Texas Shouldn't – BUT JUST DID – Execute a Mexican National
Yesterday, at 9:32 p.m., the state of Texas executed Edgar Arias Tamayo, a 46-year-old Mexican national. Injecting lethal drugs into Mr. Tamayo's bloodstream was a clear violation of the United States' international obligations, and yet the state of Texas wasn't deterred.Va. Republicans ready to defend same-sex marriage ban
What's going on here? The short answer: a deadly combination of a blood-thirsty state and a stalled Congress.
Outraged Virginia Republicans quickly began searching for a way to preserve the state’s gay marriage ban Thursday after Attorney General Mark R. Herring announced that he would join a lawsuit seeking to have it declared unconstitutional.A Win for the Climate Scientist Who Skeptics Compared to Jerry Sandusky
Some GOP legislators were exploring ways to defend the ban without Herring’s help. Herring’s most ardent opponents sought to take legal action against the attorney general for what they described as his misuse of the office. The National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex unions, called for Herring’s impeachment on grounds of alleged “malfeasance” and “neglect of duty,” though legislators did not go that far.
“I don’t know what the difference between a dictatorship and this is,” said state Sen. Richard H. Black (R-Loudoun).
In 2012—after writers for National Review and a prominent conservative think tank accused him of fraud and compared him to serial child molester Jerry Sandusky—climate scientist Michael Mann took the bold step of filing a defamation suit. The defendants moved to have the case thrown out, citing a Washington, DC, law that shields journalists from frivolous litigation. But on Wednesday, DC Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg rejected the motion, opening the way for a trial.What's Wrong with the Ten Commandments?
Although public figures like Mann have to clear a high bar to prove defamation, Weisberg argued that the scientist's complaint may pass the test. And he brushed aside the defendants' claims that the fraud allegations were "pure opinion," which is protected by the First Amendment:
Accusing a scientist of conducting his research fraudulently, manipulating his data to achieve a predetermined or political outcome, or purposefully distorting the scientific truth are factual allegations. They go to the heart of scientific integrity. They can be proven true or false. If false, they are defamatory. If made with actual malice, they are actionable.Weisberg's order is just the latest in a string of setbacks that have left the climate change skeptics' case in disarray. Earlier this month, Steptoe & Johnson, the law firm representing National Review and its writer, Mark Steyn, withdrew as Steyn's counsel. According to two sources with inside knowledge, it also plans to drop National Review as a client.
Critics of the Christian bible occasionally can score a point or two in discussion with the religious community by noting the many teachings in both the Old and New Testaments that encourage the bible believer to hate and to kill, biblical lessons that history proves Christians have taken most seriously. Nonetheless the bible defendant is apt to offer as an indisputable parting shot, "But don't forget the ten commandments. They are the basic bible teaching. Study the ten commandments."
Do study the ten commandments! They epitomize the childishness, the vindictiveness, the sexism, the inflexibility and the inadequacies of the bible as a book of morals.
Actually, only six of the 10 commandments deal with an individual's moral conduct, which comes as a surprise to most Christians. ("I never realized that!" said my husband, whose background includes a total immersion baptism, both Sunday school and church every week, non-questioning parents and a grandfather who was a Missouri preacher. Happily, the indoctrination never took.)
No comments:
Post a Comment