2/15/2014::Lots o' News

This turned out to be more of a Remnant of the Week instead of Day :)

Texas’s Bexar County Leaders Vote for Domestic Partner Health Benefits

The vote is the latest in a string of pro-LGBT legislation in the county. In September, the city council of San Antonio, the largest city in Bexar County, voted 8 to 3 in favor of updating the city ordinances to ban discrimination against LGBT residents in contracting, housing, public accommodations and city employment.

Could Creationism Become Law?

Creationists are on the march. In four states, there are proposed laws seeking to restrict ‘controversial’ teaching about science and allowing parents to pull their children from lessons about evolution.

In the aftermath of Tuesday’s debate between Bill Nye, “the Science Guy” and Ken Ham, the founder of Kentucky’s Creation Museum over evolution, more attention has been drawn to the ongoing attempts of creationists to reverse ground lost since the Scopes Trial and return to the chronology of the world established by Bishop James Ussher in the 17th century which firmly placed the Earth’s creation on Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC.

While not all creationists may adhere to Bishop Ussher’s precise chronology, there are ongoing efforts in several states to make their school curriculums adhere more closely to Ussher than to Darwin. Such efforts are underway in four states.

Atheist group appeals lease for Big Mountain Jesus statue

An atheist group seeking to remove a statue of Jesus from Whitefish Mountain Resort has taken its case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation lost its initial case last June when U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen ruled the U.S. Forest Service could reissue a 10-year permit to keep the 60-year-old statue on the ski slope. It was originally placed near the summit by the Knights of Columbus to honor members of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division and World War II veterans.

The atheist group challenged the permit renewal in 2011, and Flathead National Forest officials initially rescinded it. But Flathead Forest Supervisor Chip Weber decided to authorize a new lease in 2012, and the lawsuit followed. The foundation argued the Jesus statue was a preferential consideration for a Catholic religious shrine in violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution.

After Delivering the GOP’s SOTU Rebuttal Cathy McMorris Rodgers Faces Ethics Investigation

Republicans thought they were making a safe choice when they chose McMorris Rodgers to deliver their SOTU rebuttal. Her remarks themselves were full of God, family, and lots of flag waving. I am sure they played well to the Reagan worshipping crowd in the Republican Party, but many Americans were left shaking their heads, and asking what the heck was that?

It turns out that, surprise, McMorris Rodgers isn’t as wholesome apple pie as she claimed to be. Improperly mixing campaign and official funds isn’t the biggest crime that can be committed. She is no one woman crime wave like Michele Bachmann, but it is always a problem when party leaders face ethics investigations. It’s an even bigger black eye when that leader recently appeared all across national television selling the values of the Republican Party.

The Christian Right's Bizarre Delusions of Persecution

Christian conservatives feel aggrieved and they want to be heard. The problem is that their specific grievance---that everyone else hurts their feelings by not admitting we’re inferior---kind of sounds, well, hard to sympathize with. They need something snappier, a reason to claim that they are being oppressed by “anti-Christian bigotry”. The only problem with that is that in a majority Christian nation, most people are actually pretty accepting and even admiring of Christianity. Even if they disagree with right wing Christianity, they don’t do so because it’s Christian but because it’s conservative. Being a Christian is a privileged position in American society; that makes it really hard to claim you’re being oppressed.

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Time and time again, Christian right stories of oppression turn out to be bunk. A kid who was disciplined for fighting is turned, in the Christian myth machine, into a kid who was punished for quietly praying to himself. A track athlete is disqualified for disrespecting a teacher, but the Christian media says it was because he thanked God. A Southern Baptist website is blocked for accidentally distributing malware, but in the hands of the conservative press, it’s oppression. They need to be victimized. No one can really bother to do it for them. So they have no choice but to do it for themselves.

Arizona Medicaid Expansion Lawsuit Gets Tossed

A lawsuit challenging Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's Medicaid expansion plan that was filed by fellow Republicans in the state Legislature was dismissed in a ruling released Saturday, handing Brewer a major victory in her battle against conservative members of her own party.

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That's not likely. The suit was filed by the Goldwater Institute on behalf of 36 Republican legislators and several citizens, and Goldwater issued a statement saying it planned to appeal.

"Unfortunately, this ruling greatly damages Arizona's critically important voter-enacted constitutional protection requiring a two-thirds legislative supermajority for all new taxes, even when the government is responding to a 'crisis or emergency' or a program 'for the poor.'" Goldwater attorney Christina Sandefur said. "If this decision stands, it would enable a simple majority of legislators to vote to ignore a constitutional supermajority requirement when politically convenient, shielding that vote from legal challenge."