Here’s Pennsylvania state Rep. Brian Sims yesterday trying to stop a bill that would allow state-run health insurance exchanges to not cover abortion: “As a reminder, Mr. Speaker, I do believe this has been forgotten entirely by many of my colleagues today: Each of us put our hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. We did not place our hands on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.” Awesome line. Very quotable. But he’s not the first person to have said it. [Click headline for more…] Read more
I understand why a pro-lifer would start a paragraph like this… But let’s not forget another tragedy: abortion. … but don’t preface it with something like this: President Obama told the country that those who planted the bombs that killed three people and injured over 100 at the Boston Marathon will be prosecuted. Because you’d have to be a heartless jerk to do something like that. Read more
Among a list of public intellectuals who were selected by committee because they had “influence over the past 12 months” and “significance to the year’s biggest questions,” the British publication Prospect opened the poll to online voters (so take all of this with a grain of salt) and Richard Dawkins came out on top: [Click headline for more…] Read more
The Christian group Faith2Action just released a segment they filmed for an upcoming documentary. And if this clip is any indication, the entire film is going to be a trainwreck: The joke isn’t on gay people. It’s on Faith2Action for thinking this is a valid comparison. (Hell, adulterers can at least get married in every state.) [Click headline for more…] Read more
I don’t want to get all “Islamophobic” on you, so I’ll just place this video of Muslim women who have been victims of acid attacks right here without comment: Yes, there are obviously many other factors in play here, including politics, economics, power, etc. But to say that the criminals’ religious beliefs had nothing at all to do with it seems willfully ignorant to me. (Okay, one comment.) (via ConversationWithA) Read more
In 2010, Robert Arnold was elected Sheriff of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. And he’s finally figured out how to lower crime rates, help prisoners, and get re-elected all at the same time: By posting a copy of the Ten Commandments in the lobby of the Rutherford County Jail: Arnold in 2012 accepted a framed copy showing the Ten Commandments, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights from June Griffin, a Rhea County activist. “Those are documents this country was founded on,” Arnold said during an interview at his office. “Those are documents that all laws are derived from in this country.” … “The job is to enforce the laws of the land, and those are three documents of laws of the land,” said Arnold. “Those are the founding three documents of the laws of this country.” [Click headline for more…] Read more
Perhaps the most shamelessly dopey Member of Congress, Republican Louie Gohmert of Texas, doesn’t think it’s bad enough that the U.S. Capitol has been (ab)used several times over history as a stand-in for a Christian church. No, he’d actually like to see the government honor the fact. Like, as though we should be proud of it! Here’s the summary for Gohmert’s HR 1586: To direct the Architect of the Capitol to acquire and place a historical plaque to be permanently displayed in National Statuary Hall recognizing the seven decades of Christian church services being held in the Capitol from 1800 to 1868, which included attendees James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. [Click headline for more…] Read more
There has been a swirl of debate around what might or might not have been the motivations behind the Boston bombing attacks allegedly carried out by the Tsarnaev brothers, but one voice has stood out to me in this discussion: that of Andrew Sullivan’s. Sullivan began by confronting the garment-rending of Glenn Greenwald, accusing him of “left-liberal self-parody.” [T]o dismiss the overwhelming evidence that this was also religiously motivated — a trail that now includes a rant against his own imam for honoring Martin Luther King Jr. because he was not a Muslim — is to be blind to an almost text-book case of Jihadist radicalization… To state today that we really still have no idea what motivated him and that rushing toward the word Jihadist is some form of Islamophobia seems completely bizarre to me. When will some understand how dangerous religious fundamentalism truly is? And when will they grasp that a religion that does not entirely eschew violence (like the Gospels or Buddhism) will likely produce violence when its extremist loners seek meaning in a bewildering multicultural modern world? This was an act of Jihad. [Click headline for more…] Read more
When the subject of autism comes up, one thing you can count on is that someone, somewhere will say something stupid. So it’s not all that surprising to see someone make a deeply uninformed statement like this: “Autistic children do not know how to believe in God because they do not have a section for faith in their brains”… The statement itself is stupid, but the author of it is even more shocking; Fehmi Kaya, the head of the Health and Education Associations for Autistic Children in Adana, Turkey. Yes, that’s right, the head of an organization supposedly dedicated to the needs of autistic children believes that there is a special section of your brain for your belief in God. [Click headline for more…] Read more
