The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Despite itself, the Republican Party of Illinois sort-of-accidentally nominates Holocaust-denier/white supremacist/wearer-of-hats-that-are-too-small-for-his-head, Arthur Jones, to be their candidate for the U.S. House in Illinois’ Third District. Jones was the only candidate in the primary, and the GOP is disavowing him.
I forgot to put this in yesterday’s Heresy! We’re telling CBS to make amends for a remarkably terrible and astoundingly credulous Sunday Morning segment on ESP and the alleged “secret” programs of the CIA (they weren’t secret, we all knew). Joe Nickell, on his blog, focuses on one of the claims in the piece, that of self-proclaimed psychic Angela Ford.
The Economist points out that our likely next Secretary of State, current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, is “a zealous, evangelical Christian accused of Islamophobia.” Cool. Cool. It’ll be fine.
A member of DC’s city council, Trayon White Sr., blames Jewish bankers for the recent winter storms. I can’t even.
Google announces the Google News Initiative, through which the company will invest $300 million over three years to elevate quality (non-fake) journalism and help news outlets who are making that quaslity journalism not die out.
This is troubling on several levels: In Scotland, a guy is convicted of a hate crime for posting a video in which he gets a dog to give a Nazi salute, and he adds (he says as a joke) “sieg heil” and “gas the Jews.” The dude in question, Mark Meechan, said (and you must read this with a Scottish accent), “My girlfriend is always ranting and raving about how cute and adorable her wee dog is, so I thought I would turn him into the least cute thing I could think of, which is a Nazi.”
A weird, dead sea creature-thing washes up on the beach in Georgia, and it might be a decapitated frilled shark, no one seems to know for sure.
According to local legend, the creature could be Altamaha-ha. “The legend is similar to the Loch Ness monster in its description of a snake-like beast,” [Georgia official Jason] Lee said. “It goes in and out of the murky waters, popping up here and there.”
The guy who used to be the head of the Missionary Training Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints admits to molesting one of the women under his purview in Provo, Utah, along with confessing to a “sexual addiction” and a long history of misconduct.
A church in Michigan is taking advantage of the fact that Easter falls on April 1 this year by running ads saying “skip church this Easter.” I think everyone’s just confused.
Hey there might be a way to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria! Viruses! Wait.
Quote of the Day
From Not the Nine O’Clock News, 1980, with Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith, Pamela Stephenson, and Griff Rhys Jones:
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