This
is fucked up:
GHUMUSAR UDAYAGIRI, India — Babita Nayak was cooking lunch for her pregnant sister when a mob of Hindu extremists wielding swords, hammers and long sticks rampaged through their village, chanting “India is for Hindus! Convert or leave!”
The gist of this depressing article is that Hindu fundies are killing
Christians, burning their homes, destroying their churches, and
driving them into refugee camps.
Background: the
Alliance Defense Fund,
a right-wing religious group, is backing the
Pulpit Initiative,
in which, on Sep. 28, 2008, a bunch of pastors will give sermons
directly endorsing specific political candidates. They’re hoping to be
sued, and to use the suit to overturn the law against churches
directly endorsing candidates.
CNN’s Rick Sanchez hosted a “he-said, he-said” exchange about this:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9vsNx5ooBU&hl=en&fs=1]
The Daily Show’s already mostly made the same point, so I may as well put out here something that’s been rattling around my brain for a while.
Waiting for
Hanna to hit edition.
Webster Cook, the University of Central Florida student who
precipitated
Crackergate
by failing to eat[1]
a piece of bread he was given, has been
removed from his post on the SGA,
the university’s newspaper reports.
The only thing that could make this better would be if his colleague’s
name were Spitz.
It’s one thing to act like an elitist bastard, but quite another to
speak or write like one. You can walk the walk, but can you talk the
talk? Here are some rules to help make sure you don’t lose bastard
cred.
I’m going to pick on
a random freeper
(via
FSTDT)
because he makes an argument that I’ve seen elsewhere: in response to
a question about how gay marriage might possibly affect him and his
own marriage, he writes
er it’s forcing me to explain to my kids why two men or two women are doing what they are doing.
I have to explain that nature did not intend for two of the same sex to be together and that they like to be together for perverted sexual acts
So people’s freedom to marry whomever they love should be restricted
because you don’t want to explain it to your children? Puh-leeze!
I hate to break it to you, honeycakes, but explaining the world to
children is what parents do. It’s part of the job description. Oh,
and when I say “explaining the world”, I mean the world as it is, not just as you would like it to be.
(Thanks to Fez for letting me borrow his sarcastic endearment set.)
BarryA at Invisible Science Uncommon Descent:
I will demonstrate that under very clear United States Supreme Court precedent, the subjective motives of a policy maker are simply irrelevant in determining whether the policy violates the Establishment Clause.
Let us begin at the beginning – the Lemon test. In Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971) the Supreme Court established the following three-part test for determining whether a governmental policy violates the Establishment Clause: “First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose;
(emphasis added)
Creationist logic:
I am now a minister. Whee!
I just got a certificate from
Universal Life Church
saying that I have been ordained and “[have] all rights and privileges
to perform all duties of the Ministry.”