Alabama Supreme Court has joined the debate over morality being the sole basis for legislative restrictions on citizens. The court upheld the state ban on the sale of sex toys purely on the basis that such toys are viewed as immoral. Since Lawrence v. Texas, such morality based laws have been questioned on constitutional grounds. For a prior column, click here.
Continue reading “Love Stuff in Alabama: Supreme Court Rules Morality Can Be Constitutional Basis for Product Bans”
Category: Religion
Abdul Mouti Bayoumi, a well-known and influential scholar in Egypt, has called for the execution of women who buy female virginity-faking kits. Since such kits help conceal vice, he argues, their use should be a death-penalty offense under Sharia law. Continue reading “How to Die a Virgin in Egypt: Leading Scholar Calls for the Execution of Women Buying Kits to Fake Virginity”
This is the only known video of Anne Frank that was just made available. While short, it adds an even more chilling aspect to her writings.
Continue reading “Amazing Video of Anne Frank”
Her name is Ardi and, while she may not have been much of a looker by modern standards, she had one remarkable skill. She walked upright. This find in Ethiopa pushed our evolutionary traces about a million years earlier than the famed Lucy found in 1974.
Continue reading “Scientists Find 4-Million-Old Hominid . . . Creationists Find 10,000 Year Old Talented Monkey”
The Vatican appears in need of a serious media consultant. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the UN, has issued a defense that boils down to insisting that implicated priests were not pedophiles but homosexuals who liked young boys — and besides no more than five percent of priests had sex with children . . . and Jews and Protestants do it more.
Previously, we saw a crackdown in Saudi Arabia on women working out at private clubs and the cancelation of festivals. Now, Sheik Saad Bin Naser al-Shethri, who is a member of the powerful government-sanctioned Supreme Committee of Scholars, is calling for the end of women being able to attend any co-ed classes in universities as a “great sin and a great evil.”
Continue reading “Banning “Burning Hearts”: Leading Saudi Cleric Calls for Women To Be Barred From Co-Ed University Classes”
An Afghan girl in Helmand province led a typically sheltered life of the strict Muslim culture in the area. To reach such inhabitants of the remote area, the British resorted to dropping leaflets and succeeded in reaching the girl directly. She was reportedly crushed by a box of public information leaflets dropped by the British Royal Air Force. The drops have been used to either warn residents of the dangers of unexploded bombs or as part of “psychops” missions to “win the hearts and minds” of the population. This includes the standard leaflet below asking girls to think about their future.
Continue reading ““Is This The Future You Want?”: Afghan Girl Crushed By Box of Leaflets Dropped by RAF”
The Supreme Court has accepted a major handgun case, McDonald v. Chicago, that will define the scope of the recently recognized individual right under the Second Amendment. It will also allow new Justice Sonia Sotomayor to vote on the very issue that led to much of the opposition against her in her confirmation.
Continue reading “Supreme Court Takes Chicago Handgun Case in Major Test of Second Amendment Rights”
The cheerleaders of Georgia’s Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School appear to be short a cheer for separation of church and state doctrine. They have triggered a constitutional controversy by using Biblical verses as part of their displays to root for the football team to “commit to the Lord” and “take courage and do it.”
Continue reading “Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goal Post of Life: Georgia Roots Out Christian Cheerleaders”
Over the last decade, legislators have rushed to impose broader and broader restrictions on sex offenders that prohibit them from living within certain distances of churches, schools, and other locations. The result is often effective banishment or homelessness for sex offenders. Georgia’s politicians have been so careless in their legislation that officials are now recommending that sex offenders live in the forests.
Continue reading “Which of These Two Beings Is More Likely to Get You a Date?”
In this new book, Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor, Matt Latimer has an interesting insight into the presidency of George W. Bush. When author J.K. Rowling was proposed as a recipient for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Bush nixed the idea because Rowling’s Harry Potter series “encouraged witchcraft.” While many of us may be unaware of the outbreak of witchcraft, this was no doubt contained in one of those biblically laced briefing books of the President. What is strange is that the President already honored another author of pure fiction — CIA Director George Tenet — for producing false evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq. It must simply be the genre.
A Christian group in Calgary has organized a campaign to protest an elephant statue in the zoo that resembles Ganesh, the Hindu God. The group is challenging the three-meter statue as “selective religious partiality.”
Continue reading “Christians Protest Placement of Ganesh (Elephant God) Statue at Calgary Zoo”
The Illinois Supreme Court has upheld the so-called “Jewish Clause” in a will of a deceased Chicago dentist who wanted to disinherit any children or grandchildren who failed to marry a Jew. Max Feinberg’s will will result in four grandchildren being disinherited.
Continue reading “Bring Home A Nice Jewish Boy . . . or Else: Illinois Supreme Court Upholds “Jewish Clause””
A Polish court has awarded Alicja Tysiac $11,000 against a Catholic magazine, Gosc Niedzielny, after the magazine compared her to a child killer and a Nazi. While it is impressive to see a court levy such damages against a Catholic publication in this very Catholic nation, the ruling does raise freedom of speech issues.
Continue reading “Polish Court Awards Damages to Woman Who Was Compared in Article to the Nazis for Trying to Obtain an Abortion for Health Reasons”