Havoc and Chaos: January 9, 2016::End of the day round-up

So this tidbit of information piqued a few comments.  Primarily, what a load of crap and condusion.

Retired General Predicts Obama Will Start Killing US Soldiers

I don’t want to say what I think is going on because I don’t like the conspiracy theory business, but I really have a feeling that, as we move down the road, I think that, it’s unfortunate, but I think that we really have a lot of people out there now who are working for this particular government who would like to take over the country and run it just like a dictatorship.

The thing that stops — and this is what the Second Amendment really is all about —the thing that stops people who are absolutely anti-American, anti-Christian, the only thing that stops them dead in their tracks is the U.S. military, and the only way you can overcome the U.S. military is you’ve got to shoot them, you’ve got to kill them.

I have a feeling that while it may not work out that way, I have a feeling some of these people who are buying these ammunition and doing the training, I think that that’s exactly what they’re about, their idea is they hope they will have an opportunity to kill American soldiers and to take over the country and run it. It sounds awful and it sounds crazy. (emphasis added)

Florida university dismisses ‘truther’ professor who taunted parents of 6-year-old Sandy Hook victim

Florida Atlantic University has dismissed a professor who said massacres at a Connecticut elementary school and a county office building in San Bernardino, California, were staged, the university said.

Media professor James Tracy’s last day at the university in Boca Raton will be Friday, the school said in a statement after alerting him of the decision in a letter on Tuesday.

Tracy, 50, has worked at the university since 2002. He could not be reached on Wednesday and his attorney, Thomas Johnson, declined to comment.

Conservative Christians Are on a Mission in Public Schools

Jason Evert, the founder of the Chastity Project, says the key to a happy life is for girls to dress modestly and abstain from sexual intimacy until marriage. He holds a number of inaccurate beliefs about sexually transmitted infections and has a habit of misrepresenting studies in the social sciences. What makes his story interesting is that he is paid to present his views on sexuality and relationships to public school students.

Evert is far from alone. Religious groups keen on getting their messages to teenagers have found an effective way to do it at public expense. They come into public schools under the banner of substance abuse programs, character education, anti-bullying education, or sex education. Then they set aside the education and get down to the business of promoting a religious message, sometimes along with a partisan political agenda.

The problem of faith-based assemblies in public schools is not new, but they are occurring under new guises, and their frequency appears to be growing. These publicly supported proselytizers take advantage of two key trends. Under relentless budgetary pressure, public schools increasingly allow outside groups to develop and manage courses that previously originated inside the school. At the same time, the Supreme Court has set a very high threshold for concerns related to the Establishment Clause, or the separation of church and state—or, in this case, church and school.
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In 2015, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a national civil liberties organization, received approximately 270 complaints related to religion in public schools.* “Some speakers make it a point to keep the in-school presentation secular,” says Americans United attorney Ian Smith, “but others don’t even bother and just openly preach to the assembled students.”

“Regardless of the nature of the assembly,” Smith continues, “almost all of them illegally utilize the opportunity to invite students to an after-school event that is explicitly religious. And this is because, regardless of whether the speaker or group follows the rules during the assembly or not, their goal is ultimately to get the kids into a church and to proselytize them.”

Microsoft Ends An Era: Support For Internet Explorer 8, 9, And 10 Stops Next Week

The end is nigh: as of Tuesday, January 12, Microsoft will issue its final support patch for versions 8, 9, and 10 of its Internet Explorer browser, bringing one of the web’s clunkiest tools one step closer to vanishing.

The Abortion Case That Could Overturn Roe v. Wade Has A Lot Of Opponents

A looming Supreme Court case that could severely undermine the right to an abortion has attracted an unprecedented amount of opposition from across the country.

A slew of organizations and individuals filed 45 legal briefs in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, each brief examining the case through a unique lens and each coming to the same conclusion: State laws that restrict abortion access are unconstitutional.

The case will examine the validity of a Texas law, known as HB2, that places burdensome, unnecessary guidelines on the state’s dwindling abortion clinics. These regulations, while framed as improvements to safeguard “women’s health,” ultimately have nothing to do with patient safety — and were instead created by anti-abortion legislators to impose additional, costly red tape on clinic staff. So far, it’s been successful. HB2 has already forced half of the state’s clinics to close, thus cutting Texas’ abortion providers in half.

The Supreme Court case, Whole Women’s Health v. Cole, won’t only decide if Texas’ law is constitutional. Depending how the court rules, the decision could also give legal cover to all states seeking to enact laws that appear to function as health regulations, but that actually exist to restrict access to abortion. The oral arguments for the case begin in March.
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A group of 40 prominent scientists also submitted a brief Tuesday, hoping to overrule the “flawed pseudoscience” that will be used in testimony to support the case.

“We hope the court is able to put abortion politics aside and focus on the illegitimacy of the medical claims propping up the restrictions,” said Robyn Blumner, president and CEO of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science. “When science claims are used to infringe a constitutional right they had better be valid, but that’s not the case here.”

After Pressure from Atheists, Grand Haven City Council Puts a Stop to Giant Hydraulic Cross

In October, atheist activists Mitch Kahle and Holly Huber began challenging the Hydraulic Cross. With residents Brian and Kathy Plescher and attorneys from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, they requested that the Cross be used to promote their own views… including, for example, decorating it to celebrate LGBT pride, the winter solstice, reproductive rights, and atheism.

Hilarious. And a perfect response to anyone who claimed the Cross wasn’t really about promoting religion.

Last night, at a meeting of the Grand Haven City Council, the members voted 3-2 to turn that Hydraulic Cross into a permanent anchor and stop letting it get hijacked by various religious and non-religious groups looking to promote their agendas. Success!