You can help now These agencies have indigenous workers on the ground in Myanmar. The window is closing, if water food and supplies cannot be delivered within the next 10 days thousands more will die.

Salvation Army http://www.salvationarmy.ca/2008/05/...

Mennonite Central Committee http://mcc.org/news/news/article.htm...

World Vision http://www.worldvision.ca/ContentArc...

Christian Aid UK http://www.christianaid.org.uk/emerg...

Samaritans Purse Canada  http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/a...

Disenfranchised Nuns Strike Back  http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2...

Disenfranchising Indianan Nuns Gives Oklahoma GOP Ideas http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/0...

Republicans vote against Mother’s Day. I kid you not.  They prefer Charlie Heston.  http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/09/...

Mr. Freshwater’s War: Discord Among Ohio Students Shows Need For School Neutrality On Religion

"You’re either for Mr. Freshwater or you’re against Mr. Freshwater," said parent Beth Murdoch. "There’s no in between. In the kids’ minds, I think, it is just the Bible issue. And who is going to go against the Bible? Nobody. But it seems like the ‘Christians’ are using that as an excuse to gang up on the ‘atheists.’"

Murdoch reported that some students, wishing to support Freshwater, brought Bibles to school. One girl brought a Torah and was criticized.

"I don’t think people realize the depth of what’s going on between the students," Murdoch said. "It’s a mob mentality right now. It’s peer pressure. To not wear a t-shirt and to not bring your Bible when they say bring your Bible and wear a T-shirt, you’re asking for trouble."

http://blog.au.org/2008/05/08/mr-fre...

John McCain’s Penchant for Skirting Campaign Finance Laws http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/0...

From Crooks & Liars

HOLY CRAP: An atheist goes undercover to join the flock of Mad Pastor John Hagee...What do you expect from a town named after butter?...Is it Hillary’s turn to ‘denounce and reject’ a problematic pastor?...For some reason, Evangelicals are worried about their image...ex-prez Bush hosts a cult leader at Texas A&M...Cast-off Churches for sale...Republicans aren’t the only ones who use faith-based initiatives to win votes...Religious liberty is, at its heart, about equality - and we’re not there yet.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/0...

Another California Teacher...

.. has been fired for refusing to sign a loyalty oath on religious grounds.
As a Quaker from Pennsylvania and a lifelong pacifist, [Wendy] Gonaver objected to the California oath as an infringement of her rights of free speech and religious freedom. She offered to sign the pledge if she could attach a brief statement expressing her views, a practice allowed by other state institutions. But Cal State Fullerton rejected her statement and insisted that she sign the oath if she wanted the job.
Didn't we cover this ground already?

http://www.bjconline.org/cgi-bin/200...

Right-to-Lifers jump the shark (again) Jessica Valenti draws our attention to the latest initiative from the American Life League -- the Pill Kills campaign dedicated, it seems, to complaining about the Griswold decision that overturned bans on contraceptives. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Femin...  and  http://thepillkills.com/

Examining our shame Top Democratic senators want the inspectors general for the Pentagon and CIA to investigate reports that enemy combatant detainees were drugged by U.S. interrogators. http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...

Jon Stewart Puts McCain on the Hot Seat http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/0...

Boo Donohue Obama's Catholics bite back at Donohue, on God-o-Meter. http://blog.beliefnet.com/godometer/...

He wants to be leader of the Free World

John McCain doesn't seem to realize that there hasn't been a country called "Czechoslovakia" for about fifteen years. One wag joked to me that we should cut him some slack since "When he was studying geography, the place was called Bohemia."

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.c...

Court stops Muslim hubby from using Islamic law to grab $2 million in divorce

In Aleem v. Aleem, (Ct. App. Md., May 6, 2008), the Maryland Court of Appeals (the state's highest court) refused to recognize a talaq divorce obtained under the laws of Pakistan (Mulsim Family Laws Ordinance 1961) by a husband who, with his wife, resided in Maryland. The parties, married in Pakistan in 1980, resided in the U.S. on diplomatic visas.

After Farah Aleem filed for divorce in a Maryland court, her husband, Irfan Aleem, without notice to Farah, went to the Pakistani embassy in Washington and performed talaq by executing a written document that recited "I divorce thee" three times. Under Pakistani law, unless agreed otherwise, the wife has no claim to property owned by her husband on the date of divorce. In her Maryland divorce action, Farah sought to have Irfan's World Bank pension and other assets declared marital property. Pointing to a provision in Maryland's constitution (Declaration of Rights, Art. 46) that assures equal rights to men and women, the court reasoned that:
the enforceability of a foreign talaq divorce provision, such as that presented here, in the courts of Maryland, where only the male, i.e., husband, has an independent right to utilize talaq and the wife may utilize it only with the husband’s permission, is contrary to Maryland’s constitutional provisions....

Nice try.

Countdown: The Pulpit Bullies http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/0...

UCC issues $100,000 disaster appeal for Myanmar  UCC members and churches are responding with support for cyclone-devastated Myanmar, where thousands have been killed and an estimated 1 million are homeless. http://www.ucc.org/news/ucc-receivin...

Muslim Caucus Andre Carson wins handily in Indiana 7th District, in all likelihood ensuring that there will continue to be a 2-person Congressional Muslim Caucus after November.

The Colbert Report: The Terror Watchlist

My favorite terrorist is Hasan Elahi. Just saying his name makes my heart go up one Terror Alert level. Why Elahi? Well, to begin with, he’s innocent. A quality so rare in someone so guilty. You see, in 2002, Elahi was detained by the FBI on suspicion of hoarding explosives in a Florida storage unit. Turns out, he didn’t have any explosives. In fact, he was the only person in Florida without gunpowder. But the FBI refused to give Elahi a written letter clearing him of suspicion because he refused to change his name, religion and skin color. Instead, they just asked him to "check in" with them periodically. And here’s where I really like this guy: for the last six years, Elahi has taken the burden off government surveillance by surveilling himself. Everyday, Elahi takes hundreds of photos of his whereabouts and sends them to the FBI. Pictures of the airports he travels through, the bathrooms he visits, even the meals he eats. With these pictures, he’s ensuring that he’ll never be arrested on suspicion of terror, though by judging by some of the meals he’s eating, Gitmo might be an improvement.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/0...

Wall Street Journal jumps the shark (again) I guess blowing a $5 trillion hole in the budget and proposing a gas tax holiday counts as responsible among the WSJ's team. Maybe Hillary was right about economists after all.  http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/200...

McCain's cravenness  Mother Jones and Brave New films have released a pretty good short video about one of John McCain's newest homies, the Rev. Rod Parsley. Compare and contrast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXZbI...

We have, of course, all gotten inured to this over the past few decades. Frothing at the mouth about Muslims and gays and baby killers and Hurricane Katrina just seems like normal stuff from crazy right-wing white preachers. But it's not normal. It's crazy, and John McCain used to agree that it was crazy. But now there's an election coming up, so he's delighted to cozy up with lunatics like Parsley and John Hagee.

This isn't just some dumb campaign gotcha, either. Unlike Jeremiah Wright's egocentric blatherings, which got truckloads of attention but don't, in the end, really matter, this does. That's why I chose to link to al Jazeera's report about McCain's appearance with Parsley in Cincinnati even though lots of other news outlets covered it too. One of the biggest foreign policy challenges Barack Obama will face if he wins in November is the fact that a very large number of Muslims believe that the United States is not merely fighting terrorism, but is engaged in a war against Islam. And why wouldn't they? Rod Parsley says so, and one of our presidential candidates is willing to get up on a stage, shake his hand, and call him a "moral compass."

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/arc...

Police, judge, jury and executioners all in one Um . . . I guess I'll follow the Philly PD's lead and avoid a "rush to judgment" about this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_c2i...  Just ensuring the right to a really, really speedy trial, eh?

Hagee Reneges On Retraction Of His Katrina Comments: ‘God Always Punishes Unconfessed Sin’ http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/08/...

'Respect atheists', says cardinal Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor urges deeper understanding between believers and non-believers. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/739094...

Cashing in on the food crisis  Celcias details how "free trade" and onerous terms forced by banks upon Third World countries directly cause food prices to rise.

Recipients of IMF and World Bank loans must open their borders to the influx of highly subsidised agricultural produce from countries like the U.S. of A., who sell their food at below the cost of production (a practice called ‘dumping‘), undercutting local producers and putting them out of business — causing mass urbanisation as millions leave their fields to work or beg in cities, as well as swelling numbers of illegal immigrants into the North.

Yet those very same banks insist that Third World countries do not subsidize their crops, even as the US continues to.http://www.celsias.com/2008/05/05/th...

Apocalypse Without God: In this exclusive interview, scholar of religion Mark C. Taylor explains how social, ecological, and technological trends in today's world are not "outside" religion. http://religiondispatches.org/Gui/Co...

Big Brother can't deliver Britain has spent billions installing spy cameras in an Orwellian attempt to monitor the population and presumable reduce crime. However, the spy cams have had virtually no effect on stopping crime. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/ma...

Lutherans and Methodists "wife swap" The United Methodist congregations "could share pastors and combine churches with a Lutheran denomination under a partnership approved by the denomination last week." (The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will need to okay the agreement at its 2009 conference.) http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live...

Rummy and his sycophants

The Pentagon has now made public all the documents it turned over to the New York Times for the paper's blockbuster story a few weeks ago on the cozy relationship between the Pentagon and the ostensibly independent military analysts retained by the networks and cable news channels to provide on-air expertise.... Meanwhile, as the Politico reports, there has been deafening silence from the networks about their complicity in Rummy's domestic psy-ops campaign.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archive...

More patriots Cayman Islands Subsidiary Allows Pentagon Contractor Assisting War In Iraq To Avoid Millions In Taxes  http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/08/...

Murky Manifesto: Evangelical Statement Repudiates Theocracy – Sort Of http://blog.au.org/2008/05/07/murky-...

Porn rules! At least on the internets:

Today, YouPorn is the No. 1 adult site in the world; Vivid.com, a pay site, is ranked 5,061. According to Alexa, a website-ranking company, YouPorn’s overall rank is higher than CNN.com (84), About.com (114), and Weather.com (195). (Those numbers are averages for the three-month period from mid-June to mid-September.)

So in a matter of months, with no real promotional budget, a new porn site easily outpaced CNN and Weather.com. And it's not as if YouPorn is the only porn site out there, and so escapes all competition. Nope. It's just that people really like porn.  Via Ezra: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/e...

Sage advice from Kevin Drum

Hillary Clinton insists, unsurprisingly, that she's going to press on, but I wonder if the rest of us have to press on as well? Instead of continuing the internecine warfare of the past couple of months, maybe the best thing to do is to start ignoring her — perhaps the worst fate of all for someone who seems to gain strength via umbrage. So if she says something outrageous, who cares? Just shrug and move on. After all, Barack Obama is, at this point, the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, so why not start treating him that way? There's really not much point in fanning the flames any longer.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/arc...

The Feminist Wedge  Just behind the love of money, wedge drivers (of any stripe) are the root of all evil. http://www.thenation.com/doc/2008051...

As I tell my daughters: Men are subhuman This is a pretty chilling tale, as a woman is sexually assaulted, fights back, escapes, and then is sexually humiliated by the crowd that assembled to see what the fuss was about. http://www.dailycampus.com/home/inde...

Move along, nothing to see here...

It's as if The New York Times' famous ability to set the agenda for TV news magically evaporates when wholesale corruption on the part of TV news becomes the story. They were complicit in lying to the public, they got caught, and they're not even slightly embarrassed or ashamed.

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.c...

Imagine going to court to convert AFP describes as "rare" a decision handed down in Malaysia by Penang Sharia Court judge Othman Ibrahim. He permitted a Buddhist woman who had converted to Islam to reconvert to Buddhism. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...

Dem's Animal House in Ohio As one Dem lawmaker put it, "I don't know whether we should impeach somebody for being stupid."  http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...

Love those Family Values Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY) issued a statement confirming what the New York tabloids have been in a tizzy about since Fossella's DUI arrest in suburban DC last week: He fathered a child with the woman -- not his wife, the mother of his three other children -- who picked him up from jail that night. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/20...

At the intersection of religion and politics Group Seeking To Set Up Test Case On Tax Code Non-Profit Limits  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1210...

Good Old Socialism

I'm pretty sure Reynolds knows that Obama's not proposing the nationalization of industry or collective ownership of the means of production, so he must be confused about socialism.

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.c...

The not-so-maverick Maverick During off years he pimps for the independent vote and during election years he pimps for the conservative vote. Sure, it's craven, but it's a nice gig if you can get away with it. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/arc...

The ACLU continues its undefeated streak in challenging FBI National Security Letters. http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...

Military Analysts Laud "The Leader" From the Pentagon's propaganda doc dump: an emergency meeting on calls for Rumsfeld's resignation. "We'd love to be following our leader," one declares. http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...

2007 Second Deadliest Year on record for journalists http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...

"Deafening" Silence From Networks on Propagandagate  http://www.politico.com/news/stories...

Get out of jail free card The Senate Ethics Committee takes a pass on Sen. David Vitter's acknowledged use of the late DC Madam's services. http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...

Hillary on race and the media's silence

You don't have to believe that Hillary's a racist (I don't) to conclude that a combination of the rigors of the campaign trail and her own powerful ambitions have clouded her judgment and curdled her spirit. It has certainly soured what had been a historic relationship between the Clintons and the black community.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archive...

Take a break from politics Check out these amazing photos from the eruption of Chaitén in Chile. http://megagalerias.terra.cl/galeria...