There are ways to win arguments and ways to turn arguments into fights.
One way to switch from debate to fisticuffs is to just start insulting
your opponent. Which is why THIS is a bad idea.

The sign, a new addition [to the holiday display]this
year, is sponsored by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The sign
reads, “Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and
enslaves minds.”

There’s no real way to read this other than “You are an idiot for
beliving in god”.
Now, as an atheist, it is hard enough for me not to say this sort of thing
all the time. However, I also know it doesn’t help my cause any, and just
pisses people off (I do think there’s a time and a place for such
forcefullness).

However bad an idea it is for atheists to put up an insulting sign in a public
display that holds no legal meaning, it is much more understandable when you
realize that THIS IS ACTUALLY LAW!

An atheists-rights group is suing the Kentucky Office of
Homeland Security because state law requires the agency to stress
“dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the
Commonwealth.”

Now, if that doesn’t say “you are stupid for not believing in god and
w2e don’t
give a rats ass about you or your rights or the whole church and state thing”,
then I don’t know what does.

’nuff said!

Of course.  Because we always think about the children.

On the plus side, it looks like the states are about the tell GW to go to hell.  It stuns me that an elected official would put restrictions on how states dole out healthcare.  Oh, right, don’t want to screw those big insurance companies that donate so much money and have such powerful lobbyists.

GAO says Bush violated federal law (again)

The Bush administration violated federal law last year when it restricted states’ ability to provide health insurance to children of middle-income families, and its new policy is therefore unenforceable, lawyers from the Government Accountability Office said Friday.

Wow, I didn’t realize how horribly dangerous we were.

Now, while I think that Rob Sherman (if he’s who I think he is) is using his child, I agree with his cause.

I also think that anyone who finds their faith threatened by someone believing something else, or by someone rejecting that faith, then they really don’t have a very strong faith at all.

Interesting…Islam likes to say pretty much the same thing about people who don’t believe in Allah, or worse, those who leave Islam.  Leaving Islam, apparently, damages all muslims.

What is it about ‘people of faith’ that scares them so about people who don’t buy what they bought?

Oh, right…fantasies are pretty damn hard to maintain when someone keeps saying that its all make-believe.

I want to make this as clear as I possibly can.  I am a smoker.  I knew better but still picked up the habit.  I don’t blame the Big Tobacco industry, but I do feel that they are possibly the most evil corporations out there, along with Big Oil and Big Pharma.

That said, this does not sound at all like Big T’s fault

The plaintiffs had alleged that those who used “light cigarettes” unknowingly ended up getting just as much tar and nicotine because they inhaled more frequently to compensate.

That complaint description (if accurate) sounds an awful lot to me like someone suing the makers of diet candy because they ended up eating twice as much.

Honestly.  When the government executes you for being gay, isn’t that almost the definition of systematic oppression?
‘Discrete’…the same way light skinned black people could pass if they were discrete.  The same way apostates can get along fine if they are ‘discrete’.
The UK and most, if not all, of Europe is suffering from a deep and profound fear of Islam.
The Archbishop of Canterbury went so far as to suggest that Muslims be allowed to have their own set of laws.  England would have two legal systems.  At what point do you just give up the illusion of being one country?  The brilliance of the modern legal and governmental system is that there is only one set of laws, that they apply to everyone equally (in theory, if not in practice).  It doesn’t matter if the second system is sharia, or rabbinical, or just some new set of laws dreamed up in a poli-sci class.  When your country does not treat all people under the same laws, death comes in robes of righteousness.

Gay teenager is facing gallows as his asylum bid is rejected – Times Online

The ruling will put the Home Office under renewed pressure to reassess his case — or face the possibility of sending a young man to his death. The department’s own guidance concedes that Iran executes homosexuals but rejects the claim that there is a systematic repression of gay men and lesbians.
..
“The Home Office’s position is that gay people can return to Iran safely
providing they are ‘discreet’. Heaven knows what that means,” he said.

Only sluts and whores will get HPV.
(like those pesky Negro girls, who we all know are sluts and whores)
(and, apparently, 1 in 5 non-Negroes who are also obviously sluts and whores or who have horrible parents who don’t raise them as good christians)

CDC study says at least 1 in 4 teen girls has a sexually transmitted disease; HPV most common | NewsOK.com

At least one in four teenage girls nationwide has a sexually transmitted disease, or more than 3 million teens, according to the first study of its kind in this age group.A virus that causes cervical cancer is by far the most common sexually transmitted infection in teen girls aged 14 to 19, while the highest overall prevalence is among black girls — nearly half the blacks studied had at least one STD. That rate compared with 20 percent among both whites and Mexican-American teens, the study from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

My thing here isn’t with the idea of home-schooling.  Its with the hands-off policies some states have.  We agree that kids should have to get at least something of an education, whether at home or in a school.  But if there’s no regulation on home-schooling, if parents just have to come in and say “We aren’t sending our kids to school, we’ll just teach them at home” then there’s no way to know if thats actually happening.  Parents could, in fact, be keeping their kids home in order to put them to work.  They could, in fact, be home-schooling them without teaching them what we as a society consider important (such as reading, and math).
A hands-off policy isn’t supportive of home-schooling.  Its the state abandoning kids.

Home-schoolers reel from California court blow – Yahoo! News

The number of students nationwide who are home-schooled is not known because 10 states are so hands-off they require no reporting at all, nor do parents always comply with reporting requirements. Estimates range from 1.1 million to 2.5 million home-schooled students, and the numbers are rising.About half the states require more than simple notification from parents or guardians, such as testing, curriculum approval, or home visits. But such rules are dwindling – either explicitly or by lax enforcement, say experts. Home-school advocates worry the California case could bring more regulation or enforcement, or both.

Well, thats got to be very comforting to women. Wear jeans and you can’t possibly be raped.
(quite possibly the most horrible thing to come out of Italy since…)

(edit: sorry, this is actually from 9 years ago, dunno why its making the rounds now.  However, the fact that it was 9 years ago doesn’t diminish how  fucking repulsive this is)

BBC News | Europe | Women in jeans ‘cannot be raped’

Women in jeans ‘cannot be raped’Women in jeans ‘cannot be raped’
Italy’s highest court has ruled that a woman wearing jeans cannot be raped.

The Supreme Court of Appeal in Rome on Wednesday overturned a rape conviction, saying that the supposed victim must have agreed to sex because her jeans could not have been removed without her consent.

A court in the southern town of Potenza had convicted a driving instructor of raping his 18-year-old pupil.

The instructor, aged 45 and identified only as Carmine, had been sentenced to 34 months’ jail.

His defence had argued that the young woman – identified as Rosa – had consented to sex, a version of events which the woman strongly denied.

The Supreme Court ruled that it was impossible to remove a pair of jeans “without the collaboration of the person wearing them”, and that the young woman must therefore have consented to sex.

In a judgement likely to anger women’s rights organisations, the rape conviction was reversed.

Driving instructors in Italy have a reputation, deserved or undeserved, for molesting young female pupils, and the case appeared at first to be a familiar story of sexual assault on a lonely country road.