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“ If your upbringing or pastor or background or whatever leads you to hate total strangers because of who they love, where they live, what they look like, how they worship or if they worship, if you have devoted yourself to an ‘Us’ or ‘Them’ mentality and refuse to abandon such poison, if you have no ears to hear, but instead choose to pursue a course of vitriol and division, here is a truth: we will break you across our knee like so much kindling.” - William Rivers Pitt

— http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/9016-it-is-enough-an-open-letter-to-the-sick-at-heart

I just have to go here. I know that “I’m not Jesus but I play him in a theme park” will wash away all my sins.

Secrets of the Affordable Care Act

Here’s what’s wrong with politics today: “The Affordable Care Act, the health care bill that passed without a single Republican vote, was basically the Republican alternative that had been written to oppose the Clinton health care plan in 1993 by several people, including Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch, current senators who now denounce those same ideas as socialistic.” — Norman Ornstein, congressional scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute

“ Given the damage done by the pedophilia scandals, she said, “the church’s obsession, at times, with the sexual relationships is a serious problem.” Ya think??

— http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/dowd-bishops-play-church-queens-as-pawns.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

“ That’s right: the heathens, the goat fuckers, the pornographers, the child molesters, the orgy-havers, the sin-eaters and the Onanists are the majority now. There was also a marked increase in one-person “households,” which is a “household” only in the sense that “lonely bastard copulating with his Real Doll™ brand sex toy” is a “household.” Sin is winning. “Get with it,” Mormons.

— http://gawker.com/5905396/miscegenation-fornication-and-onanism-have-replaced-the-american-family

“ If one’s capacity for logic, and detection of absurdity is so low, that they believe humanity started when an invisible space god through his celestial rib into a magical garden, where it sprouted into a man who was then accompanied suddenly by a naked teenage girl, who in turn struck up a conversation with a talking snake who was actually a shapeshifting demon from an equally invisible netherworld of doom, and this shapeshifting talking snake tricked this poor girl into eating an apple, with the invisible space god allowing the snake to exist, allowing him to trick the innocent girl, and then justifying a world of tortorous cancers and childhood rapes and senseless wars and unspeakable starvation of babies, in the name of this act? If you can pass that story and countless others just as absurd through the filter of your logic and reason and humanity while failing to smell its fecal veracity, I not only have no faith in your ability to analyze my 401k or babysit my children, but indeed I haven’t the faith in you to successfully mow my lawn.

— The late great Christopher Hitchens

“ The practical effect of rational basis review of economic regulation is the absence of any check on the group interests that all too often control the democratic process. It allows the legislature free rein to subjugate the common good and individual liberty to the electoral calculus of politicians, the whim of majorities, or the self-interest of factions.” — Judge Janice Rogers Brown

— http://volokh.com/2012/04/14/judges-brown-and-sentelle-urge-the-supreme-court-to-end-rational-basis-review-of-economic-regulations/

“ NETWORK played a key role in supporting the Obama administration’s health care overhaul despite the bishops’ objections that the bill would provide government funding for abortion. The Leadership Conference disagreed with the bishops’ analysis of the law and also supported President Barack Obama’s plan. Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, said in a phone interview that the timing of the report suggested a link between their health care stand and the Vatican crackdown. — Vatican says leadership group for US nuns doesn’t adhere to church teaching; orders reform

— http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/vatican-says-leadership-group-for-us-nuns-doesnt-adhere-to-church-teaching-orders-reform/2012/04/18/gIQAXir0QT_story.html

“ The public deserves to know that while the bishops are stirring the pot quite publicly to obtain more “liberty” than the Constitution provides, they are also working tirelessly to stymie the movement to protect children that was born out of their misdeeds. Those concerned about the protection of children need to know who their political enemies are.” — The Catholic Bishops Lobby Against Legislation to Protect Children

— http://verdict.justia.com/2012/04/19/the-catholic-bishops-lobby-against-legislation-to-protect-children?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Verdict+%28Verdict+|+Legal+Analysis+and+Commentary+from+Justia%29

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While the Court in Bush v. Gore stated that its ‘consideration is limited to the present
circumstances,’ I believe that statement was not meant to deprive the decision of all precedential
weight but, rather to make clear that the precise facts of the case were unique.” John Roberts, at
his confirmation hearing.

“Come on, get over it.” Antonin Scalia, referring to Bush v. Gore.

— Flanders, Chad W., “Bush v. Gore as Precedent” (2007). Student Scholarship Papers. Paper 36.
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/student_papers/36

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