Shia Levitt

On Monday the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that police violated the 4th amendment when they placed a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device on a suspect’s car and monitored its movements for 28 days. In his opinion on the case, Justice Anthony Scalia wrote that the use of GPS constituted a "search" and therefore requires a warrant. This ruling may have an impact on other cases where GPS was used, as well as other types of surveillance mechanisms.

Wikipedia and several other websites participated in an online "blackout" on Wednesday in protest over SOPA and PIPA, anti-piracy bills that would allow the government to fine or blacklist sites accused of copyright violations. The message of the blackouts have come across not just to the online community, but with members of Congress — some who, like Republican Senator Marco Rubio, withdrew their support of the bill. But the blackouts bring up broader questions about the implications of shutting down the Internet as a form of protest.

More than 7,000 websites shut themselves down on Wednesday in a one-day protest of the anti-piracy bills now in Congress. The blackout has some U.S. lawmakers thinking twice about voting for the bills. The Protect IP Act, or PIPA, lost support from two former co-sponsors, Republican Senators Marco Rubio and John Cornyn. Reddit.com's co-founder, Alexis Ohanian, talks about why his website joined in on the blackout and if he thinks it was a success.

In a unanimous decision on Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that churches and religious organizations are exempt from employee discrimination laws when hiring or firing their own employees and leaders. Many are heralding this decision as key in reinforcing the separation between church and state, while others worry that this will allow these organizations far too much power. The initial complaint that motivated Hosanna-Tabor Church v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission stemmed from a teacher at an elementary school who felt she was being fired for pursuing a disability claim. 

Thursday marks the two-year anniversary of Haiti’s January 2010 earthquake. The 7.0 magnitude quake devastated the capital city, Port-au-Prince, and Haiti’s government estimates the death toll was more than 316,000 people. An international outpouring of support followed, with NGOs, human rights organizations, and the first mass text-based fundraising campaign bolstering the island nation. A little less than a year after the earthquake, an outbreak of cholera further devastated the country and set back relief efforts. So what has and hasn't been accomplished in the time since?

Sunday night marked the season finale of TLC's "All-American Muslim." The show followed five Muslim-American families in Dearborn, Michigan, and drew a lot of attention when retail chain Lowe’s decided to pull commercials from the program. Both the boycott and the show itself prompted a larger conversation about the portrayal of Muslims in the media, as well as many Americans' private prejudices.

Amit Gupta first appeared on The Takeaway in October, three weeks after being diagnosed with leukemia, to discuss his experiences trying to find a bone marrow donor. Amit is of South Indian descent, and South Indians are severely under-represented in the donor pool. His friend Seth Godin, who writes for the popular blog SethGodin.com, offered $10,000 to the first person to be a donor match with Amit.

Along with "supreme leader" and "our Father," Kim Jong-Il was also known as "Dear Leader." And certainly, there were few tyrants that satirists dearly loved lampooning more than the self-loving, eccentric late dictator. From "co-starring" as the singing antagonist in "Team America: World Police" to being portrayed as a wife-abducting weatherman on "30 Rock," Kim Jong-il's legacy is in large part an absurd one. Celeste Headlee remembers one of the world's most eccentric evil dictators.

A devastating tornado struck Joplin, Missouri, on May 22 of this year. One hundred sixty people were killed, and nearly a thousand were injured. According to the National Weather Service, as much as 75 percent of the city was damaged. Three days later, Susan Moore and Regina Jones, two Joplin public school teachers, joined The Takeaway to discuss its effects on the city's schools, which were closed for the remainder of the school year. Scott Meeker, enterprise editor of the Joplin Globe, also came on the program to discuss his efforts to reconnect people over Facebook. The Takeaway speaks to them again for an update on Joplin many months after the storm.

Stephen Spielberg's adaptation of the Michael Morpurgo novel "War Horse," the adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's novel "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," and Cameron Crowe's "We Bought a Zoo" are slated to be this week's newly-released, big box office winners. "The Artist," which topped many years' best lists and has only been in a handful of theaters, also opens across the country this weekend. 

Before there were tents in Zuccotti Park, before there were demonstrations, the creative minds at the Canadian magazine Adbusters had already made the name "Occupy Wall Street" — a Twitter hash tag that was creating buzz. And then they had a slogan: We are the 99 percent. Unsurprising for a group that has specialized in activism through subversive advertising, or subvertising, as they call it.

A Pew Research Center report released Wednesday shows 51 percent of all adults in the United States are now married — a record low. In 2010, a survey also conducted by Pew found that four in ten Americans thought marriage had become obsolete, but found that most people who had never married (61 percent) would like to do so someday.

Every Friday, The Takeaway looks at the weekend's new releases. Opening this weekend: slacker comedy "The Sitter" with Jonah Hill; and "New Year's Eve" starring Sarah Jessica Parker among many others. Rafer Guzman, film critic for Newsday, and Takeaway producer Kristen Meinzer, co-hosts of The Takeaway Movie Date podcast, give their recommendations on this weekend's new movies.

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