Religiously-based hostility to science: it's not just for American Christians.

Exam board contacts Jewish school over censored GCSEs (the Guardian)

A state-funded orthodox Jewish girls' school in north London has been criticised after it was discovered that dozens of pupils had their GCSE exams censored, with questions about evolution deliberately blacked out of science papers.

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Yesodey Hatorah is a voluntary-aided all-girls school, meaning it is fully funded by the government but retains full power over its own admissions procedure. According to the school's prospectus it gives priority to admitting "Charedi Jewish girls who meet the Charedi criteria as prescribed by the rabbinate of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations."

Charedi Jews are often described as strictly Orthodox Jews, with Stamford Hill home to Europe's largest community of Orthodox Judaism.

Obama's cowardice on cannabis is having real effects on people's lives.

'I'm Going To Prison For Working At A Pot Shop That Was Legal In My State' (The Huffington Post)

We hired lawyers from day one. We were entirely compliant with state law. It was shortly after the federal government said it would not intervene if people followed state law. We wanted to abide by the rules. None of us had criminal backgrounds. We’re all regular guys. The only reason we got into this was because the federal government said they wouldn’t intervene.

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I didn’t find out until shortly before the actual sentencing that I would have to go to jail. The prosecutor recommended 24 to 30 months, and I was sentenced to two years in December. I guess I got the lower end of the sentence.

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It boils down to the feds wanting to make an example out of us. There’s no rhyme or reason, no formulas, like the feds saying you have too many patients or you have too many profit dollars. And actually, we really weren’t making that much money because we were just reinvesting into the company. And I didn’t see any of that anyways. I just had a modest salary. President Obama saying that marijuana is like a vice similar to alcohol, maybe there’s a bigger strategy there and he’s trying to ramp up for a bigger policy change. But the snapshot of right now -- it couldn’t be a more insulting slap in the face.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner in this week's douchebag politician competition.

Republican lawmaker very sorry he said men should be able to rape women if abortion is legal

In the early 1990s, Lockman was active on the issue of abortion. He became a director of the Pro Life Education Association and in 1990 was quoted as saying “If a woman has (the right to abortion), why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman? At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death.”

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Having been exposed as a prolific and outspoken bigot, Lockman promptly issued a statement arguing that the decades he spent publicly expressing his political views and opinions have, apparently, nothing at all to do with how he legislates today.

The mayor and city council should demand his resignation.

Citing Joke, Annapolis Police Chief Testifies That Pot Killed 37 People on the First Day of Legalization in Colorado (Reason.com)

As Sen. Jamie Raskin (D-Montgomery) quickly pointed out, what Pristoop actually remembered was a joke story at The Daily Currant headlined "Marijuana Overdoses Kill 37 in Colorado on First Day of Legalization." The article included a quote from "Peter Swindon, president and CEO of local brewer MolsonCoors," who supposedly said: "We told everyone this would happen. Marijuana is a deadly hardcore drug that causes addiction and destroys lives. When was the last time you heard of someone overdosing on beer? All these pro-marijuana groups should be ashamed of themselves. The victims' blood is on their hands."

Congratulations to the Israeli government in finding yet another way to discriminate. Good ol' divide and conquer.

New law dividing Christian, Muslim Arabs legalizes inequality | +972 Magazine

According to the bill’s sponsor, Likud MK Yariv Levin, Christians are “our natural allies, a counterbalance against the Muslims who want to destroy the state from within.” Levin, an outspoken opponent of the establishment of a Palestinian state (like other fellow MKs in Likud and the Jewish Home party) also emphasized that he refuses to call Christian citizens “Arabs.” “I’m being careful about not calling them Arabs because they aren’t Arabs,” he told the Israeli daily Ma’ariv a few weeks ago, despite the fact that the large majority of them are, in fact, Arabs, and many identify as part of the Palestinian nation.

"Biblical principles" like slavery. Sure.

DeLay: Americans Have Forgotten That God Wrote The Constitution

DeLay said that Americans have forgotten "that God created this nation [and] that He wrote the Constitution, that it's based on biblical principles," but he is also optimistic that the tide is beginning to shift, noting that when he was in Congress, he sealed off the rotunda in the Capitol building so that leaders from Congress could come together for three hours to get on their knees and seek the face of God.

Jobs are created when consumers are prosperous enough to purchase goods and services, not when rich assholes who gamed the system gamble their ill-gotten loot.

Challenging the myth of the job creator (baltimoresun.com)

A lot of his money came from being an early investor in Amazon. But MR. Hanauer does not think this makes him a job creator. "Amazon didn't create any jobs," Hanauer said in a recent Seattle Times interview. "Amazon probably destroyed a million jobs in our economy."

The way Mr. Hanauer sees it, leaders in our capitalist democracy need to account for the employment-killing side of the modern market where new technologies and efficiencies have eliminated old jobs and not created nearly enough new ones to replace them. In a controversial TED talk in 2012, Mr. Hanauer castigated policymakers who subscribe to the false faith that rich people and businesses will provide all the jobs we need, if only they do not have to pay much in taxes.

So in LA, if you're a cop who shoots two innocent women, no criminal charges will be filed, it's just a "policy violation" and you might face a slap on the wrist. It's not like you'll be found too incompetent to keep your job, no. Why? Because guarding one of their own is far, far more important than the lives of ordinary citizens. Another fine example of cop privilege.

LAPD shooting in ex-cop manhunt violated policy (Yahoo News)

A civilian oversight board has determined that eight Los Angeles police officers violated department policy when they mistakenly opened fire on two women during the manhunt for rogue ex-cop Christopher Dorner.

The Police Commission's decision announced Tuesday leaves the question of disciplinary measures to Police Chief Charlie Beck....

Margie Carranza and her then 71-year-old mother, Emma Hernandez, were delivering newspapers around 5 a.m. when LAPD officers guarding the Torrance home of a target named in Dorner's online manifesto blasted at least 100 rounds at their pickup.

Missed this one when it happened. The quickness of ill-trained American police to reach for this potentially-lethal electrical torture device is a national shame. Not to say the Taser doesn't have a proper place on the use-of-force continuum, but it's a go-to far too often for cops who don't know how to control a situation with presence, voice, and lower levels of force -- or who just get pissed off and think it's their right to administer some "street justice" via electric shock. The case also illustrates the hazards to students of having so-called "resource officers" in schools.

Texas student tased by police exits coma, enters rehabilitation, attorney says (CNN)

A 17-year-old Texas student who spent 52 days in a medically induced coma after police used a Taser on him at school entered a full-time rehabilitation facility Friday, his family's attorney said.

Noe Nino de Rivera was transported to the hospital on November 20 after Bastrop County Sheriff's Deputy Randy McMillan, serving as a school resource officer, used the device on him after the teen tried to defuse a school fight involving two girls, one of them his girlfriend, said attorney Adam Loewy.

The parents have filed a lawsuit alleging their son never posed a threat to the deputy and that Nino de Rivera suffered a permanent brain injury when he hit the ground after McMillan tased the teen.

And this is why "state's rights" is an inadequate political-legal philosophy: state governments can sometimes be even more brutal, thuggish, and criminal than the feds.

Missouri Executed This Man While His Appeal Was Pending in Court (The Atlantic)

Asked repeatedly not to execute Smulls while appeals were pending, state officials failed even to respond to emails from defense attorneys that night while corrections officials went ahead with the execution. Smulls thus was pronounced dead four minutes before the Supreme Court denied his final stay request. This was not an accident or some bureaucratic misunderstanding and did not come as a surprise to Smulls’ lawyers. They say it was the third straight execution in Missouri in which corrections officials went ahead with lethal injection before the courts were through with the condemned man's appeals.*