"Until we can adequately vet these refugees and ensure the safety of all Americans, I support President Trump's executive order to stay refugees from these terror-prone countries."

Thank you, followers of Evolution. Maybe it's time you started defending your faith with more than this unsubstantiated article? God must be having a good time watching us trying to figure out [the duck-billed] platypus.

Why would I believe that man comes from polar bear? Have you heard of the word sarcasm? HAHA. You guys believe in anything like monkeys came from bacteria and bacteria from random chemical reactions. Stupid brains produce stupid books and stupid buyers of that book too. HAHA.

America has dealt with atheists before in the form of communists. The killing spree of atheists is not over yet, Ameica has yet to deal with China a few years from now and Russia as well. Europe has become atheist also and America has to deal with them too in some future time.

[Title: TikTok psychic sued for accusing professor of killing 4 Idaho students
Note: an unrelated suspect was arrested since. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/30/idaho-students-homicide-arrest/]

Ashley Guillard claims she knows who killed four University of Idaho students [...]. Her source of information? Tarot card readings. In scores of videos posted to her TikTok account, the self-styled psychic unwinds a bizarre and baseless theory that the chair of the university’s history department orchestrated the killings after a romantic entanglement with one of the students.
[...]
Now the historian at the center of Guillard’s allegations, Rebecca Scofield, has filed a defamation lawsuit against her.
[...]
The cards then led her to the word “history.” She pulled up the University of Idaho’s history department website and saw Scofield at the top of the page. Another reading told her the history chair was involved, Guillard said. That was that—she was convinced. She told a Post reporter not to dismiss card reading as speculation. “Having my gift or my ability, I know what I know,” she said.
She started posting her claims Nov. 24, using Scofield’s university photo and saying repeatedly — and without any evidence — that she had ordered the students’ killings because she did not want people to find out that she was in a same-sex relationship with one of the victims.
[...]
She told The Post that she isn’t worried about being sued, that “time will tell and I’m willing to take the risk.” She has not hired an attorney. “I’m going to keep posting. I’m not taking anything down,” she said. “If in the alternate universe, if I was wrong, this is an open and shut case. I did say she ordered the execution of the four University of Idaho students. I’m still posting. I’ve said a lot of things about her. I’m not going to stop. If I’m such a liar, I’m so wrong about it, then in court she will win.”

[Opinion piece title: "Putin pitches the American right with an ungodly invocation of God"]

[...]Vladimir Putin is sounding like someone who wants to enter the 2024 Republican presidential primaries. [...] the Russian dictator fired a series of heat-seeking verbal missiles into our culture wars.

“Look at what they’ve done to their own people,” he said of us Westerners. “They’re destroying family, national identity, they are abusing their children. Even pedophilia is announced as a normal thing in the West.” Never mind that Russia is a world leader in sex trafficking.
[...]
“And they’re recognizing same-sex marriages,” he said. “That’s fine that they’re adults. They’ve got the right to live their life. And we always, we’re very tolerant about this in Russia. Nobody is trying to enter private lives of people, and we’re not going to do this.”

Well, not quite, but he pressed on: “However, we need to tell them, but look at the scriptures of any religion in the world. Everything is said in there. And one of the things is that family is a union of a man and a woman.”

Among his enemies, Putin charged, “even the sacred texts are subjected to doubt.” Also, watch out, Britain: The “Anglican Church is planning to consider the idea of a gender-neutral God,” Putin mourned. “What can you say here? Millions of people in the West understand that they are being led to spiritual destruction.”
[...]

French nationalist Marine Le Pen has executed one of the most extraordinary political rebrandings in the Western world[…]
French newspaper Libération has been compiling an “endless list” of National Rally candidates who have made or relayed “reprehensible remarks” online[…]
Glimmers of racism and antisemitism from National Rally candidates and supporters can bolster the impression that the movement has changed less than its leaders say[…]
Marie-Christine Sorin, a National Rally candidate in southwestern France, posted on X in January that “not all civilizations are equal” and that some “have remained below bestiality in the chain of evolution”[…]
Sophie Dumont, a National Rally candidate in northeastern France, was spotlighted by Libération for a post implying that Jewish financing was behind Reconquest, a rival far-right party led by Eric Zemmour, who is Jewish. Zemmour’s adviser had said that the ritual slaughter of animals to make kosher and halal meat should not be banned in France. “The small gesture that betrays the origin of the funds that fuel Reconquest”[…]
Agnès Pageard, a National Rally candidate in Paris, has advocated for abolishing a law that makes it illegal to question the Holocaust and another that bans “incitement to hatred” against religious or racial groups[…]
Asked about seemingly antisemitic comments from candidates running in this election, National Rally frontman Bardella told French media that the process of selecting candidates for the surprise elections had necessarily been rushed, with “dozens, even hundreds of investitures … made in a few hours.” Never mind that some of the same candidates had run under the National Rally banner in past elections, too

Many of Truth Social’s investors say they’re in it for the long haul. Todd Schlanger, an interior designer at a furniture store in West Palm Beach who said Trump had been one of his customers, said he’s invested about $20,000 in total and is buying new shares every week.


Schlanger said he now watches his stock performance every day hoping for positive signs. In a Truth Social post last week, he encouraged “everyone who supports Donald Trump and Truth [Social to] buy a share everyday” and asked, “Do you think we have hit bottom?” (The stock has slid about 25 percent since that post.)


He suspects the recent drops in share price have been the result of “stock manipulation” from an “organized effort” to make the company look bad. There’s no proof of such a campaign, but Schlanger is convinced. “It’s got to be political,” he said, from all the “liberals that are trying to knock it down.”

(Remember Judith Newman and her book “To Siri With Love”, where talking about how she would like to have her autistic son castrated is far from the worst thing she does, while completely assured of her own self-righteousness, and yet got praised by the neurotypical critics and public? By all accounts, this book is even worse. Far worse.)

Bystanders were horrified. But my son has autism, and I was desperate.

What I did to help my 5-year-old autistic son overcome his intense fear of indoor spaces might not have been right or even safe. Doctors didn’t recommend it. The people who witnessed it were appalled, understandably. I don’t suggest this for others.

I could have been more patient with conventional methods, but I wasn’t. I am not certified in restraining children, though doctors say anyone attempting what I did should be. They would also recommend a much slower approach.

I am writing this because I hope to educate people about the burden families face when their autistic children have tantrums in public spaces, so next time you witness such a struggle you don’t immediately resort to blaming the parents. I’m also reaching out to fellow parents in pain to remind them to cast off shame, because I believe nothing is more important than getting your autistic children out into the world.
AD

It was a desperate time. Nothing else had worked for Zack — flashcards, photos, play therapy. gradual exposure to feared indoor spaces. That is how, very much against his will, I ended up physically dragging Zack into Verizon Center (now Capital One Arena) one day 10 years ago to see his favorite character, Elmo, perform as part of a “Sesame Street Live!” show.

There is nothing anyone could have said that would have convinced me my son was anything other than precious and worthy of the extreme measures I intended to take to save him from a life entrapped by autistic phobias.

My mind-set that day: If I can get him through this without either of us getting physically hurt, his fear of this place will be behind him for good. He will reset his association with this arena, and it will no longer be frightening. I believe this deeply, but getting him over the hurdle is terrifying.
AD

‘I have this thing called autism’: A boy’s eloquent message to his fourth-grade classmates

We enter Verizon Center, and the moment the exterior door closes behind us, Zack reels back and plunges toward it, trying frantically to get back outside. At 50 pounds, his furious strength is a troubling match for mine. He is a thoroughbred of resistance.

My usually buoyant child is slamming his fists and clawing at the metal door’s push bar. I quickly seize him by the shoulders and pry his fingers from the bar as he jerks his head back in a sudden motion. His skull smashes into my chin, and I taste the metallic taint of my own blood.

I give up trying to pry his fingers away, wrap both arms tightly around his torso and yank him back fiercely. We both tumble to the floor. Zack momentarily escapes my grip and scrambles back toward the door, but I leap on top of him, pinning his entire body flat to the ground. We are still in the vestibule.
AD

This was a mistake, too ambitious, I think to myself. Everything is happening too quickly.

Breathlessly, I pivot myself to secure Zack’s entire body between my thighs as I clamp down tightly and interlock my feet to prevent him from breaking free. Zack is shrieking at an alarmingly high pitch, but I keep heaving and dragging us both, inch by dreadful inch, closer to the show’s main entrance area, which we are separated from by a red curtain. I can hear voices around us.

“Hey, lady! Your kid obviously doesn’t want to go to the show!”

An icy shock sprints down my back, and I reflexively arch and look around wildly. Someone has just thrown their soda at me.

No, I’m not giving up.

Suddenly, I feel an imaginary cloak descend and slowly envelop me. These are the moments I’ve been dreading, but also building toward, and I don this invisible armor, now impervious to ridicule because I don’t care what anyone thinks. My singular focus is getting Zack where he needs to be: inside the main area, looking at Elmo. The show has already begun inside, and I know Elmo is on the stage.
AD

Okay, get in his head now, talk back to his thoughts. Keep it simple.

“Zack, you are doing it! I know you’re afraid, but all you have to do is stay here, you’re already doing it, you’ve already won. Just stay and watch, sit and watch, that’s it. You did it. You’re doing it. You did it!” A simple and repetitive mantra to penetrate the panic and break through the force field.

In a now recovered and controlled voice, I loudly announce, “My son has autism and he’s terrified. I’m working with him to get his fears under control.”

A manager strides toward us, summoned to calm the explosive scene.

“Miss, I’m afraid this is too disruptive to the other patrons to let this continue, you’ll have to leave.” No response. Repeat with emphasis. “Miss, you are creating a public disturbance, and I need to escort you and your child out of the auditorium right now.”
AD

“No,” I respond calmly without looking up. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m a paying customer too, and I have a right to be here, and so does my autistic son.”

Suddenly, from the far reaches of my mind, the legal jargon jettisons to the surface. What was that ADA language about the right of disabled people to access public facilities? That they have a right not be discriminated against because of their disability, a right to reasonable accommodations to access public venues. My son is not legally required to enter the auditorium quietly. He’s allowed to enter on his own disabled terms. I am his reasonable accommodation.

Zack will ride in on me.

Okay, one more push forward with Zack squeezed between my legs, and that curtain that separates the hallway where we are and the seated auditorium is within arm’s reach. Once the curtain is pulled back, he will see all the children in their seats, and he will see Elmo on the stage. But I am on the floor and I can’t reach the curtain.
AD

I quickly gesture with my hand to the woman guarding the entrance to please pull back that curtain so my son can finally see inside and glimpse the purpose behind the long, bitter altercation. I need her to act quickly. She tries a few times to reach my son with chirpy words that fall on deaf ears.

“LADY, he’s got AUTISM, please just pull back the curtain!” I hiss.

She wordlessly pulls back the plush red velvet in a single swoop to reveal a bright-red, singing caricature on a large stage, clearly visible even from our long distance. I quickly point Zack in his direction and exclaim, “There’s ELMO! Elmo is singing! Look, Zack, it’s Elmo!”

Zack’s eyes catch hold of Elmo, and suddenly he’s too stunned to scream or speak, his hysteria abruptly interrupted by the sight of a familiar friend. Transfixed by the furry creature, Zack sits still and stares intently.
AD

I quickly move to slide him further along the floor, closer to the cushioned seats. The rigidness in Zack’s body gives way as he relaxes, a literal crossover to the other side.

Zack is as smooth and malleable as liquid as he sits upright, almost unaware of his own physical existence and wholly locked in on Elmo. I calmly walk him to his seat. The past and future are of no consequence; for him, there is only the present.

As I gaze around the auditorium, Zack is indistinguishable from his peers. In these precious moments I can savor the reality that Zack has succeeded in the greatest challenge of his life — overriding his intense phobia of indoor spaces — long enough to access something beloved.

It took 36 minutes and 45 seconds. And, yes, it was worth it.

‘I’m more awesomer’: How kids with facial differences are reacting to the movie ‘Wonder’

It was the first in a series of exposures to crowded public places for Zack and me. His transition at the Verizon Center allowed him to enjoy the Elmo show, and also return repeatedly to that auditorium without fear, because he replaced his previous negative association with a positive one. For Zack, the gradual exposure approach was not effective. What worked for him was a single, traumatic episode in which he could grasp the purpose of the exposure and feel good about it.
AD

I spoke with his doctor afterward, and he confirmed that by refusing to allow Zack to escape the place he feared, I broke the pattern of negative reinforcement and allowed him to “reset the record.” I also learned that, as a last resort, in a controlled way and only after years of therapy, a licensed behavioral clinician might have physically restrained Zack to force him to confront his fears, had he not responded to more gradual methods.

In the past, when I’d retreated home with him during a tantrum, I was unintentionally reinforcing his phobia. But the doctor made it clear to me he would not recommend this method for any child unless all other methods had been exhausted, and the child was able to handle it without causing harm to himself or others.

For us, the Elmo success paved the way for outings to other indoor places he feared — Disney World, movie theaters, airplanes, the Baltimore Aquarium. Each exposure required less time for him to acclimate. We found that while Zack was initially confused and frightened, he always adjusted. Over time, he became less fearful of all indoor places. He also gained self-esteem once he realized he was conquering his fears and accessing more of the world. And in possibly his biggest win, his overall demeanor became as calm and predictable as his perception of life itself.

Ellenby is a lawyer, writer and mother based in Montgomery County. This piece was adapted from her upcoming book, “Autism Uncensored: Pulling Back the Curtain,” which details her struggles and triumphs with her son’s autism.

[Excerpts from a report on her pro "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" testimony]

Donnelly treated the panel to an extraordinary exhibition of rage. She warned of "transgenders in the military." She warned that lesbians would take pictures of people in the shower. She spoke ominously of gays spreading "HIV positivity" through the ranks.

"We're talking about real consequences for real people," Donnelly proclaimed. Her written statement added warnings about "inappropriate passive/aggressive actions common in the homosexual community," the prospects of "forcible sodomy" and "exotic forms of sexual expression," and the case of "a group of black lesbians who decided to gang-assault" a fellow soldier.

[...]

But it was Donnelly, founder and president of the Center for Military Readiness, who amused lawmakers the most. Snyder asked Darrah about Donnelly's reference to "passive-aggressive actions common in the homosexual community," saying, "I'm almost tempted to ask you to demonstrate."

Darrah was stumped. "Like a woman who is stared at, her breasts are stared at," Donnelly explained. She further explained the "absolutely devastating" effect of homosexuals "introducing erotic factors" and made a comparison to Sen. Larry Craig's adventure at the Minneapolis airport. She said admitting gays to the military would be "forced cohabitation" and a policy of "relax and enjoy it."

Native American groups have long objected to President Trump’s use of the nickname “Pocahontas” to deride one of his political foes, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).?

But even at a White House event specifically intended to honor the World War II Navajo code talkers — the heroic Native Americans who helped the U.S. Marines send coded messages in the Pacific Theater — Trump couldn’t resist.

?“I just want to thank you because you’re very, very special people,” Trump said Monday afternoon, speaking to a small group of code talkers. “You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who, they say, was here a long time ago. They call her ‘Pocahontas.’ ”

[on legalizing same sex marriages]

What do you expect from the capital?

They've disregarded the wishes of the American majority in favor of their own warped agenda since Obama stepped into the oval office.

They're not going to ram homosexuality down my or my families throats.
We believe homosexuality to be a mental disorder and will stick to know what we believe to be the truth till hell freezes over regardless of what our corrupt and foolish government says or does.

And the next time I see two male homosexuals with their pants down around their ankles doing the "wild thing" in front of women and children in the park,
I'm filing a lawsuit.

In written dissents, Alito and Thomas said the case presents important questions of free speech that have divided lower courts.
“There is fierce debate over how best to help minors with gender dysphoria,” Thomas wrote…

In Thomas’s five-page dissent on Monday, he said Washington’s ban [on conversion therapy for minors] had “silenced one side of this debate” by restricting the First Amendment rights of medical professionals. “Licensed counselors cannot voice anything other than the state-approved opinion on minors with gender dysphoria without facing punishment. The Ninth Circuit set a troubling precedent by condoning this regime,” Thomas wrote.

The slogan, "Make America Great Again" is brilliant. Many of us have watched in disgust as Obama has led a fight against every American value conservatives hold dear. Obama has advanced LGBT rights, illegal alien rights, secularism, and Islam. He has encouraged discord among the races, defiance of police authority, and disregard for the separation of powers.

Many of us see Donald as a leader who will reverse the decline of western civilization and restore America to its rightful place in the world through truth, justice and the American way. This is reality. We need a superman to lead us, and that man is Donald Trump.

Enough of the Obama weakling and his sob sisters.

[The quote was at the end of a WaPo 2023-09-02 article, I thought it may be entertaining enough for FSTDT. I thought about including the mammon tag for fun, but...]

Trump, however, said he isn’t going anywhere and that Truth Social was his “home.” In a post there Monday, he wrote, “TRUTH SOCIAL IS THE GREATEST & ‘HOTTEST’ FORM, SYSTEM, & PLATFORM OF COMMUNICATION IN AMERICA, & INDEED THE WORLD, TODAY. THAT’S WHY I USE IT — THERE IS NOTHING THAT COMES EVEN CLOSE!!!”

At a dinner, Ramaswamy told the audience that the public could handle the “truth” about the Capitol riot. Hendrickson later asked him what that “truth” was, obviously understanding that Ramaswamy was generally winking at conspiracy theories like those elevated by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Ramaswamy shrugged, offering a just-asking-questions response about the unsupported idea that government agents were involved.

“Then, suddenly,” Hendrickson wrote, “he was talking about 9/11.”


“I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers. Maybe the answer is zero. It probably is zero for all I know, right? I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero,” Ramaswamy said. “But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 Commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to.”
Hendrickson pressed him on this, asking the candidate if he was actually uncertain about culpability for the attacks.
“I mean, I would take the truth about 9/11,”

Ramaswamy replied. “I am not questioning what we — this is not something I’m staking anything out on. But I want the truth about 9/11.” He was going to say he wasn’t just asking questions, but, of course, he was.

Your ignorance is showing, since you don't consider Fox a legitimate source of news. A typical leftie response. It's not legitimate because it doesn't espouse your point of view. That would make the Wall St. Journal non-legit as well, I suppose. Oh wait. You don't read that rag because it's only about evil, capitalist business, which of course it is not. As regards white supremacists. People can support whomever they choose. Why no comment on black racists and Muslim anti-Zionists supporting Hillary? Who exactly are the "many sensible people" you mention? Roger Waters? Vanessa Redgrave? Stephen Hawking? Putting a little meat on your plate won't change the fact that you are wrong, but at least it could validate why you feel the way you do. When you hear news you don't like you ignore it.

Mussolini's fascist regime was praised by progressives (you know, the left). Hitler's regime was the National *Socialist* party, and in fact was quite socialist.

Fascism is a left wing idea - it is all about the government making the economy work well through micromanagement. Of course, to do that, it needs strong leaders, and the result was Mussolini. Hitler was an admirer of Mussolini and copied his ideas.

“Nobody writes a book on the correct way of parenting,” Sharron Dobbins explained to ABC 15 Arizona this week, shortly after her release from jail on a felony child abuse charge.

It’s true — there is no instruction manual for raising two teenage sons. But as Dobbins, 40, told a reporter on her Phoenix front lawn, she had certain parental tips and tricks.

She had the Bible, for example, and the verse she recited often to her sons: “Honor thy mother and father, or their days will be shortened.”

And on a particularly frustrating Easter Sunday morning, as she tried to get the 17-year-old ready for church, she had her Taser handy, too.

“I said, ‘Get up! It’s Jesus day!’ ” Dobbins recalled to ABC 15.

Easter services at Greater New Zion Missionary Baptist Church had started at sunrise that day. But nearly two hours later, the teenager insisted on staying home with his friends, Dobbins said.

“He said some cuss words at me,” she told Fox 10 Phoenix. “He said that his friends don’t have to go anywhere.”

The boy was no stranger to trouble, Dobbins would later tell a court; he wore an ankle bracelet and was under her legal custody.

So by way of convincing him that he needed to be in church, Dobbins said, she fetched her Taser and stood with it in her son’s bedroom.

This is where the mother’s story begins to depart from a police report obtained by 3TV/CBS 5. Dobbins said she merely sparked the device while standing in the bedroom doorway, as a warning.

“I didn’t touch him at all,” she told Fox 10. “I made the sound with the Taser.”

But according to the police report, which cites both of Dobbins’s sons and their cousin as witnesses, the mother zapped the 17-year-old on his leg, leaving two small marks as evidence.

“He was like, ‘Mom! I’m calling the police,’ ” Dobbins told ABC 15. “I say, ‘You can call the police, UPS, DPS. Whoever you want to call.”

The boy made good on his threat. While waiting for police to arrive, Dobbins said, she lectured the 911 dispatcher on the meaning of Easter.

“I told her, ‘You need to be with Jesus right now.‘ ”

Instead, Dobbins ended up on her lawn with an officer, who after speaking to the boys informed her she would be charged with child abuse.

[The CEO of Murray Energy, a coal mining corporation, read this prayer to his employees the day after the election.]

Dear Lord:

The American people have made their choice. They have decided that America must change its course, away from the principals of our Founders. And, away from the idea of individual freedom and individual responsibility. Away from capitalism, economic responsibility, and personal acceptance.

We are a Country in favor of redistribution, national weakness and reduced standard of living and lower and lower levels of personal freedom.

My regret, Lord, is that our young people, including those in my own family, never will know what America was like or might have been. They will pay the price in their reduced standard of living and, most especially, reduced freedom.

The takers outvoted the producers. In response to this, I have turned to my Bible and in II Peter, Chapter 1, verses 4-9 it says, “To faith we are to add goodness; to goodness, knowledge; to knowledge, self control; to self control, perseverance; to perseverance, godliness; to godliness, kindness; to brotherly kindness, love.”

Lord, please forgive me and anyone with me in Murray Energy Corp. for the decisions that we are now forced to make to preserve the very existence of any of the enterprises that you have helped us build. We ask for your guidance in this drastic time with the drastic decisions that will be made to have any hope of our survival as an American business enterprise.

Amen.

[He then laid off 156 people.]

Arkansas became the first state on Monday to pass a bill prohibiting doctors from providing gender-affirming medical care to transgender children, treatments that major medical organizations describe as essential to the mental health of an already vulnerable community of young people.

Lawmakers voted 28 to 7 in favor of the bill, which would ban doctors from providing transgender minors with gender-affirming treatments such as puberty blockers, hormone therapies and transition-related surgeries, or referring them for such treatments.

The legislation is the first to pass among a series of similar bills introduced by Republican lawmakers in more than 17 states so far this year, part of a growing effort by politicians to restrict the rights of transgender young people across America — in both doctor’s offices and high school sports teams.

The bill will now be sent to the desk of Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R), who last week signed a law banning transgender girls from competing in school sports teams consistent with their gender identity. He also signed legislation last week allowing doctors to refuse treatment to a patient based on religious or moral objections.

[Title: ‘Treason!’ Moorish Americans facing gun charges create disarray in Md. courtroom
Note: Black "Moorish Americans" are a splinter group from the Moorish Science Temple of America with ideology borrowed from the usually white supremacist anti-government Sovereign Citizen movement]

Two Moorish Americans — who claim to be sovereign citizens of a fictitious North African empire — were scheduled to make their first appearance in front of Judge Monise Brown for several gun-related charges.
Lamont Butler and George Neal-Bey were arrested after a confrontation with Charles County sheriff’s deputies during a traffic stop last month. Both men were armed at the time. Butler was also charged with resisting arrest.
[...]
In 2013, he tried to occupy a 12-bedroom Bethesda mansion worth $6 million and was charged with breaking and entering, fraud and attempted theft.
But Butler — who claims to be the consul general of the “Morocco Consular Court at the Maryland State Republic” — argued that the mansion fell under an 1836 treaty between Morocco and the United States and actually belonged to him. It didn’t work.
[...]
On Friday morning, the judge had barely spoken when Butler made his first objection. He went by a different name — Lamont Maurice El — and did not consent to standing in for this other person, even though that “other person” was legally him.
[...]
“I’m not making an appearance, first of all,” Butler replied. “As long as the grass grows green, as long as the water runs downhill, as long as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, we will never come together. We are separate people.” [...] “I am invoking my treaty right,” he immediately said, referencing Morocco, a country 4,000 miles away.

[Title: What top Republican lawmakers said about the Nashville school shooting]
[...]
Tim Burchett was asked by reporters how Congress might respond to the mass killing Monday at a private school in Nashville. It was tragic, he told them, but there was nothing the lawmakers could do[...]
[...]
“We’re not going to fix it,” [...] “I don’t see any real role that we could do other than mess things up, honestly.”
[...]
GOP leaders repeatedly deflected questions about what action from Congress might help prevent the murder of schoolchildren and their adult caretakers by heavily armed shooters.
[...]
Kevin McCarthy [...] said later that he wanted to see “all the facts” before discussing it. Several other Republicans stuck to that now-familiar script, suggesting it was inappropriate for lawmakers to debate gun violence until more facts came in. What facts were missing in this case, they didn’t say.
[...]
Tim Burchett [...] "So it’s a horrible, horrible situation. [...] I don’t think a criminal is going to stop from guns [...] I don’t think you’re going to stop the gun violence. I think you’ve got to change people’s hearts. You know, as a Christian, as we talk about in the church — and I’ve said this many times — I think we really need a revival in this country."
He also fielded a question about how to protect children like his daughter, who is school-aged, from gun violence.
“Well,” Burchett said “we home-school her.”
[...]
Steve Scalise [...] "I do is, I pray. I pray for the victims, pray for their families. I really get angry when I see people trying to politicize it for their own personal agenda, especially when we don’t even know the facts, there are facts coming out."
[...]
Byron Donalds [...] “If you’re going to talk about the AR-15, you’re talking politics now,” Donalds said. “So, again, if we’re going to talk solutions, let’s talk solutions. Let’s not get into politics.”
[...]

[Article title: Attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband follows years of GOP demonizing her. ... yelled "Where is Nancy?" before assaulting Paul Pelosi with a hammer ...]

[...]
“Fire Pelosi” project [...] #FIREPELOSI hashtag and images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) engulfed in Hades-style flames
[...]
Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) joked that if he becomes the next leader of the House, “it will be hard not to hit” Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel.
[...]
blog written under DePape’s name and filled with deeply racist and antisemitic writings — as well as pro-Trump and anti-Democratic posts — belonged to the suspect. In a single day earlier this month, the blog had seven new posts. The titles included: “Balcks Nda jEwS,” “Were the Germans so Stupid?” “Who FINANCED Hitler’s rise to Power” and “Gas chamber doors.”
[...]
“Sadly this attack was inevitable. Political violence is on the rise,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), said. “And instead of GOP leaders condemning it, they condone it with silence or, even worse, glorification.”
[...]
Among far-right extremist groups, the anti-Pelosi memes are often cruder and more violent, but the demonization of the Democratic House leader is no fringe phenomenon. Her face — sometimes adorned with devil’s horns or a swastika — was plastered on signs at all the national rallies that led up to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. [...] insurrectionists did when roaming the halls of the Capitol searching for her while yelling: “Where are you, Nancy?”
[...]
Greene liked a Facebook comment that said “a bullet to the head would be quicker” as a way of removing Pelosi as speaker
[...]
Mark Kelly released a Western-themed ad that featured himself dressed as a sheriff shooting at actors playing President Biden, Kelly and Pelosi.
[...]
Paul A. Gosar [...] tweeting an anime video depicting him killing Ocasio-Cortez, a move Pelosi instigated to demonstrate that advocating political violence would not be tolerated.
[...]
“... you have political leaders who have personalized this and their rhetoric is hot and inflammatory — it’s not contextualized — so when Donald Trump back during the 2016 campaign talks about beating the hell out of someone, he meant that literally and people took it literally,” Steele said.

Yes, the right-wing is much more violent and a little more crazy than the left-wing.

Nevertheless, Free Speech still holds. If you don't like it, feel free to move to a more-restricted country whose range of allowed speech is more amenable to you.

Transgender people can’t be baptized unless they’ve ‘repented,’ Catholic diocese says

A Catholic diocese in Michigan has instructed its pastors to deny baptism, confirmation and other sacraments to transgender and nonbinary people unless they have “repented” — possibly the first diocese in the United States to issue such a sweeping policy about those who identify with a gender other than their sex assigned at birth.

The guidance issued by the Diocese of Marquette also stipulates that transgender people may not receive Communion, in which Catholics believe the body and blood of Jesus Christ are truly present. In most circumstances, they cannot receive the anointing of the sick, which is meant to provide physical or spiritual healing to those who are seriously ill. The guidance was issued in July but only recently sparked a debate after a prominent priest and advocate for LGBTQ Catholics shared it on Twitter.

“The experience of incongruence in one’s sexual identity is not sinful if it does not arise from the person’s free will, nor would it stand in the way of Christian Initiation,” reads the document. “However, deliberate, freely chosen and manifest behaviors to redefine one’s sex do constitute such an obstacle.”

The backlash may portend a growing clash between the church, which teaches that people should accept their sex assigned at birth, and a younger generation more likely to identify as something other than cisgender and less likely to believe that being transgender is morally wrong. One in 6 adults in Generation Z identifies as LGBTQ, according to survey data released by Gallup in February.

Some theologians said the new rule may contradict canon law. “There’s nobody who approaches baptism from a state of perfection,” Jennifer Haselberger, a former chancellor for canonical affairs in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, said. “The presumption is the opposite. You come to baptism as a sinner, and original sin is forgiven you.”

[Title: Measures across the country aim to restrict what children can read. - Context: moral panic in the US, banning books in schools, non-expert prejudice-based supervision, enabled with new controversial laws]

In one Virginia school district this fall, parents will receive an email notification every time their child checks out a book. In a Florida school system, teachers are purging their classrooms of texts that mention racism, sexism, gender identity or oppression. And a Pennsylvania school district is convening a panel of adults to sign off on every title that school librarians propose buying. The start of the 2022-2023 school year will usher in a new era of education in some parts of America -- one in which school librarians have less freedom to choose books and schoolchildren less ability to read books they find intriguing, experts say.
[...]
"This is a state-sponsored purging of ideas and identities that has no precedent in the United States of America," said John Chrastka, EveryLibrary's executive director. "We're witnessing the silencing of stories and the suppressing of information [that will make] the next generation less able to function in society."
[...]
Meanwhile, a flurry of parent-staffed websites reviewing books for inappropriate content have appeared -- including "Between the Book Covers," whose website says "professional review sites cannot be entrusted," and BookLook.info, a place for taking a closer look at the books in our children's hands." (Virginia's Bedford County district now suggests the latter as a resource for parents.) There are also Facebook groups like Utah's "LaVerna in the Library," which "collects naughty children's books."
[...]
BookLooks ratings range from 0, "For Everyone," to 5: "Aberrant Content" for "Adult only." A BookLooks review of Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison's novel "The Bluest Eye," often taught at the high school level, labeled it a "4" -- meaning it should not be read by anyone under 18.
[...]
In other places, book purges are proceeding quietly -- sometimes by unwilling hands.
[...]

Oklahoma just passed its third anti-trans bill of the year

The state is on the brink of signing its ‘bathroom bill’ into law

Oklahoma is on the brink of enforcing a law that would require transgender students at public schools and public charter schools to use restrooms and locker rooms that do not match their gender identity. If Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) signs the legislation — passed by lawmakers last week — it would be the third law the state has passed this year curbing the rights of trans residents.

Stitt is expected to sign the bill, which would apply to students from pre-K through the 12th grade. Trans students who do not comply will be required to use a “single-occupancy restroom or changing room” at their school.

Under the law, parents or students can report minors suspected of violating the rule to school officials, who are required to investigate and potentially discipline the students. School districts that do not enforce the law could lose up to 5 percent of their state funding, and the law would be effective as soon as Stitt signs it.

Bathroom bans started making national headlines when North Carolina passed the country’s first in 2016. The law drew a massive backlash, hurting the state economically, and was partially repealed in 2017.

According to KTUL Tulsa, Oklahoma’s bill was proposed last year after Stillwater Public Schools refused to change a policy allowing students to use the bathroom that matched their gender identity unless a law declared otherwise. Conservative lawmakers, commanding the largest supermajority in the history of the state’s legislature, did just that.

Republican state Rep. Danny Williams, the House author of the bill, S.B. 615, said the goal of the legislation was to “protect our children,” according to KTUL.

“It’s about safety, it’s about protection, it’s about common sense,” Williams said.

Among the state’s Democratic representatives debating the bill was Rep. Jacob Rosencrants, whose son is trans, KTUL reported. Rosencrants argued that the bill would further isolate trans students.

“My child wants to go to the bathroom where he feels comfortable,” Rosencrants said. “My kid just wants to ‘be’ … and he doesn’t feel like he can do that in this state.”

[...]

Pence calls for national abortion ban as Trump, GOP celebrate end of Roe

As Republicans across the United States are celebrating the Supreme Court decision Friday to overturn the fundamental right to an abortion established in Roe v. Wade, former vice president Mike Pence is calling for a national ban on the procedure, while former president Donald Trump argued the court’s decision is “something that will work out for everybody.”

In an interview with Breitbart News, Pence said that the Supreme Court voting 6 to 3 to uphold a restrictive Mississippi law banning almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy “has given the American people a new beginning for life, and I commend the justices in the majority for having the courage of their convictions.”

After saying that “life won” on Friday, Pence, who is considered a potential GOP contender in the 2024 presidential election, went one step further by arguing the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health should lead to a national ban on abortion.

“Now that Roe v. Wade has been consigned to the ash heap of history, a new arena in the cause of life has emerged, and it is incumbent on all who cherish the sanctity of life to resolve that we will take the defense of the unborn and the support for women in crisis pregnancy centers to every state in America,” he said to Breitbart. “Having been given this second chance for Life, we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land.”

Pence’s remarks came as Trump praised the Supreme Court’s decision in a Friday interview with Fox News.

“This is following the Constitution, and giving rights back when they should have been given long ago,” Trump told the network. “I think, in the end, this is something that will work out for everybody.”

[...]

Asked on Fox News about his role in the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump said, “God made the decision.”

[...]

Yelling ‘I hate white people’ and punching one isn’t a hate crime, Canadian judge rules

Tamara Crowchief may have yelled "I hate white people" as she carried out a violent assault on a white person, but that doesn't mean her attack was racially motivated, a Canadian judge has ruled.

The attack occurred outside a pub in Calgary, Canada, on Nov. 1, according to the Calgary Herald. Crowchief's victim, identified as Lydia White, lost a tooth in the assault, the paper reported.

Prosecutor Karuna Ramakrishnan had tried to put Crowchief behind bars for 12 to 15 months by arguing that the indigenous woman's "unprovoked" actions represented a hate crime, the paper reported. But Judge Harry Van Harten of the provincial court strongly disagreed.

“The offender said, ‘I hate white people’ and threw a punch,” Van Harten told those gathered in the court during his ruling. “There is no evidence either way about what the offender meant or whether . . . she holds or promotes an ideology which would explain why this assault was aimed at this victim. I am not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that this offense was, even in part, motivated by racial bias.”

The Calgary Herald reported that the attack happened suddenly and without warning.

White was standing outside the pub talking to another person when Crowchief walked up and yelled “I hate white people” before punching White in the face, the paper reported. After the assault, Crowchief left the scene, but White followed her and called police.

When authorities arrived and arrested Crowchief, she told them “the white man was out to get her,” the paper reported.

At a recent court hearing, White said she's still baffled by the assault.

“I still get angry when I think about it,” she said. “I don’t understand why this woman did this. I never did anything to her. Never even spoke to her.”

By the time of her sentencing, Crowchief had already spent more than six months in jail, according to the Calgary Herald.

Van Harten agreed with Crowchief's defense attorney, Adriano Iovinelli, that she'd been behind bars long enough.

The judge gave Crowchief 12 months probation "and ordered her to get psychological and psychiatric counselling, as well as counselling for substance abuse," the Herald reported.

Crowchief was also banned from drinking or going to a business that specializes in the sale of alcohol, the paper said.

Of all the series’ villains, none are more sinister than the Jews. Two minutes into its very first scene, Abdulhamid is riding in a procession in Istanbul when a mustachioed onlooker flips a coin into the hand of one of the royal guards. The soldier opens his hand to find the coin is etched with a Star of David surrounding a squat cross in the style favored by Crusaders and Freemasons. The signal thus received, dozens of his fellow guards turn around and open fire on the royal carriage. The screen fades to black — and to the crescent moon that accompanies the mournful opening theme.

Later in the episode we learn that underneath the coin-flipper’s Ottoman fez is a black skullcap of a Catholic priest, for he is a Vatican emissary working for none other than Theodor Herzl, the Jewish Austrian journalist who founded modern Zionism. Herzl, his beguiling assistant Sarah and their various co-conspirators are forever haunting Istanbul, meeting with wayward members of the sultan’s family who are themselves intoxicated by deviant, imported ideas such as popular sovereignty. Herzl is the series’ arch-villain, so perfidious as to hold his penniless father imprisoned without his mother’s knowledge — all because the old man opposes Zionism.

As with much of “The Last Emperor,” most of it is fiction. Herzl’s father wasn’t poor but a wealthy businessman, and differed with his son not on the necessity of Jewish statehood but only on the methods for achieving it. Sarah, Herzl’s sidekick, doesn’t appear to be based on any real-life figure. At the First Zionist Congress, held on the show in Vienna (the actual one was in Switzerland), bearded delegates evoking the Elders of Zion applaud Herzl’s stump speech. “Soon all humankind will only live to serve us Jews, chosen by Jehovah,” Herzl intones, then paints the Zionist flag, a blue Star of David, for the assembled, braying crowd. Not satisfied, a red-dressed Sarah calls out from the audience, insisting that he flank the star with two horizontal blue stripes to mark the Jews’ supposed territorial ambitions: no less than the Nile to the Euphrates. To the delegates’ delight, Herzl complies.

That episode, which aired in March, provoked a surge in anti-Jewish invective on social media. One Twitter user vowed to turn the supposed Jewish homeland into a “Jewish graveyard.” Another, citing the same purportedly vast territorial objectives, declared, “The more I watch ‘The Last Emperor,’ the more my enmity to Jews increases — you infidels, you filthy creatures.” Both users identify in their bios as Erdogan supporters.

The real Herzl is known to have visited Istanbul only a handful of times and obtained an audience with the sultan only once. Though he failed in his chief objective — obtaining a sultanic charter for the already-nascent Zionist settlement enterprise in then-Ottoman-controlled Palestine – he was given a first-class induction into the Order of the Medjidie, a prestigious honor the Ottomans only ever granted to 50 people. Herzl hadn’t exactly made a Zionist out of the sultan, but the notion of a rivalry between the two leaders — one of a sprawling empire and the other of a minuscule Jewish-nationalist movement — is revisionist in the extreme. Herzl’s attempt to curry favor with the sultan was brief and unsuccessful, and he soon resumed his activism, journalism and fundraising in London and Vienna.

A new paper, published in the journal Social Forces by sociologist Gordon Gauchat of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee shows fundies reject science.

“The ‘direct effect’ of liberal-conservative orientation is spurious once the distinct belief systems that underlie those identifications are accounted for,” wrote Gauchat.

Which belief systems? In particular, being a biblical literalist — endorsing the statement, “The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word” — was a much bigger factor than liberalism or conservatism in explaining why some people disagreed with the use of science in “concrete government policy decisions,” and also why they were against federal science funding.

“Overall, these results show that perceptions of science are polarized, but this political discord reflects deeper cultural belief systems that cohere on the political right,” wrote Gauchat.

Gauchat also found something else striking: Political ideology became more significant in driving people’s views about science as they became more scientifically literate. Thus, being a liberal or a conservative alone didn’t matter much to how the questions above were answered – outside of the cases where political beliefs were combined with scientific knowledge.

“Only for scientifically sophisticated respondents, those 1.5 standard units above the mean, is conservative political ideology associated with less favorable views towards science’s authority,” wrote Gauchat. That’s not surprising: More scientifically literate conservatives are surely more literate and informed in all aspects of life, including politics. And thus, they’re more likely to be aware that the scientific community is a very politically liberal place, overall — far more liberal than the American public.

And knowing this, in turn, they’re inclined to distrust it.

"A record number of poor kids are eating breakfast — thanks to a program many conservatives hate"

First, only a liberal media source like the Washington Post would brag about a record number of children being dependent on a government program due to their parents not providing for them. Whether it's a result of poor economic conditions where they live or lack of personal responsibility, it's nothing to be proud of. Second, calling these lunches free is fake news. Just like every other government program from the Affordable Care Act on down someone is always paying for those who are incapable of or refuse to provide for themselves and their children. Third, this program and all others should only be for the truly poor and one has to be just that to not be able to afford a big $2.00 container of oatmeal and bananas to cut up and put over the top of it. Finally, I have the misfortune of knowing several individuals who have children with 3-4 different women and don't provide for them. Can you guess who does? The rest of us. May the government start permanently sterilizing individuals who through their irresponsible actions and selfishness create a burden on the rest of society. They are a cancer in need of major radiation. They make me sick.

In a video that appeared to be shot on a smartphone, a group of young men and women viciously beat a 49-year-old man named David Wilcox while screaming phrases such as “You voted Trump” and “Don’t vote Trump.”

Wilcox told the Chicago Tribune that it began Wednesday about 1 p.m. at the corner of Kedzie Avenue and Roosevelt Road, when a black sedan scraped along the side of his Pontiac Bonneville, scratching it.

“I stopped and parked. And I asked if they had insurance, and the next thing that I knew they were beating the s— out of me,” Wilcox told the paper.

In the video, several men and women threw him to the concrete and kicked him repeatedly, sometimes in the face.

The laughing group threw haymakers at the Wilcox’s head, as he desperately tried to crawl and limp back to his Bonneville. The door hung open until one of the young men climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.

A subsequent video obtained by the Tribune showed Wilcox grabbing onto the open back window of the car, as the young man drove off. Wilcox hung from the window, his feet dragging along the concrete as the Bonneville picked up speed.

“The guy took off. He was doing 70 or 80 down Roosevelt, swerving. He was trying to have me fall off, and I knew if I somehow let go, I was going to die,” Wilcox told the paper. “Then he slowed down. I was looking at oncoming traffic. He probably slowed to about 45. God was watching over for me. I rolled about five or seven times into the oncoming traffic lanes.”

Wilcox said he did vote for Donald Trump, but that no one would know this just by looking at his car. He said of Trump, “He’s gonna bring back the economy. I believe he’s gonna be the one to protect the [nation]. I know he doesn’t speak politically correct sometimes, but 95 percent of the country doesn’t.”

He claimed someone at a nearby bus stop yelled, “Yeah, it’s one of them white boy Trump guys,” during the attack.

.......

“What’s happening to America?” Wilcox asked in a recorded interview with the Tribune. “You’re supposed to be able to vote in peace. It’s supposed to be part of our democracy, and what happened is I vote for somebody, and I get beaten, robbed, and my car stolen, and I have no way of getting my wife to and from work safe anymore.”

In a nationally representative online survey of 1,011 Americans conducted by Qualtrics between Dec. 6 and 12, we asked respondents, “In last month’s election, Donald Trump won the majority of votes in the electoral college. Who do you think won the most popular votes?”...

Respondents’ correct understanding of the popular vote depended a great deal on partisanship. A large fraction of Republicans — 52 percent — said Trump won the popular vote, compared with only 7 percent of Democrats and 24 percent of independents. Among Republicans without any college education, the share was even larger: 60 percent, compared with 37 percent of Republicans with a college degree.

Last summer, Ruslan Sokolovsky entered the imposing Church of All Saints in Yekaterinburg, a city about 1,000 miles east of Moscow. The Russian Orthodox church holds special meaning for some, because it was supposedly built on the site where the last czar of Russia, Nicholas II, was murdered along with his family.

But Sokolovsky wasn't there to worship or pay tribute to Russian history. Instead, the blogger wandered through the gilded rooms of the church, his eyes and fingers glued to his smartphone. He was playing “Pokémon Go,” the app that allows users to “catch 'em all” using augmented reality.

“But, you know, I didn't catch the rarest Pokémon that you could find there — Jesus,” Sokolovsky, an outspoken atheist, said at the end of a video he recorded that day. “They said it doesn't even exist, so I'm not really surprised.”

At the time, Pokémon Go was experiencing an unprecedented craze that would ultimately die down in a matter of weeks. However, the consequences for Sokolovsky would last long after he fired up the app on his phone last summer — and posted the video of his Pokémon Go-playing venture inside the church to YouTube.

After Russian officials discovered the footage, Sokolovsky was detained last fall and charged with inciting religious hatred. On Friday, the last day of the trial, prosecutors in Russia requested a sentence of 3½ years in prison for Sokolovsky.

Sokolovsky, now 22, protested that his potential punishment outweighed the crime.

“I may be an idiot, but I am by no means an extremist,” said Sokolovsky in a statement, according to the Russian news site Meduza. He compared his suggested prison sentence, for joking about the Orthodox Church, to those who had been imprisoned for decades under Joseph Stalin for joking about communism.

“For me, this is savagery and barbarism,” Sokolovsky's statement continued, according to Meduza. “I do not understand how this is at all possible. Nevertheless, as we have seen, it is quite possible indeed.”

He wasn't the only one who drew comparisons between the harsh suggested prison sentence and Stalin's Russia. While prosecutors and others have justified Sokolovsky's arrest under a new law that prevents the “violation of the right to freedom of conscience and belief,” others have blasted the potential punishment — and the law — as a restriction on free speech.

“Previously #Russia jailed people for mocking Communism/Stalin, now for mocking Orthodoxy,” Moscow Times reporter Matthew Kupfer tweeted.

The human rights group Amnesty International called Sokolovsky a “prisoner of conscience” and criticized the Russian government for detaining the blogger “solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression.”

The charge against Sokolovsky, inciting religious hatred, is the same offense under which two women from the punk-rock collective Pussy Riot were imprisoned for two years, according to the Associated Press. The group had staged a protest against Russian leader Vladimir Putin at an Orthodox cathedral in Moscow in 2012. Shortly afterward, two members were arrested on charges of hooliganism.

The following year, the Russian parliament passed a law based upon the Pussy Riot incident that criminalized activities that “insult the feelings of believers.” If charged, defendants face up to three years in jail, and at least six men stood trial last year under this charge, according to Amnesty International.

Sokolovsky's critics say it is under this law that Sokolovsky's arrest was justified.

“The problem is that did it on purpose, even though there were no Pokémon there,” a priest in the Yekaterinburg diocese told Global News last fall. “But it did not matter. It was a reason to insult.”

A judge will issue a final verdict in Sokolovsky's case May 11, according to the Associated Press.

In the figure below, we find that nearly 60 percent of Republicans believe that illegal immigrants are voting, a claim that has been circulated by Trump in recent days and debunked by political scientists. The share of independents and Democrats who believe non-citizens are voting is considerably lower, but not insignificant.

We also found that 43 percent of Republicans believe people vote under the names of registered voters who have died, and that 36 percent believe that election officials are manipulating vote totals. We did not find very many people who believe double-voting — or someone voting twice — is common.

A Republican senator has inserted language into an appropriations bill that would prohibit the Justice Department from enforcing key provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act at private schools that receive public funds, a measure he said was necessary to protect voucher programs from politically motivated attacks.?The bill — the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Act — has not yet passed. But disability-rights advocates are concerned that the amendment submitted last week by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) could make it far more difficult for Justice Department officials to ensure that voucher programs give students with disabilities fair access to private schools.

Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia's King Salman awarded a prestigious prize to Zakir Naik, a televangelist and religious scholar from India, heralding him as "one of the most renowned non-Arabic-speaking promulgators of Islam." Naik, a trained doctor, founded the Peace TV channel, which supposedly reaches an audience of 100 million English-speaking Muslims. His popular YouTube stream includes videos titled "Who is deceived by the Satan, Christians or Muslims?" and "Does eating non-vegetarian food have any effect on the mind?"

Naik's creed is an expansive one. "Islam is the only religion that can bring peace to the whole of humanity," he said in a video biography aired at the ceremony.

The preacher is not short of controversy. His orthodox, Wahhabist views — affiliated closely with the Saudi state — are polarizing in India, which is home to a diverse set of Muslim traditions and sects. His conservatism has led him to make statements endorsing the use of female sex slaves and allegedly expressing sympathy for terrorists

Earlier this year, hundreds of Sufi Muslims picketed a New Delhi event where Naik was speaking, demanding his arrest and accusing him of propagating a divisive, dangerous brand of Islam.

In a 2008 video, he claimed President George W. Bush was behind the Sept. 11 attacks. "Even a fool will know that this was an inside job," Naik said. Years before, he appeared to offer tacit backing to terrorist masterminds such as Osama bin Laden.

"If [Bin Laden] is terrorizing America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, I am with him," he said in one video. "Every Muslim should be a terrorist."

In a video in 2007, he talked about how "Jews are controlling America."

In 2010, Britain's government barred his entry into the country on grounds of "unacceptable behavior."

Naik's supporters argue that his comments are taken out of context, and point to the religious diversity of those in attendance at his mass public events.

Speaking to the New York Times earlier this week, he condemned the violence of militants like those from the Islamic State, but not without a caveat. "I am absolutely against Muslims who kill, but what is the U.S. doing?” Naik said, citing civilian casualties amid U.S. campaigns in the Muslim world. "Is the U.S. really bothered about human rights? No!"

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Saudi Arabia late Wednesday to consult with Salman on the status of negotiations with Iran, a Saudi foe. The United States' close relationship with Saudi Arabia endures despite the kingdom's horrific human rights record and its conspicuous role in helping spread the views preached by Islamic supremacists such as Naik.

Naik, who has also been feted in the neighboring United Arab Emirates, reportedly received a 24-karat gold medal from the Saudi king and a check for $200,000.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has called for expanded surveillance of American Muslims, is refusing to rule out extreme measures that include warrantless searches or faith-based identification requirements.

"We're going to have to do things that we never did before. Some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump told Yahoo News in an interview published Thursday. “And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”

When pressed on whether these measures might include tracking Muslim Americans in a database or noting their religious affiliations on identification cards, Trump would not go into detail -- but did not reject the options.

“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”

It was almost midnight in Thailand, and Paul Salo said he had not slept in days — too busy telling reporters about a contentious and costly new venture to reconstruct the 9/11 terrorist attacks and put people’s questions to rest.?“There’s a serious doubting crowd out there,” he said in a weak and raspy voice. “In this day and age, people want to see what happens.”?Salo, a 51-year-old American expat living in Bangkok, has launched the “9/11 Redux” project to raise $1.5 million to purchase a fully loaded airplane similar to a Boeing 757 or Boeing 767 and a building as comparable as possible to the World Trade Center — and then fly the aircraft into the structure at about 500 mph.

The biggest single cut proposed by the passback document comes from NOAA’s satellite division, known as the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, which includes a key repository of climate and environmental information, the National Centers for Environmental Information. Researchers there were behind a study suggesting that there has been no recent slowdown in the rate of climate change — research that drew the ire of Republicans in Congress.?

Another proposed cut would eliminate a $73 million program called Sea Grant, which supports coastal research conducted through 33 university programs across the country. That includes institutions in many swing states that went for President Trump, such as the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Michigan, Ohio State University, the University of Florida and North Carolina State University.

In a 2014 debate when he was running for the U.S. Senate, acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker said judges should have a Christian worldview, and that a judge with a “secular worldview” would be problematic, according to reports from that time.

Whitaker was answering a question. Erickson had asked the candidates “what criteria” they would use to block President Obama’s judicial nominees. One candidate, Sam Clovis, said he would vote for judges who could link “natural law” to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, Basu wrote.

Mark Jacobs said he would look for someone who would "not legislate from the bench." Joni Ernst echoed that view, adding the judge would need to understand that America's laws "all came from God."

But Whitaker went the farthest: "Natural law often times is used from the eye of the beholder and what I would like to see — I'd like to see things like their world view, what informs them. Are they people of faith? Do they have a biblical view of justice? — which I think is very important because we all know that our government ..."

"Levitical or New Testament?" interrupted Erickson.

“I’m a New Testament,” continued Whitaker. “And what I know is as long as they have that world view, that they’ll be a good judge. And if they have a secular world view, where this is all we have here on Earth, then I’m going to be very concerned about that judge.”

The big four multinational accounting firms — Ernst & Young, KPMG, Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers — took out ads in three Hong Kong papers saying that they are “opposed” to the democracy movement and complaining that the demonstrations are a threat to the rule of law. As reported in the Financial Times, the four accounting firms warned that the protests could disrupt the stock exchange, banks and financial service firms, causing “inestimable losses in the economy.” If such displays continued, they cautioned, their clients might pull up stakes and relocate to a city where the business climate isn’t dampened by pro-democracy demonstrators.

John Allen Chau, 26, of Vancouver, Wash., an Instagram adventurer who also led missionary trips abroad, traveled to the Andaman Islands — an Indian territory in the Bay of Bengal — this month to make contact with members of the tiny Sentinelese tribe, police said. The tribe, which has remained isolated for centuries, rejects contact with the wider world and reacts with hostility and violence to attempts at interaction by outsiders. The island is off-limits to visitors under Indian law.

Chau’s riveting journal of his last days, shared with The Washington Post by his mother, shows a treacherous journey by dark in a small fishing boat to the area where the small tribe lived in huts. The men — about 5 feet 5 inches tall with yellow paste on their faces, Chau wrote — reacted angrily as he tried to attempt to speak their language and sing “worship songs” to them, he wrote.

“I hollered, ‘My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you,’ ” he wrote in his journal. One of the juveniles shot at him with an arrow, which pierced his waterproof Bible, he wrote.

?“You guys might think I’m crazy in all this but I think it’s worthwhile to declare Jesus to these people,” he wrote in a last note to his family on Nov. 16, shortly before he left the safety of the fishing boat to meet the tribesmen on the island. “God, I don’t want to die,” he wrote.

Following the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, a Baptist preacher stood at his pulpit Sunday night in Northern California and delivered an impassioned sermon praising the brutal massacre at a gay nightclub in Florida.

Pastor Roger Jimenez from Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento told his congregation that Christians “shouldn’t be mourning the death of 50 sodomites.”

“People say, like: Well, aren’t you sad that 50 sodomites died?” Jimenez said, referencing the initial death toll in Orlando, which authorities later clarified included 49 victims plus the gunman. “Here’s the problem with that. It’s like the equivalent of asking me — what if you asked me: ?Hey, are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?’

“Um, no, I think that’s great. I think that helps society. You know, I think Orlando, Fla., is a little safer tonight.”

He added: “The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is — I’m kind of upset that he didn’t finish the job!”

(...)

Members of the LGBT community are not allowed to join Verity Baptist or attend its services, according to the church’s “What We Believe” page. It states the church believes “sodomy” — referring to homosexuality — is “a sin and an abomination before God? which God punishes with the death penalty.”

“I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a firing wall, put a firing squad in front of them, and blow their brains out,” Jimenez said during his Sunday sermon, which Verity Baptist posted on its website under the title “the Christian response to the Orlando murders.”

(...)

Video of the sermon, uploaded to the church’s YouTube channel, was removed late Monday or early Tuesday “for violating YouTube’s policy on hate speech.” A copy of the video was later uploaded by a different YouTube user.

The sermon runs for 45 minutes and focuses on the Bible, homosexuality and the deadly rampage at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando.

Hours after a lone gunman went into the club and shot and killed 49 people, Jimenez suggested that their deaths were well-deserved.

“As Christians, we should not be taking a sympathetic approach to these types of news and saying: This was a tragedy, this is something that we’re sad about, we should be mourning these people,” he said. “The Bible teaches that they’re all predators. That’s all the Bible says about them: They’re wicked, they’re vile, they’re predators. ?And God says that they deserve the death penalty for what they do —

“I’m not saying that we should be doing that. But in God’s government, where God set up the laws and God set up the rules and God set up the people in charge, God said: When you find a sodomite, put them to death.”

He continued:

Let me say this: As Christians, we shouldn’t be advocating the killing of sodomites. I’m not standing up here tonight and saying: Let’s go get some guns, and let’s go get ’em. That’s not what I’m saying at all. People will sometimes hear people like me preach, or other pastors, and say: You guys are advocating violence. We’re not advocating violence. We’re not saying we should go do this.

But we’re just saying this: ?If we lived in a righteous nation, with a righteous government, then the government should be taking them. There’s no tragedy. I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a firing wall, put a firing squad in front of them, and blow their brains out.

If we lived in a righteous government that loved God and loved children and wanted to protect them, that’s what we’d do. I’m not saying we should do it. I’m not saying we should go, you know, blow up Planned Parenthood. I’m not saying that at all. All I’m saying is this: If God has his way, that’s what he’d do. And by the way, in the millennium, that’s what will be done. God’s laws will be reestablished.

A televangelist’s flu-season advice: ‘Inoculate yourself with the word of God’

At least 53 children across the country have died during a nasty flu outbreak that is already one of the worst on record, even though the season typically peaks in February.

But Texas televangelist Gloria Copeland thinks there’s nothing to worry about. In fact, the minister who advised President Trump’s campaign says she doesn’t believe there’s such thing as a flu season.

“We got a duck season, a deer season, but we don’t have a flu season,” she said in a video posted to Facebook last week. “And don’t receive it when somebody threatens you with, ‘Everyone’s getting the flu!’ ”

Her remarks come as physicians insist people get their flu shots, as 80 percent of the children who died did not have a flu shot. The flu vaccine does not guarantee against illness, but experts say that data suggests that vaccinations make the flu milder.

It’s not the first time Copeland — who told her viewers in the video that “Jesus himself gave us the flu shot” and “redeemed us from the curse of flu” — has insisted that people put their health in God’s hands. She once bragged during a conference that she and her husband did not need prescription drugs because the Lord heals all illnesses, according to the Associated Press.

In 2015, Copeland was featured in a segment of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” that accused televangelists of manipulating and defrauding their followers. Oliver played a clip of her preaching to her viewers, talking about cancer.

“We know what’s wrong with you. You’ve got cancer. The bad news is we don’t know what to do about it — except give you some poison that will make you sicker,” Copeland said in the clip. “Now, which do you want to do? Do you want to do that, or do you want to sit in here on a Saturday morning, hear the word of God, and let faith come into your heart and be healed?”

[Paramedics said her 6-year-old had common flu symptoms and left, she claims. Now her daughter is dead.]

In 2013, her husband, Kenneth Copeland, also a televangelist, was criticized when the family’s North Texas megachurch found itself at the center of a measles outbreak. Many of the congregants had not been vaccinated, and 21 people fell ill with the contagious disease, the AP reported.

“To get a vaccine would have been viewed by me and my friends and my peers as an act of fear — that you doubted God would keep you safe. — We simply didn’t do it,” former church member Amy Arden told the AP at the time.

Copeland last week told her viewers to protect themselves with the “word of God.”

“If you say, ‘Well, I don’t have any symptoms of the flu,’ well, great! That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” she said. “Just keeping saying that. ‘I’ll never have the flu. I’ll never have the flu.’ Put words. Inoculate yourself with the word of God.”

The family’s organization, Kenneth Copeland Ministries, could not be immediately reached for comment.

China says interning Muslims brings them into ‘modern’ world

BEIJING — China on Tuesday characterized its mass internment of Muslims as a push to bring into the “modern, civilized” world a destitute people who are easily led astray — a depiction that analysts said bore troubling colonial overtones.

The report is the ruling Communist Party’s latest effort to defend its extrajudicial detention of Central Asian Muslim minorities against mounting criticism.

The report by the official Xinhua News Agency indicated that key to the party’s vision in Xinjiang is the assimilation of the indigenous Central Asian ethnic minorities into Han Chinese society — and in turn, a “modern” lifestyle.

Xinjiang Gov. Shohrat Zakir said the authorities were providing people with lessons on Mandarin, Chinese history and laws. Such training would steer them away from extremism and onto the path toward a “modern life” in which they would feel “confident about the future,” he said.

“It’s become a general trend for them to expect and pursue a modern, civilized life,” Zakir said, referring to the trainees. He said the measures are part of a broader policy to build a “foundation for completely solving the deeply-rooted problems” in the region.

In the Xinhua report, Zakir said authorities provide free vocational training in skills geared toward manufacturing, food and service industries. Zakir said “trainees” are paid a basic income during the training, in which free food and accommodations are provided.

The report appeared aimed at disputing accounts provided by former detainees, who have said they were held in political indoctrination camps where they were forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the party.

Ethnic Uighurs and Kazakhs have told The Associated Press that ostensibly innocuous acts such as praying regularly, viewing a foreign website or taking phone calls from relatives abroad could land one in a camp.

Zakir said the training centers were for people “who are influenced by terrorism and extremism, and those suspected of minor criminal offenses” who could be exempted from criminal punishment.

Zakir did not say whether such individuals were ever formally charged with any crime or provided a chance to defend themselves against the allegations. The report also did not say if attendance was mandatory, though former detainees have said they were forcibly held in centers policed by armed guards.

Zakir did not say how many people were in such courses, but said some would be able to complete their courses this year.

Zakir seemed to try to counter reports of poor living conditions within the camps, saying that “trainees” were immersed in athletic and cultural activities. The centers’ cafeterias provide “nutritious, free diets,” and dormitories are fully equipped with TVs, air conditioning and showers, he said.

Omir Bekali, a Xinjiang-born Kazakh citizen, said he was kept in a cell with 40 people inside a heavily guarded facility.

Bekali said he was kept in a locked room with eight other internees. They shared beds and a wretched toilet. Baths were rare.

Before meals, they were told to chant “Thank the party! Thank the motherland!” During daily mandatory classes, they were told that their people were backward before being “liberated” by the party in the 1950s.

Beware of the monks.?

It’s an odd sounding statement. After all, Buddhist monks are popularly known for kindness, peacefulness and generosity. But the advice comes straight from New York City Buddhist leaders, who say that panhandlers have been dressing like monks — right down to the shaved head and orange robes — as a means to con tourists out of money.?

The men reportedly hand passersby golden medallions or simply peaceful tidings before asking for donations to help build a temple in Thailand. Only, there is no temple in Thailand, and the “monks” reportedly become irate, are unrelenting in their demands and occasionally aggressive.

The Trump administration is debating whether to launch a governmentwide effort to question the science of climate change, an effort that critics say is an attempt to undermine the long-established consensus human activity is fueling the Earth’s rising temperatures.?The move, driven by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, has sparked a debate among top Trump administration officials over whether to pursue such a strategy.?A senior White House official, who asked for anonymity because no final decision has been made, said that while Pruitt has expressed interest in the idea, “there are no formal plans within the administration to do anything about it at this time.”?Pruitt first publicly raised the idea of setting up a “red team-blue team” effort to conduct exercises to test the idea that human activity is the main driver of recent climate change in an interview with Breitbart in early June.?“What the American people deserve, I think, is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2,” Pruitt said in an interview with Breitbart’s Joel Pollack.?But officials are discussing whether the initiative would stretch across numerous federal agencies that rely on such science, according to multiple Trump administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because no formal announcement has been made.?Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who once described the science behind human-caused climate change as a “contrived phony mess,” also is involved in the effort, two officials said.?At a White House briefing this week, Perry said, “The people who say the science is settled, it’s done — if you don’t believe that you’re a skeptic, a Luddite. I don’t buy that. I don’t think there is — I mean, this is America. Have a conversation. Let’s come out of the shadows of hiding behind your political statements and let’s talk about it. What’s wrong with that? And I’m full well — I can be convinced, but let’s talk about it.”?The idea, according to one senior administration official, is “to get other federal agencies involved in this exercise on the state of climate science” to examine “what we know, where there are holes, and what we actually don’t know.”?Other agencies could include the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and NASA, according to the official, all of which conduct climate research in some capacity.

If he had to do it again, Robert Weiler Jr. wouldn’t have told his friend about his plan to blow up the Maryland abortion clinic. That was how he got caught 10 years ago. His friend told Weiler’s parents. His parents told the police. And Weiler, then 25, wound up spending almost five years in federal prison and three more on supervised release.

His regret, he says, is not that he was caught. It is that he didn’t achieve what he set out to do.

“I don’t object to the use of force to stop abortion at all,” Weiler says. “I believe it’s completely justified. If it weren’t for the fact that I’d probably go back to prison, I’d do it myself.”

Now the fervent activist is at the center of a different abortion battle — one that is playing out in the District just as the U.S. Supreme Court considers its most important abortion case in decades.

Weiler and four other abortion opponents are the targets of a closely watched lawsuit filed in December by Two Rivers Public Charter School. The high-performing school in Northeast Washington is seeking to restrict protests by anti-abortion activists of a Planned Parenthood clinic that is being built next door. The lawsuit filed in D.C. Superior Court charges that beginning last summer, Weiler and the other defendants have harassed students, some as young as 3, and their parents in an effort to halt construction of the clinic, which is scheduled to open its doors this spring.

The suit alleges that the defendants displayed gruesome images of aborted fetuses, held up signs declaring that a “murder facility” was being built next door and yelled at children such things as, “They are going to murder kids right next door if your parents don’t do something about it.”

Tony Goodman, an ANC commissioner and a parent of a 5-year-old kindergartner at the school, says that there was chaos when the protesters began targeting students last fall.

“It was disruptive and terrifying at times,” he said, “to have people yelling at kids right in front of us.” Although his own child was too young to fully understand why the protesters were there, Goodman said that many parents had to have difficult conversations with their children about the abortion issue.

Several of the defendants, including Weiler, have filed motions to have the suit dismissed, arguing that the school is trying to prevent them from exercising their First Amendment right to speak out on a matter of public concern.

An initial hearing has been pushed back until April 29, but the case is already being monitored by abortion providers, pro-life activists, civil libertarians and constitutional lawyers because it raises questions about what restrictions, if any, can be placed on protesters based on the nature of their message and intended audience.

Can activists be told they must limit the content of their protests? Is the nature of the protests causing the children emotional distress and irreparable harm? Can the school keep protesters a certain distance from school grounds? Can a school sue on behalf of its students?

All of these questions are before D.C. Superior Court Judge Jeanette J. Clark. In the meantime, the protesters are allowed to continue their activities at the school and the clinic that is under construction.

For his part, Weiler says that his appearances outside the clinic have been few. In November, he held up a large banner that read “They kill babies nearby! Tell your parents to stop them.” But when he was served with the lawsuit, he took it personally. He returned to the school to protest holding another sign that said “Two Rivers attacks free speech.”

Planned Parenthood protestors are seen outside the Two Rivers Public Charter School. (Two Rivers Public Charter School)
On the issue of abortion, Robert Weiler does not want to be told to be quiet.