Daily Links #106: Trump admin. dismantles pro-LGBTQ policies

• Politico examines the Trump administration’s pervasive dismantling of pro-LGBTQ policies, particularly in healthcare.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Pennsylvania Supreme Court releases their independently drawn, non-gerrymandered congressional map. Predictably, it slashes the old map’s Republican advantage, though the state remains red.
  (via @fark)

• The Georgia Senate advances a bill that would allow adoption agencies to use religion as a pretense to refuse same-sex couples.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Meanwhile, Wyoming Republicans’ anti-gay “parody marriages” bill comes to a very predictable end.

• Judge tosses out Pennsylvania Creationist’s idiotic lawsuit complaining about Evolutionary Theory being taught in science classrooms.

• Icelandic religious groups are angry over their government’s plan to ban them from slicing up baby boys’ genitals for non-medical reasons.

• Finally, Facebook has two great new security features: A VPN that spies on you and two-factor authentication that spams you.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Links #104: Education Dept. to ignore trans student bathroom complaints

Education Sec. Betsy DeVos

• The Department of Education ^{[secretary pictured]} will no longer investigate civil rights complaints from trans students blocked from using their rightful bathrooms.

• In better news, a second federal judge has blocked Trump from ending DACA.

• Vermont state police demonstrate cops’ knack for turning would-be suicide victims into murder victims.
  (via @fark)

• Alabama prosecutor and sheriff declare that reforming civil asset forfeiture will force police to arrest more people to keep the money flowing, except when they’ll have to arrest fewer people because busts won’t be profitable anymore. How refreshing of them to admit they’re in it for the money.
  (via @RickHorowitz; retweet @Popehat)

• Parents of the year here sue their transgender son to bar him from undergoing hormone therapy because it would violate their religious beliefs, also tell him to kill himself because he’s “going to hell anyway”.

• As a chaser, here’s a funny (to me) piece about Creationists Intelligent Design advocates getting angry at Wikipedia for “censoring” ID – by calling it a “religious argument” and “pseudoscience”.

• Evidence is mounting that the dinosaur-killing asteroid may have been helped by massive volcanic activity in India.

• I was going to write up a post about this inane Tucker Carlson diatribe before I realized I’m not nearly that bored and masochistic.

• Finally, good kitties:
  (via Joe.My.God.)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Ken Ham’s new exhibit portrays Creationists as idiots

Attendance at Ken Ham’s Creation “Museum” has been down for some time – intelligent people wouldn’t get caught within a mile of the place, and even the gullible flock it caters to grow weary of seeing the same gimmicky animatronics every visit, I suppose. Ham plans to remedy this with renovations – not to add new information, since there hasn’t been a novel Creationist argument in years. He just wants to add a few more shiny toys and flashy displays, since substance and actual evidence aren’t exactly his thing.

On the other hand, perhaps we should encourage this, because one of those planned exhibits would cement the fact that Creationists are incompetent clods:

Lazy Saturday Links: 10/07/17 – A Sick Country Filled With Guns

• The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill is blunt about the US’s gun pathology: A Sick Country Filled With Guns.

• University of Wisconsin wants to protect speakers’ free speech rights by banning protestors from exercising their free speech rights.
  (via @studentactivism)

• There’s nothing wrong with sex work. There’s something very wrong with how society treats sex workers.

• US Creationist group Answers in Genesis wants to infect Canada. I hope we give them the same reception we gave “Fox News North”.

• Finally, I consider myself a reasonably imaginative guy, and I still can’t conceive of how this teacher possibly thought having sixth-graders draw Nazi mascots was a good idea.
  (@fark)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Atheists tour Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter

The gloriously-voiced Seth Andrews of The Thinking Atheist and the normal-voiced (but still awesome) Matt Dillahunty of The Atheist Experience recently visited Ken Ham’s Big Gay Boat, that $100 million Creationist blight on the Kentucky countryside. What they saw is just what you’d expect.

Creationism: Magical sky-fairies, dinosaurs, incest and geologically impossible events all wrapped up in a lie told to children.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Daily Links: 09/07/17 – Surveys, surveys and more surveys

• New religion survey: As the US grows more religiously diverse, White Christians are losing their dominance … and the nonreligious are becoming a plurality.

• Another religion survey: Only 9% of Britons believe in Creationism, as opposed to 15% of Canadians … and 38% of Americans. (That’s actually the lowest that number has dipped.)

• New crime survey: Despite what Jeff Sessions and other scaremongers would have you believe, the US crime rate is still falling and has hit a 30-year low.
  (via @radleybalko)

• New scientific review finds significant flaws in the 3% of climate-science papers that deny human-driven global warming, from cherry-picked results to bad models.
  (via @fark)

• Finally, Russia’s efforts to block “pirate” websites censors 4,000 targeted sites … and 41,000 innocent sites.

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Links: 07/28/17 – Senate “skinny repeal” fails, thanks to McCain

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

• House Trumpcare bill dies. Second House bill ignored by Senate. Senate bill dies. Senate repeal-and-replace bill dies. Senate repeal-only bill dies. And now, Senate “skinny repeal” bill dies – after John McCain (R-AZ) ^[pictured] casts the deciding “no” vote. It’s anyone’s guess what happens next.
  (via @fark)

• Amongst the people caught by surprise by Trump’s trans ban announcement: Military officials, trans soldiers, the rest of the country, and even his own party, many of whom are now backpedaling.
  (via @fark)

• Meanwhile, survey shows most Americans oppose Trump’s trans military ban, yet just last month only 23% were okay with trans troops serving openly. Seems Trump is so widely hated he’s pushing more people than ever in favor of civil rights. (That, or more people go against him just to spite him.)

• Pakistani man rapes a 12-year-old girl. In response, village elders order the girl’s brother to revenge-rape the attacker’s sister. Police eventually arrest the elders and the original rapist.

• Texas teens harassed by police for mowing grass whilst Black.
  (via AlterNet | Facebook)

• Deeply satisfying (and informative!): Alt-Right knucklehead scoffs at the idea that Roman Britain was ethnically diverse, gets schooled hard by a historian.
  (via Pharyngula)

• And finally, after trying everything they could to weasel out of it (and almost losing an $18 million tourism rebate), Ken Ham and Ark Encounter finally agree to pay their “safety fee” tax.

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Links: 07/25/17 – NHS axes prescriptions for homeopathy

Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ)

Quick change: I’m moving puppycide reports to their own weekly post, since they’re cluttering up my Daily Links with their frequency. Which is depressing, when you think about it.

• England’s National Health Service plans to do away with prescriptions for homeopathy and other “low value” treatments. What took them so long?
  (via Friendly Atheist)

• “What you have here is a conservative group suing a conservative Justice Department for ignoring a FOIA request concerning a conservative House chairman’s efforts to kneecap FOIA.”
  (via @fark)

• Color me pleasantly surprised: Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) ^[pictured] does a good thing, signs a bill to protect the rights of trans students in public schools.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Texas to man: You owe your ex $65,000 in back child support. Man: This DNA test says the kid isn’t mine. Texas: Pay up anyway or go to jail.
  (via @fark)

• It’s like Cracked.com is aiming to become social justice central. I like it.

• Ken Ham’s Tax-Avoiding Ark Ride continues: Creationists sell Ark Encounter (again) to themselves (again) for $10 (again) so that it’ll be eligible for an $18 million tax rebate (again).

• China finds a novel use for pervasive surveillance: help impoverished school students with discreet supplemental financial assistance. And now I’m conflicted.

• And finally: What’s that? You don’t want to hear terrible White-boy rap from a flat-Earther? Well here you go anyway:
  (via Friendly Atheist)

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Links: 07/22/17 – Puppycide and schadenfreude edition

[full size (800×500)]

• Puppycide in Wichita, KS: Cops investigating a burglary report check out a back alley, shoot & kill family dog after it pushes through a fence. Witness says dog was friendly and not dangerous.
  (via @PuppycideDB)

• Puppycide in Central Point, OR: Cop driving home spots man running from dog, then pit bull arrives and bites cop’s leg. Officer shoots dog in the head; no indication he tried to use baton, mace or other non-lethal means. No further details known.
  (via @PuppycideDB)

• Justice is schadenfreudelicious: Creationists behind Ark Encounter ^[pictured] boondoggle lose $18 million in tax rebates over the next decade after trying to scam their way out of $7 million in safety fees over that same period.

• US Government Accountability Office sets up fake police agency in sting operation to trick Defense Department into giving them military-grade equipment. There’s no way it’ll – oh, look, they received $1.2 million’s worth of weapons in less than a week.
  (via @radleybalko)

• Media Research Center, two weeks ago: We present the William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence to Sean Hannity! MRC today: Whoops, takesie-backsies ^{[auto-play video warning]}.
  (via Joe.My.God.)

• Oh, look, it’s another family-values religious leader caught hiring prostitutes.

• And finally, religious-Right leader proclaims that LGBTQ-friendly PM Justin Trudeau is a sign that “Canada is under the judgement of God”. So I guess we’re doing pretty good.

If you have any story suggestions, you can leave them in the comments or send them in.

Daily Blend: 06/23/17 – Wall o’ Links the First

Ali Awad Habib

All right, let’s see if I remember how this goes …

AP report: US complicit in torture ^{[victim pictured]} in Yemen’s secret prison system. You didn’t really think the US’s participation in torture had stopped under Obama, did you?
(via @Snowden)

US Gov’t claims Syrian drone strike killed one civilian. Syrian civilians on the ground say it killed dozens. Whom to believe?^*

In theocracy news, Pakistan sentences a man to death over blasphemous Facebook posts.
(via Techdirt)

How is the US’s new Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrong about drug sentencing? Let Radley Balko count the ways.

Today in “took long enough”, the Montreal Catholic Church imposes strict new rules on priests’ interactions with minors and other vulnerable groups. And Bill Donohue pops an artery in 3 … 2 …
(via Friendly Atheist)

Meanwhile, the head of the Church of England admits it helped cover up for a bishop who spent decades abusing children.

Confederate monuments have little to do with the South’s cultural heritage and much more to do with its racism.
(via The Watch | The Washington Post)