that they would have aborted daughter Kalanit, who is now four years old, had Portland’s Legacy Health hospital informed them of her disability.

The federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has decided against a group of PepsiCo shareholders in their efforts to stop the company from contracting with a firm that uses cells from aborted babies in producing artificial flavor enhancers.

The state of Texas finds itself in a battle with the Obama administration over its decision to defund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s premier abortion provider. “At the direction of lawmakers and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott,” reported the Texas Tribune, “the Texas Health and Human Services commissioner signed a rule [February 23] that formally bans Planned Parenthood clinics and other ‘affiliates of abortion providers’” from participating in the Texas Women’s Health Program (WHP), which provides a variety of health services to low-income women throughout the state, including “family planning.” Planned Parenthood had confirmed that it was providing some 40 percent of the services offered through WHP.