Jeff Sessions forms a kind of Christian-privilege SWAT team, the DOJ’s “Religious Liberty Task Force.” The Morning Heresy Editorial Board’s official response: “Barf.” CFI’s response is a little more thought out:
Sessions’ enthusiasm for discrimination and the formation of this vindictive task force exposes his extremist, Religious Right agenda. [. . .] He plainly seeks to force women, LGBTQ individuals, atheists, and others to submit to the will of the Religious Right.
Vox and the Washington Post (and probably others) post explainers on Bigfoot erotica. Yes indeed.
At NYT, Frank Bruni says to be careful what you wish for, if what you’re wishing for is the impeachment of Trump. Because then you get President Pence:
[Pence is] also self-infatuated. Also a bigot. Also a liar. Also cruel.
To that brimming potpourri he adds two ingredients that Trump doesn’t genuinely possess: the conviction that he’s on a mission from God and a determination to mold the entire nation in the shape of his own faith, a regressive, repressive version of Christianity. Trade Trump for Pence and you go from kleptocracy to theocracy.
That’s not fair to Trump. We’re totally getting both a kleptocracy and a theocracy.
Frank Ravitch of the Michigan State University College of Law writes at SCOTUSblog about Brett Kavanaugh and his record on religion-related issues. It’s not a good record, BTW.
Looks like the “Climate Kids,” the 21 kids who are suing the U.S. for its culpability on climate change, are going to get their day in federal district court, so rules the Supreme Court.
David Weigel at the Post reports from Michigan where an unprecedented slate of Muslim candidates are running for various offices.
The FDA is cracking down on companies that market products for “vaginal rejuvenation.” Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said, “Deceptive marketing of a dangerous procedure with no proven benefit, including to women who’ve been treated for cancer, is egregious.”
A recent analysis determines that in 2013, an anti-vaccine community in Brooklyn cost taxpayers almost $400,000 by enabling a measles outbreak.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (who use the term correctly) gets an Air Force base to stop putting a Bible on a POW/MIA memorial display, to be replaced by a book with several faiths’ religious teachings, along with “blank pages representing nonbelief,” which seems weird.
Michael Gerson examines Trump’s morality (or lack thereof) through the lens of his loyalty to figures like Alex Jones (and thereby, the morality of clowns like Tucker Carlson and Lou Dobbs, who defend Jones because of his closeness to Trump).
Ted Cruz and 108 other Members of Congress with nothing better to do press the Supreme Court to take up the Bladensburg Cross case. Cruz says:
The American Humanist Association convinced the Fourth Circuit to adopt a perverse interpretation of the Establishment Clause, which in no way prohibits a war memorial on public land from featuring religious imagery.
An Ayurvedic hospital in India claims to cure cancer by giving patients cow milk, yogurt, ghee (a kind of butter), urine, and dung. Go for it.
This guy in Pennsylvania, John Ventre, will give you $30,000 for a “medically proven irrefutable Grey or Reptilian extraterrestrial, dead or alive.” I dunno, I think there are probably, like, nation-states that would pay a lot more than that.
Quote of the Day
From The Sun (via the New York Post), no less:
In 2007 a woman called South Wales Police to report a “bright stationary object” that had been floating in the air for half an hour. An officer went to investigate and soon radioed back: “It’s the moon. Over.”
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Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by Paul or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.