All I see are table legs....

Clarence Darrow said it best below: 

If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.

By the way... Yellowstone is melting.

Its roads. And why it needs to be monitored very closely...

Abortion

Treat abortion like any other medically comparable procedure.

Update: What We Don't Talk About When We Don't Talk About Abortion

Beware the Dangers of Congress’ Latest Cybersecurity Bill

A new cybersecurity bill poses serious threats to our privacy, gives the government extraordinary powers to silence potential whistleblowers, and exempts these dangerous new powers from transparency laws.

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014 ("CISA") was scheduled to be marked up by the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday but has been delayed until after next week's congressional recess. The response to the proposed legislation from the privacy, civil liberties, tech, and open government communities was quick and unequivocal – this bill must not go through.

The bill would create a massive loophole in our existing privacy laws by allowing the government to ask companies for "voluntary" cooperation in sharing information, including the content of our communications, for cybersecurity purposes. But the definition they are using for the so-called "cybersecurity information" is so broad it could sweep up huge amounts of innocent Americans' personal data.

The dangers of methane

Sunday funnies

How women have to navigate the world.  Being called Beyonce voters.  Misconceptions about the Hobby Lobby ruling.

All the tornadoes that have happened so far this year.  The weather next week.

World War I explained in 40 maps

Reporting the scientific news does not mean including 'opinions'.

The conservative mindset.  Paul Krugman explains their difficulties with the success of Obamacare.

Torches and pitchforks in the future.

Poisonous newts in your coffee?  Crickets singing hymns?

Putin has hurt Russia by attacking the Ukraine.

National parks feel climate change.

Censorship or protection?

Iraq explained in five minutes (greatly simplified)

Meh? Really?

To the Supreme Court apparently yes.

Imagine the hysteria if Hobby Lobby were run by religious Muslims....

Hobby Lobby and the Supreme Court but there may be a silver lining....

It's sad we were right all along about Blackwater....

Blackwater threatened to kill US official over Iraq massacre probe

The top manager in Iraq of the notorious private security firm Blackwater threatened to kill a US State Department investigator for probing the company's performance, the New York Times reported Monday. 

The Times, citing an internal State Department memorandum, said the threat came just weeks before Blackwater guards shot and killed 17 civilians on September 16, 2007 in Baghdad's Nisour Square. 

However US embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater and the State Department investigators were ordered to leave, The Times said. 

Four former Blackwater employees are currently on trial in a US court for the Nisour Square deaths. 

The killing, seen as an example of the impunity enjoyed by private security firms on the US payroll in Iraq, exacerbated Iraqi resentment toward Americans. 

The lead State Department investigator, Jean Richter, warned in the memo dated August 31, 2007, that little oversight of the company, which had a $1 billion contract to protect US diplomats, had created "an environment full of liability and negligence." 

Blackwater guards "saw themselves as above the law," Richter wrote.