The modern pathology of liberalism.
It’s not just a river in Egypt: The modern pathology of liberalism.
It’s not just a river in Egypt: The modern pathology of liberalism.
Leftwing civility: Threats to assassinate Mitt Romney exploded after last night’s debate.
The Cuban government announced today that, beginning January 13, 2013, it will allow its citizens to freely visit other countries for the first time in over a half century.
This quiet announcement reminds me of what happened in East Germany in 1991. The government then made a quiet announcement saying it would allow travel outside its country, and within days the Berlin Wall was literally being torn down by its citizens. Shortly thereafter East Germany ceased to exist, absorbed into Germany itself, and the communist bloc fell apart.
Hopefully, we shall see the same thing happen to the Cuban dictatorship.
Today one mainstream newspaper finally caught up with the global warming skeptic community and recognized that a recent release of data from the United Kingdom’s Met Office shows that since 1996 the temperature of the climate has stalled. For the past sixteen years there has been no global warming, at all.
Three takeaways from this story.
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The tolerance of Islam: It now appears to be illegal to drive around in Dearborn, Michigan displaying Israeli flags on your vehicle.
The [driver] involved was driving in front of the high school as it let out. He was backed up in traffic, a police car immediately behind him. He had Israeli flags on truck. When the students began their assault he rolled down his window asking them to stop. After they pulled him over the police used the rolled down window as a pretext to accuse him of instigating the altercation. While being questioned by the police in front of the high school the [driver] received death threats. The police denied hearing them though the individuals involved were only a few feet away.
The assault also included one high school student throwing a bottle at the car.
Damn, I wish I lived close to Dearborn. I would be organizing a large parade of cars with Israeli flags right this minute.
As columnist Maggie Gallagher pointed out during the furor over Proposition 8, “Targeting an entire business because one person associated with it made (in their personal capacity) a donation to a cause is brand new.” Some gay activists are one step away from claiming that if someone disagrees with them, they shouldn’t be allowed to work anywhere. The original Hollywood blacklist never went that far, but you won’t see any movies made about the current intolerance of supporters of traditional marriage. [emphasis mine]
Read the whole article. It very clearly illustrates the reality today that if you disagree with the gay movement in any way, they are increasingly demanding that you should not be allowed a job anywhere, and your career, life, and family should be destroyed.
That doesn’t sound like the actions of an oppressed minority, does it?
Catholic bishops to Joe Biden: “This is not a fact.”
Two stories were published on Thursday about two very different future space telescopes. Both are worthwhile, but the differences between them illustrate how the industry of space astronomy — like manned space — is evolving from Big Science and government to small, efficient, and privately built.
First there is this story describing how the nonprofit B612 Foundation’s project to launch an infrared telescope by 2017 had passed its first technical review.
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“A profound disdain for the Constitution.”
The article quotes numerous Constitutional scholars, cites numerous examples of abuse by Obama, and repeatedly makes this same point:
Multiple experts interviewed for this article cited the Obama administration’s willingness to disregard laws for the sake of his policy goals as evidence that the president is disregarding the Constitution.
The last thing a free nation needs is a leader who has contempt for the law.
Finding out what’s in it: A new survey of 13,575 physicians had found that doctors are fleeing the field.
The survey also found that over the next one to three years, more than 50 percent of physicians will cut back on patients seen, work part-time, switch to concierge medicine, retire, or take other steps likely to reduce patient access.
But don’t worry, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.” Not!
The long list of links — social and political — that this article outlines between the Democratic Party and the journalists that dominate the media is downright appalling. No wonder they can’t report objectively. Too many of them have been activists trying to get Democrats elected.
The anthropologist who led the research into the Kennewick Man skeleton found in the Columbia Valley presented his research to Indian tribal leaders yesterday.
First the science:
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We’ve only just begun. Two Baptist-affiliated colleges today sued the Obama administration over its contraceptive mandate.
There are now 33 separate lawsuits over this odious attempt under Obamacare to impose contraceptives on those who do not believe it moral to use them.
Does this make you feel safer? A dying woman, refused a private screening at a TSA checkpoint, was patted down in public and forced to remove her bandages.
They also destroyed some of her medicine. Worse, she called ahead to make sure she was doing everything correctly in order to get past the TSA thugs as easily as possible. Obviously, it didn’t work.
Finding out what’s in it: To avoid the cost of Obamacare, companies are reducing their full time staff and switching as many employees to part-time as possible.
It is very simple. The regulatory cost of Obamacare is so high companies are doing anything they can to avoid it. It is for this reason that they stopped hiring almost the instant the law was passed, and are now scrambling to find other ways to survive outside its influence.
The Obama administration had declared that a company whose sole business is to publish Bibles is not religious enough for an exemption to the HHS contraceptive mandate.
The company has of course gone to court. The mandate itself is odious and unconstitutional. It is not the business of the federal government to decide who is religious and who is not. Nor is it that government’s business to force behavior on anyone that they do not believe.
Leftwing tolerance: A high school teacher in Philadelphia threatened a student last Friday for wearing a Romney t-shirt on dress-down day.
The teacher allegedly told the girl to take off the shirt, saying it was like wearing a Ku Klux Klan sheet. The teacher allegedly threatened to use a marker to cross out Romney’s name and that of Rep. Paul Ryan, his running mate. The teacher also allegedly tried to throw the student out of class. The teacher also allegedly said that Carroll was “a Democratic school.”
The law is such an inconvenient thing: The Obama administration’s promise to reimburse any fines issued to employers who violate the law is the equivalent to “a mini-coup,” according to one senator.
Leftwing tolerance: New research has now documented the widespread bigotry of liberals in the academic community against conservatives.
Hostility toward and willingness to discriminate against conservatives is widespread. One in six respondents said that she or he would be somewhat (or more) inclined to discriminate against conservatives in inviting them for symposia or reviewing their work. One in four would discriminate in reviewing their grant applications. More than one in three would discriminate against them when making hiring decisions. Thus, willingness to discriminate is not limited to small decisions. In fact, it is strongest when it comes to the most important decisions, such as grant applications and hiring.
This behavior is hateful, prejudiced, intolerant, and close-minded. And it is occurring against individuals merely because they disagree with the accepted orthodoxy of liberal academia. Worse, it is occurring in our universities among the educated elites of our society. Such close-mindedness among the educated cannot bode well for our society’s future.