1/7/2014::In other news, that which got left behind

Stand firm on beliefs, King tells his backers

U.S. Rep. Steve King, who has a reputation for making controversial comments, says in a campaign fundraising email that he’s “doubling down” against his critics and vows he won’t retreat from his conservative beliefs.

The Iowa Republican compares his enemies to foes of Phil Robertson of the television reality show “Duck Dynasty,” who King contends were attacking Christianity itself. Robertson, who made remarks about gays and blacks during an interview with GQ, was simply expressing his opinion using Bible-based truths, the congressman says.

King, who created a firestorm last year by suggesting that many undocumented immigrants are drug smugglers with “calves the size of cantaloupes,” is expected to be challenged in November for his 4th Congressional District seat by Democratic candidate Jim Mowrer, a Boone native and an Iraq war veteran who has also worked at the Pentagon. The district covers northwest Iowa and north-central Iowa, including Sioux City, Fort Dodge and Ames.

Jon Stewart to Fox News’ Varney: ‘Your f*cking opinion is not as valid as scientific fact’

Jon Stewart’s wish to start 2014 without “left vs. right ideological bullsh*t” was quickly dashed on The Daily Show Monday night, as he confronted conservatives’ continued spewing of hot air regarding global warming.

“There you have it: ‘War on Christmas’ is over; ‘war on carbon’ begins,” Stewart said. “Global warming: Just one more liberal conspiracy. Because even though there is a great deal of scientific data establishing climate change trends. Even though many of the models of global warming predict more extremes of weather — not just warming — apparently decades of peer-reviewed scientific study can be, like a ficus plant, destroyed in one cold weekend.”

Stewart got particularly incensed at Fox News host Stuart Varney’s argument that a Russian research ship’s getting trapped in ice in Antartica proved the world was getting colder, which he punctuated with a blithe, “That’s just my opinion.”

'Anonymous’ Leaves Special Message On White Supremacists’ Home Page

As it turns out, hackers who say they’re with ‘Anonymous’ infiltrated the website and left a message for all white supremacists to see. The hackers decided to leave the majority of the website in perfectly functioning order. Only the homepage had been changed. Instead of racism and white supremacy, any visitor to the page would simply find a message condemning bigotry and fascism. The message also served as a promise that ‘Anonymous’ has these groups on their radar.

“Greetings, fellow Anons and Citizens of the world,” the message began. “It has come to our attention that Fascists and white power groups across the world are causing the spread of hate and ignorance. A spectre is haunting the Earth, the spectre of Facism [sic]. For [too] long, we have seen the damage caused by the ideology of white supremacy. We have seen, and participated in, many decades of resistance to white supremacy. We, and others, will never stop fighting fascism and racism wherever it rears its head.”

Translation? ‘Anonymous,’ the global network of hackers known for internet vigilantism, has placed white supremacy groups in their cross-hairs. That should make these groups shiver. The last people anyone should want to anger are hackers. Especially those who belong to ‘Anonymous.’ Not too long ago, the hacker group single-handedly trashed the capabilities of a different white supremacist group and exposed Ron Paul as a card-carrying member of the racist club.

Imagine Trying To Pay Bills On Little Money. Then Imagine They Want To Take Half Of That Away

When folks talk about "cutting entitlements," these are some of the people affected.

Religion as a Product of Psychotropic Drug Use

The notion that hallucinogenic drugs played a significant part in the development of religion has been extensively discussed, particularly since the middle of the twentieth century. Various ideas of this type have been collected into what has become known as the entheogen theory. The word entheogen is a neologism coined in 1979 by a group of ethnobotanists (those that study the relationship between people and plants). The literal meaning of entheogen is "that which causes God to be within an individual" and might be considered as a more accurate and academic term for popular terms such as hallucinogen or psychedelic drug. By the term entheogen we understand the use of psychoactive substances for religious or spiritual reasons rather than for purely recreational purposes.

Perhaps one of the first things to consider is whether there is any direct evidence for the entheogenic theory of religion which derives from contemporary science. One famous example that has been widely discussed is the Marsh Chapel experiment. This experiment was run by the Harvard Psilocybin Project in the early 1960s, a research project spearheaded by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. Leary had traveled to Mexico in 1960, where he had been introduced to the effects of hallucinogenic psilocybin-containing mushrooms and was anxious to explore the implications of the drug for psychological research.

Why Police Lie Under Oath

THOUSANDS of people plead guilty to crimes every year in the United States because they know that the odds of a jury’s believing their word over a police officer’s are slim to none. As a juror, whom are you likely to believe: the alleged criminal in an orange jumpsuit or two well-groomed police officers in uniforms who just swore to God they’re telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? As one of my colleagues recently put it, “Everyone knows you have to be crazy to accuse the police of lying.”

But are police officers necessarily more trustworthy than alleged criminals? I think not. Not just because the police have a special inclination toward confabulation, but because, disturbingly, they have an incentive to lie. In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.

That may sound harsh, but numerous law enforcement officials have put the matter more bluntly. Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner, wrote an article in The San Francisco Chronicle decrying a police culture that treats lying as the norm: “Police officer perjury in court to justify illegal dope searches is commonplace. One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets of the criminal justice system is undercover narcotics officers intentionally lying under oath. It is a perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law. Yet it is the routine way of doing business in courtrooms everywhere in America.”