A New Perspective

I'm one of those people who have always marked "Organ Donor" on my driver's license. I can think of no nobler legacy than enabling a fellow human to continue to live, or have a better life,. It costs nothing (we're all going to die sometime) and is perhaps the grandest of gestures.
For the first time, tho, I feel ambivalent about this due to one compelling reason: my donated organ could end up in someone like Dick Cheney. If I thought my death enabled the Dark Lord to continue his avaricious ways, I'd have my body cremated and my ashes mixed with salt.

Scopes II, Part II (with added climate change denial at no additional charge)

They did it.

Having narrowly escaped falling off the edge of the earth, Tennessee's creationism-happy Senate has approved the so-called monkey bill, allowing teachers to discuss the "strengths" and "weaknesses" of "controversial" topics like "evolution," as well as "global warming," in order to help their students "improve their thinking skills" and realize once and for all that the miraculous earth was shaped with a magical touch of a godly finger, even though a gazillion scientific and legal experts say the bill is "unnecessary, anti-scientific, and very likely unconstitutional." Also dumb. State legislators are also busy enacting other useful bills, such as allowing the Ten Commandments to be displayed on public buildings, banning the word and concept "gay" and telling girl 
athletes what they can and can't wear, for which acts 
we and the Lord thank them. Sort of.

Female Capos

During the Holocaust, in the camps the Nazis would select certain prisoners to act as overseers of their own kind. Of course these "capos" as they were known received enticements in exchange for their limited privileges. One can only assume that such is the case with the vile Liz Trotta of Faux Noise. Here's a taste:

During a segment about new rules regarding women in the military, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta attacked the Department of Defense for increasing spending on support programs for victims of sexual assault. Trotta also reacted to a Pentagon report showing a 64% increase in violent sexual assaults since 2006 by stating: "Well, what did they expect? These people are in close contact."

Go read the whole post. If you can stomach it: http://gocl.me/xr60yF

Xtian Love

Now that Christopher Hitchens is gone, the xtian crazies are coming out of the woodwork. Bryon Fisher of Focus on the Family stated that "God sent Christopher Hitchens to hell" (because he loves him, dontcha know). Apparently he has a hot line to god.
I realize of course that Hitch could be very acerbic; once, on "Countdown" with Bill Maher, the audience tittered at one of his statements and shot them the bird.
I didn't always agree with the man. I found his support of Bush II and the Iraq war to be very misguided. But there is no doubt he was a true intellectual giant: I certainly wouldn't want to debate him. Nonetheless, I found his atheism quite inspirational and his logic on this topic unassailable. It was quite a kick to watch him shred the xtians who dared to argue with him, and I will miss that. He generally knew more about the bible than his opponents.
But these so-called "Christians" are quite vile in their condemnation of the man. And to wait until he's gone, as Fisher did, to critizice him is cowardice of the highest (or rather, lowest) order. Take, for instance, the asshat Albert Mohler, ninth president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, and board member of Focus on the Family: "The point about Christopher Hitchens is not that he died of unbelief, but that his unbelief is all that matters now. Unspeakably sad." How can one die of "unbelief?" Is that in the DSM-IV?
And if anyone wants to post on this thread saying, 'Oh, but these people aren't true Christians and they've misunderstood what Christianity's all about' - please don't bother. It's them you need to tell, not me.

Einstein the Creationist : Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Einstein the Creationist : Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Scopes II

It will be 86 years this summer when a Tennessee public school teacher, John Thomas Scopes was convicted of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach evolution in the state. The trial at the time was a bit of a publicity stunt: the town business men wanted the trade they assumed would come from a high-profile litigation. The case famously pitted the two great legal minds of the era, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. With reportage from H. L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun, the event ended up bringing the town of Dayton a lot more than it bargained for. 
And now, nearly 90 years later, the Tennessee State Legislature, in its unassailable wisdom, has passed yet another anti-science law, this time by a margin of 70 - 23. The pertinent language:

This bill prohibits the state board of education and any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or principal or administrator from prohibiting any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught, such as evolution and global warming.


Weaknesses that do not exist. Throw in that word "theories" for sure. And make sure your example covers the two things the right hates most: evolution and global warming. 


We are doomed. 

Clarence Thomas is . . . something

In the case of Connick v. Thompson (and yes, that's Harry Connick Jr.'s dad, a District Attorney in New Orleans), the court has apparently taken the teeth out of Brady v. Maryland, which says prosecutors must turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. In this case, they sat on it for 20 years, and the petitioner, Thompson, sat in prison for over 14 years for a crime he did not commit. The trial court awarded Thompson $15 million, which was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. But that is vacated now; the court has guaranteed that nobody can be held responsible for even the most shocking civil rights violations.