They’re coming for you next: It appears it is now considered reasonable in today’s intolerant society to persecute any expert witness who dares testify honestly for the defense in any trial that the narrative demands a guilty plea, no matter what the facts might be.

The trial in this case was against Derek Chauvin, the police officer who in 2020 held George Floyd down by the neck during the arrest in which Floyd died. The expert witness is Dr. David Fowler, the former Chief Medical Examiner of the State of Maryland, who testified for Chauvin’s defense.

The persecution of Fowler was instigated by Dr. Roger Mitchell, former Chief Medical Examiner of the District of Columbia, Deputy Mayor of DC, and now Chief of the Department of Pathology at Howard University. Mitchell was outraged that Fowler had dared express an opinion challenging the political narrative that insisted Chauvin killed Floyd for racial reasons, refusing to get off his neck even as the man was dying of suffocation. Mitchell wrote a open letter, signed by 400 others, calling for a full review of all of Fowler’s past cases in Maryland, with the clear intent of punishing Fowler by having his medical license revoked.

Soon thereafter, in April 2021, Maryland authorities agreed to Mitchell’s demand, forming a panel to review Fowler’s work and his right to continue to practice medicine of any kind.

[R]epresentatives for Attorney General Brian Frosh and Gov. Larry Hogan confirmed to NBC News that they agreed to a review. “We welcome an independent review of reports on deaths in custody issued during David Fowler’s tenure, and agree it is appropriate for the Office of the Attorney General to coordinate the workgroup,” Hogan spokesman Michael Ricci said in a statement.

The irony behind this kangaroo court is that Fowler’s testimony at the Chauvin trial was not simply his own. He was testifying as the representative for a panel of about a dozen medical experts, giving their consensus conclusions about the cause of George Floyd’s death. As William Oliver, a member of that panel and a retired assistant medical examiner explained to me in an email,

For the Chauvin case, the defense empaneled a team of around 14 (I don’t remember the exact number any more) experts, including forensic pathologists, physiologists, pulmonologists, and others to look at what happened. We came to a different conclusion about the mechanism than the prosecution experts regarding the pathophysiology of this death. That’s not uncommon.

Fowler was then chosen to outline their conclusions at the trial, for the defense. To try to destroy Fowler, and only Fowler, for his testimony is thus an act of dishonest evil so ugly words can hardly describe it. Despite having served for seventeen years as Maryland’s chief medical examiner without any serious blemish to his record, he is now to be Maryland’s scapegoat, punished not because he did anything fundamentally immoral or wrong but because he publicly disagreed with the shouts and screams of the mob that leftist politicians were using for political gain.

The willingness of so-called Republican Larry Hogan to endorse this show-trial tells us much about him. It also tells us that his fantasy of winning the Republican nomination for president in the 2024 election has about as much chance as a snowflake surviving in hell.

To explain in detail the conclusions of the Fowler panel, which was based on the fundamentals used in all medical forensic investigations, Oliver has written a long thirteen part essay and posted it on the web. If you want to deepen your general knowledge about the scientific process and the importance it places on always questioning everything, I urge you to read it all. It might not change your mind about the George Floyd case, but after reading it you will no longer find it so easy to jump to any conclusions when next a hot story hits the headlines.

The bottom line however is simple. Floyd was a very sick man, from many causes both natural and self-inflicted. Many factors during his arrest could have caused his death. The prosecution’s accusation, based on the ruling of the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s office, that Chauvin committed homicide by his actions might have been correct, but it was also an accusation that many could very reasonably question. And according to fundamental American law, the defense above all had the right to question it. The Fowler panel — explained by Fowler — simply provided the defense the evidence it needed for that questioning.

But reasonable doubt is no longer allowed in today’s blacklist culture. Nor are fair trials. The knives are out for Fowler, and even if Fowler survives this attack, notice has been given to other expert witnesses: You better not consider testifying for the defense in any case that has any political ramifications. If you do, you will face persecution and destruction. Better to shut up and let the innocent hang.

To end this essay on a somewhat vague positive note, it appears that the Maryland attorney general’s office has had enormous difficulty assembling its kangaroo court. Despite extensive searching on the web, I could find no specific information about the panel’s status or make-up, even as recently as this week. The only solid information I could glean was that in October 2022 a still unnamed panel recommended that the state narrow its investigation. Rather than looking at all 1,300 autopsies done by Fowler when he was Maryland’s medical examiner, the state should review just 100.

The user’s manual being used by
Larry Hogan, Maryland’s governor

Now the panel is recommending that the state hire independent forensic pathologists to further review the 100 cases. Fowler served as the state’s chief medical examiner from 2002 to 2019. “This review will determine whether independent experts agree or disagree with the [the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s] determination of cause and manner of death, whether such experts believe the OCME’s determinations were based on adequate investigations,” the panel’s report said.

Apparently, for this new review the state is still having trouble finding qualified experts. As wrote me Oliver in January, “The Maryland AG had a very difficult time getting any American forensic pathologists to be on the panel.” Instead, Maryland officials appear to be looking to the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand for experts, none of whom will be familiar with American law or forensic practices, and some of which appear to be generally hostile to the field of forensic pathology in general, according to Oliver. Appearing on such a panel and taking down Fowler will be great for their resume and political goals, but it will have nothing to do with coming to a fair and just decision.

We shall have to see how this plays out. Considering the eagerness in which those in power move to blacklist people in this day and age, if I was Fowler I would be prepared for a negative ruling, and have my own lawyers ready with knives sharpened. It is likely that any attempt to revoke Fowler’s medical license will be based not on any strong evidence of misconduct, but on an effort to destroy him for speaking truth to power. Such unjust punishment should be challenged strongly and quickly.

Persecution is now cool! The leaked draft opinion by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that suggested that Roe vs Wade will be overturned this year has resulted in another wave of persecution by pro-abortion activists, almost all of which are Democrats and leftists.

The first indication that the threats and hate were real was revealed two days after Alito’s draft was leaked when his office canceled a scheduled public appearance by him at judicial conference this week.

Though the office provided no explanation for the cancellation, the reasons soon became obvious when two different radical left organizations partnered to publish the home addresses of all six conservative Supreme Court justices, encouraging protesters to go there and use “a diversity of tactics” to “force accountability.”

In collaboration with Vigil for Democracy, Ruth Sent Us generated and posted a Google Maps graphic pinning what it claims are the home addresses of Justices Barrett, Kavanaugh, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Roberts, where they presumably reside with their families. Vigil for Democracy titled the map, “Extremist Justices,” adding, “Where the six Christian fundamentalist Justices issue their shadow docket rulings.” The map has 3,185 views so far.

In Virginia, where three of the six justices live, protesting outside a private home is illegal.

One of these organizations, Ruth Sent Us, is offering to pay a stipend to anyone who joins their planned protest at these homes on May 11th. It is also using Twitter to plan protests on May 8 inside DC-area churches, during Sunday service.

I have not linked to these organizations because I do not wish to provide them any aid in their blacklisting and persecution. Worse, their effort is apparently garnering lots of support on the left, including groups endorsed by Black Lives Matter, Code Pink, Women’s March SF, Kavanaugh Off Our Court, and Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights.

All of these radical groups have violent histories, organizing protests and riots that have destroyed property and even killed innocent people. All are also closely linked to the Democratic Party.

Protesting is of course completely legal under the First Amendment. Threatening the homes and families of those you disagree with however has nothing to do with peaceful protest, and as noted in the quote above, is illegal in some jurisdictions. It is instead a form of violent bullying intended to intimidate. It has also become the standard operating tactic of the left. No one can ever disagree with them, and if you do, they claim the right to threaten you and your family with violence for daring to do so.

What makes these thugs any different than the storm-troopers of Adolf Hitler who looted and destroyed Jewish businesses in the 1930s? Nothing. They are goons aimed at destroying freedom and peaceful dissent for the sake of power.

We should all therefore expect violence and rioting on May 8th in churches across the country, as well as at the homes of these justices on May 11th. And should Alito’s draft opinion be confirmed by a Supreme Court vote, expect even more rioting and violence.

Worse, if not stopped this violence is inevitably going to lead to the murder and assassination. These leftists are so certain they are right that they feel justified to take any action to destroy their opponents. And since they have learned that the Democrats who control the local urban governments where they riot will not prosecute them, they are entirely justified in believing they have free rein to do just about anything for their cause.

Americans could change this, by simply voting out of power as many Democrats as possible, since it is very clear the Democratic Party is now using its political, legislative, and prosecutorial powers to further this persecution. That party no longer honors the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or even the rule of law. It is merely power-hungry, and is using the power it has to expand that power in every way possible, mowing down anyone who gets in its way.

It will of course try to falsify any election results in November that defeat it, but it will find doing so impossible if it loses by overwhelming majorities, especially in local elections where its ability to commit voter fraud is more difficult. In fact, it is those local elections that are the most important, because it will be the state legislatures that will move to prevent further election fraud in future elections. Defeat the Democrats there, and the election process will be quickly cleaned up.

Even more important, a resounding defeat will finally force the Democratic Party to reform itself, dumping its thugs and petty dictators for more reasonable individuals willing to honor our Constitution and the freedoms it protects.

They’re coming for you next: After demanding that conservative protester Matthew Perna be sentenced to many years of imprisonment for daring to peaceably walk through the Capitol building for less than ten minutes on January 6, 2020 — demands that caused Perna to commit suicide — the FBI has now quietly dropped those trumped up charges, without comment.

Perna was looking at 51 months in federal prison for entering the Capitol for five to ten minutes, snapping selfies, and chanting “USA” in an apparently seditious way. He also tapped a window with a pole but didn’t break it or anything else. He didn’t hit a cop.

The FBI magnanimously decided to drop their charges against Perna on Wednesday.

The article at the link notes that, in comparison, a man in Florida was sentenced to only nine months in prison for killing an elderly man when he punched him for saying “the N-word.” The article also notes the Project Veritas bombshell this week where New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg admitted that the claim by his newspaper and the Democrats that the January 6th protests were “an insurrection” and violent is an outright lie, even though that was exactly how he reported it in his Times articles. In addition, the FBI itself has admitted the protests were not an organized insurrection.

Thus, the FBI and Rosenberg have essentially admitted that they have been persecuting Perna and other January 6th protesters based on a lie. And that lie destroyed Matthew Perna. It killed him.

I wonder how many other January 6th protesters, guilty of doing nothing more than expressing their opinions freely under the First Amendment, will end up dead or ruined because of federal persecution. I expect quite a number before this ugly travesty of justice runs its course.

I also wonder if most Americans are paying attention. Does anyone really care that our government now prosecutes people for freely expressing dissent? Some do, but my impression is that those who care about freedom and the first amendment are now a minority. Most Americans shrug and say nothing, desiring instead to go along to get along. Who cares if Matthew Perna killed himself because the Biden administration went after him with fake charges? It isn’t my concern.

And so freedom dies, one suicide at a time.

They’re coming for you next: Nicholas Ortiz, then a 14-year-old Christian freshman at the high school level of Florida’s charter school Mater Academy, has sued the school for allowing both students and teachers to slander, harass, and discriminate against him for his religious beliefs, and then punishing him when he reported the abuse to school officials.

Ortiz said he regularly brings his bible to school to read, which he alleges has made him a target for “disparaging comments” from other students, as well as school staff and administrators.

The complaint also outlines what it calls false and defamatory statements that circulated among students claiming Ortiz was planning a school shooting. Screenshots of communications between students show them discussing the rumored shooting and details their plans to physically assault Ortiz as a result.

Due to the shooting allegations, Ortiz was given the maximum allowed punishment of a 10-day suspension.

“Nicholas repeatedly made the school aware of a pattern of pervasive bullying by his fellow students, bullying that was reinforced by the words and actions of the school,” the complaint added. “Yet, the school did not just sweep Nicholas’s bullying claims under the rug — failing to report them as required under the law — they retaliated against Nicholas for reporting the harassment.”

You can read his complaint here [pdf].

Though the whole behavior of the school and its students is intolerant and disgusting, this event — which probably began the persecution — is probably the most egregious:

During a Fall 2021 classroom discussion, [then fourteen-year-old] Nicholas’s science teacher, Mr. Ardieta, singled out Nicolas in front of his peers and questioned him for believing in God. Mr. Ardieta insinuated that Nicoloas was ignorant for believing in the Bible. When Nicholas attempted to defend his beliefs, Mr. Ardieta cut him off and said, in front of the class and during the classroom discussion, Nicholas should not believe in the Bible.

This same disparaging attitude towards faith has been adopted by Nicholas’ peers. Students have regularly made disparaging comments to Nicholas about his Bible reading and his faith. Students have threatened Nicholas publicly and privately with violence both in general and on account of his faith.

For a teacher to publicly single any child and attack them for their personal religious beliefs should be grounds for instantaneous firing. That teacher should have been immediately escorted to the exit and banned from ever teaching any children ever again.

Instead, it appears the administration at the Mater Academy not only supported Ardieta, it expanded the persecution against Ortiz. Quite clearly the teacher’s actions encouraged the other students in the school to ramp up their attacks and slanders, knowing the school backed them in every way. When the students began to make false accusations that Ortiz was planning a school shooting — based on no evidence — the school suspended Ortiz without ever giving him a chance to defend himself. The administration took the false accusations at face value.

Kudos for the Ortiz family for suing. I hope they win. My only regret is that they are not also suing the particular teachers and administrators who were personally responsible for Nicholas’s ordeal.

It is happening repeatedly now every moment of every day in communities across America. Dare to speak out against the accepted leftist mantras of the moment and you will be crushed.

Consider for example the orthodox Jewish community in New York. That city’s leftist Democratic mayor, Bill De Blasio, has forbidden them to gather at funerals, has shut down their schools, and has now locked nearby playgrounds so that Jewish children cannot play safely, all in the name of supposedly saving them from the Wuhan flu.

At the exact same moment however that same leftist Democratic mayor had no objection to a gathering of tens of thousands in packed street demonstrations in favor of “Black Trans Lives Matters,” a gay racist group that wants to impose its sexual and racist agenda on everyone. For some reason, De Blasio has decided that the Wuhan flu is no threat to that political movement.

Only Jews can get COVID-19, and must be protected from it, even if that protection is against their will.

The Orthodox Jews in New York have been fighting back. They have repeatedly cut the locks that De Blasio’s police thugs have put on the parks, only to have De Blasio order the park gates welded shut.

Now they have gone to court to force this clear double standard to cease.

The unofficial Jewish #RESIST movement against de Blasio’s seeming bigotry escalated even further on Monday with a new civil rights lawsuit, just filed against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Attorney General Letitia James, along with de Blasio in federal court.

The NYC-based Algemeiner reports that the “lawsuit accuses the three top officials of an apparent double standard as it pertains to allowing protesters to exercise their First Amendment [rights] over the death of George Floyd.” With plenty of evidence to back it up, the suit also claims that “Favored businesses, entities and activities, as well as favored mass demonstrations such as those over the death of George Floyd, are totally exempt from the challenged gathering limits.” This, the suit says, “unduly burdens plaintiffs’ sincerely held religious beliefs.”

In a more sane America that honored our Bill of Rights, this court case would be a no-brainer, and these unconstitutional restrictions targeting specific people because of the political and religious beliefs would be stopped immediately.

But no, don’t expect that. First, though the Orthodox Jewish community in New York is one of the most conservative in the city, and votes that way, they are also a tiny minority, surrounded by a vast sea of Democratic voters who approve of De Blasio’s actions and who will vote for him and the Democrats again in November. Witness the size of that “Black Trans Lives Matter” protest. This tells you the size of De Blasio’s support.

Second, I am pessimistic the courts will support the suit. We now have a Supreme Court, led by Trump-appointee Neil Gorsuch, which just decided by 6-3 that the word “sex” has no meaning, that anyone can assign any meaning to that word they wish. If you are born a man and want to compete against women in sports, you now can, and no one can stop you. If you are a man who likes to rape women, but declares you are really a woman who has the right to use the woman’s bathroom, you now can, and no one can stop you.

This is the thinking now in our highest court, even after the appointment by Trump of two so-called conservatives who supposedly believed that it was not the place of the court to legislate.

Thus, I fully expect the courts to back De Blasio. If he wants to declare that leftwing protests are immune from COVID-19 but rightwing activities are not and should thus be banned, it is clearly within his rights. How dare anyone stop him from oppressing those he disagrees with?

And before anyone thinks my conclusion here is insane, be aware that this is exactly what has happened in Oregon. The governor there has, under her Wuhan flu emergency order, forbidden religious gatherings, and has done so even though by the very words of the state’s constitution her emergency order cannot last more than 28 days. When a local judge dismissed her restrictions based on those plain words, the liberal state Supreme Court stepped in to allow her emergency order to remain in force, forever if necessary.

In Democratically controlled America today, leftwing politics always tops freedom and individual rights. Always. Freedom and rule by law is dead. We are in a time of oppression, and we wish to survive, we had better face up to that fact.

What makes this situation even more terrifying is the deep and unshakeable support this political oppression is getting from its Democratic base. For years I have pleaded with ordinary Democrats — sometimes in my writing, sometimes in person — to look honestly at their party. It is no longer the freedom-loving tolerant political movement they once thought. It is now an American-hating authoritarian monolith, striving to destroy American democracy and the Constitution for the sake of its own power.

And for years those ordinary Democrats, many of whom are personal friends or relatives, have refused to listen. Now, when the politicians of that Democratic Party are encouraging riots, looting, and even murder in the name of “Black Lives Matter,” those Democratic voters are not only going along, many are going along with enthusiasm and joy.

Nor am I speaking rhetorically. I am saying this based on some very raw personal experience. Let me give you some recent examples.

In January I was considering doing a post on a cool image of some dunes on Mars. I contacted the scientist who requested the image, Matt Chojnacki of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, to ask him some questions. He had previously been very helpful, and had also been very pleased with my reporting, once published. I had every expectation that he would be glad to help again.

His response? “Go ahead and publish what you want. After reviewing some of the materials/links promoted on your site I am not interested in contributing.” He clearly found he disagreed with my politics, and decided I must be blackballed. He has since refused to answer any emails, and I fear is likely working to get other scientists to blackball me as well.

Less than a week after this incident I received an email from a regular reader, who had for years been corresponding with Carolyn Porco, who for more than a decade had been head of the imaging team for the Cassini mission. For a planetary scientist, you can’t get much higher than this.

The subject of manned space exploration, Elon Musk, and climate change came up. Porco was angered by my reader’s opinion in support of Musk, commercial space, and manned space exploration. She opposed Musk’s effort, and wrote, “I’m thinking about the BIG mess we have all around us and how those $$ are needed now down here on Earth.”

He tried to reason with her. His words:

I work in environmental protection as a professional. If you want clean air and water, build a city on Mars where closed-loop recycling is mandatory. Almost all current treatment systems are open-loop. That technology will not stay rooted on Mars.

Her response? “Go #%*$ yourself, idiot!”

Recently, in my caving community, some high officials in the national organization had hijacked the national organization’s letterhead and listserv to endorse the leftist political movement “Black Lives Matter.” When several ordinary members rightly questioned the misuse of the organization’s facilities, without approval, they were immediately accused of being bigoted racists, with the strong implication that they obviously wanted blacks killed by the police.

The slanders were not subtle, and it was clear that if the accusers, one of which I knew personally to be a loyal liberal Democrat, could have had their opponents kicked out of the organization and even arrested, I think they would have celebrated. How dare anyone challenge the actions or rightness of any leftwing person or political organization?

Last fall I wrote several posts critical of the movie “First Man,” stating that it appeared to trivialize the Apollo 11 achievement while also apparently trying to minimize the role of America in making it happen.

I sent the link to my posts to fellow space authority Keith Cowing, who in the past I have defended when NASA tried to squelch his ability to report on the agency’s bad management. I thought he might find it interesting, even though I figured he’d probably disagree based on my sense of his overall political beliefs.

His response? “Blocking you. Will complain to [my science journalist organization] if you try again.”

With the Wuhan flu panic, I have had people I thought were friends accuse me of being disrespectful and willing to have people die because I do not believe a mask is useful, and in fact can be counterproductive. When I tried to present the data that backs up my position, I was immediately dismissed, and told to basically go to hell. They want nothing more to do with me, and would I think be happy if I was made a non-person.

These are only a small sampling of numerous personal experiences I’ve had over the past thirty years, or have been described to me by numerous other conservatives. Increasingly, the opposition to conservative and pro-American ideals has morphed from mere disagreement to outright hate and violent anger.

I face this reality every day. It is why the bulk of my writing is on this webpage, or self-published as ebooks, because doing things that way insulates me from this oppressive movement. When I have tried to work with others, I have found myself repeatedly stymied. Time after time, I have been told by others what my opinion should be, by them.

Here, they have trouble reaching me, because I am not dependent on their leftwing authoritarian surrogates at Google, Facebook, Twitter and in the editorial offices of publishers.

I also realize that my margin of safety is shrinking steadily. Without a social order that supports freedom, the ability of anyone to express dissent dies.

And while the ordinary Democrats I know personally have not yet transitioned to violence, they are clearly in support of the political movements that have made that transition. They would never commit violence, but they now have surrogates who will, and they are very committed to voting for them. Anything to get Trump out of office.

To them, persecution is now cool. It helps them obtain their political agenda, and that is all that matters. So what if the politicians they vote for run over people and destroy them along the way. They must get what they want, by any means necessary.

This sentence from the link sums the situation up nicely:

At the same time that Islamic religious leaders are mostly silent on the genocide, Islamic political leaders have spoken out.

It appears that Islamic political leaders have generally been forthright in condemning ISIS’s actions, something that we should take heart from. Islam’s religious leaders however have taken a more partisan stand, worrying that ISIS’s actions might harm Islam and thus condemning it for that reason. That Christians and other non-Muslims might be murdered however does not seem to be a concern for these Islamic religious leaders.

This happened, not in Egypt or Syria or Iran or Iraq, but in California, on the campus of the University of California-Davis. And while it happened the police did nothing.

The Solimans [a Christian family] have been in hiding with a Muslim family which saved them from their burning homes, and is presently giving them protection. Muslims threatened that if eight Coptic families were not evicted by February 3rd, all remaining 54 Coptic families in the village would be subjected to violence after Friday prayers. They called it “Friday of Eviction” and “Friday of Clean-up.”

On Wednesday February 1, a hastily organized reconciliation meeting was arranged by security authorities, and was attended by Ebeskharion Soliman and one of his sons. The terms of the agreement which resulted were:

• eviction of eight Coptic families, namely three of the Mourad families, in addition to five Soliman families.
• selling of the assets of the wealthy Abeskhayron Soliman family within three months by a committee, under the supervision of Salafi shaikh Sherif el Hawary. Soliman has no right to get involved in the sale or even accompany a prospective buyer.
• the Committee is to collect any money accrued from the sale of his land, properties, businesses as well as collect promissory notes pending from business transactions by the Soliman-owned chain of stores.
• in case of non-implementation of this Agreement, all Copts in the Kobry-el-Sharbat village will be attacked, their homes and property completely torched.

Abeskhayron Soliman signed the agreement, which most Copts viewed as “humiliating.” Father Boktor, who attended the meeting, described the reconciliation agreement as “utter injustice.”

I find the last item in this so-called “agreement” most enlightening.

And then there’s this: An affront Catholics agree on.

And this: The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America has announced its unanimous support of the Catholic Church and opposition to the Obama Administration over the new Obamacare regulations.

My question is this: if Obama should back down before the election and cancel these odious regulations, will the liberal church leaders forget the whole thing and support him again, or will they finally wake up and see him for what he is: an arrogant power-hungry politician eager to force his will on everyone, regardless of their beliefs?

So far, the campaign has identified 55 “deniers” in the meteorologist community and are looking for more. They define “deniers” as “anyone who expressly refutes the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change: that it is real, largely caused by humans, and already having profound impacts on our world. … We track the views of meteorologists through their on-air statements, blog posts, social media activity, public appearances, interviews, and interactions with viewers,” the campaign explains.

In other words, they should be fired because of their opinions.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

The quote is part of an op-ed signed by sixteen prominent scientists describing why there is no need to panic over global warming.

North Korea tops a list of the world’s worst religious persecutors for the tenth consecutive year, but Islamic states dominate the rankings, accounting for nine of the top ten and 38 of the full 50-country list released Wednesday.

There is a pattern here, I think, though hard as I try it is hard to see it. Maybe it’s related to Islamophobia somehow?