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The determination of David Cameron to press ahead with legalising gay marriage opens up the possibility of a lesbian queen giving birth to a future monarch by artificial insemination, Lord Tebbit has warned.
Because that’s exactly what happened in Belgium when they legalized gay marriage ten years ago.
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Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, argued that there is no comparison between Hurricane Sandy relief, which he voted against last fall, and aid for his state in the wake of Monday’s devastating tornado because the two are “totally different.”
Of course. That was “them” and this is “us”.
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Exorcism experts said on Monday that it appears that Pope Francis may have performed an exorcism on an ill man on St Peter’s Square following mass on Pentecost Sunday. According to a panel of clergy specialized in exorcism speaking on the religious satellite channel TV2000′s program Vade Retro, images appear to show the pontiff placing his hands on a man’s head and reciting a prayer to liberate the him from demons. Next Friday’s edition of the program on the religious satellite channel will be dedicated to “Pope Francis’ battle against the devil and his seductions,” the program conductor said. TV2000 is the television channel of the Italian Bishops Conference.
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In the case of a fire at Pensacola Christian College, the first priority is to dress appropriately.
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A prominent barrister specialising in reproductive rights has called for the age of consent to be lowered to 13.
Barbara Hewson told online magazine Spiked that the move was necessary in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal to end the “persecution of old men”.
Oh, why didn’t we think of this? End the sexual exploitation of children by making it legal!
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On today’s episode of the 700 Club, Pat Robertson urged viewers to avoid false prophets and televangelists caught up in scandal. “By your fruits you shall know them, what’s their track record?” Robertson told cohost Terry Meeuwsen, “You can dominate somebody that way: I’ve heard from the Lord, I have a message for you, do this.”
Funny he should mention this, because just today we stumbled across an interview between Pat Robertson and televangelist Benny Hinn the week before the presidential election where Robertson bluntly informed Hinn that “the Lord told me” that Mitt Romney would defeat President Obama.
Not only did God inform Robertson that “Romney will win” but that he will be a two-term president who presides over a huge economic boom.
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“Only God can judge,” Matt Gaetz, a Republican who sponsored the bill in the House of Representatives, said last week during House debate. “But we sure can set up the meeting.”
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Pastor Jim Garlow of Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego lost his wife of 42 years, Carol, to cancer earlier this month. I grieve for anyone who has lost a loved one, especially a beloved spouse.But it’s too bad Garlow would not be able to extend the same compassion to me if I should lose my beloved spouse of 12 years. You see, Garlow has used the death of his wife as an opportunity to do what he does best: bash gays and lesbians.
In an email he sent to supporters this past Sunday, Garlow wrote:
On occasion I would read phrases in newspapers or blogs to describe me as being “anti-gay” or “anti gay-marriage.” First, I am not against homosexual “marriage” because there is no such thing. I cannot be against something that does not exist according to God’s definition.
But I am adamantly pro authentic, historic marriage. And God’s Word on the subject, along with an indescribably spectacular 42 years with Carol, caused me to be so intensely pro (natural) marriage.
I was once asked by a secular news reporter, “Has your love for Carol and her cancer battle impacted your fight for marriage.” “Yes,” I responded. Why? Because I saw the wonder of covenantal one man-one woman marriage. I saw the sheer delight of authentic, biblical, natural, historic, God-defined marriage. The complimentary halves of humanity coming together is simply breathtaking.Two things struck me as I read this odious message. First, what kind of blind hatred of other people would compel you to use the occasion of your wife’s death to make political hay? Rev. Garlow’s wife dies and the first thing he wants to do is write a letter to his supporters about how awful and sinful other people’s relationships are compared to his “real” relationship?
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A Florida teen with an exemplary record is facing federal charges after conducting what a classmate calls “a science project gone bad.”
16-year-old Kiera Wilmot is accused of mixing housing chemicals in a small water bottle at Bartow High School, causing the cap to fly off and produce a bit of smoke. The experiment was conducted outdoors, no property was damaged, and no one was injured.
Not long after Wilmot’s experiment, authorities arrested her and charged her with “possession/discharge of a weapon on school property and discharging a destructive device,” according to WTSP-TV. The school district proceeded to expel Wilmot for handling the “dangerous weapon,” also known as a water bottle. She will have to complete her high school education through an expulsion program.
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Two masked men wearing hoodies and wielding handguns burst into the Pine Eagle Charter School in this tiny rural community on Friday. Students were at home for an in-service day, so the gunmen headed into a meeting room full of teachers and opened fire.
Someone figured out in a few seconds that the bullets were not drawing blood because they were blanks and the exercise was a drill, designed to test Pine Eagle’s preparation for an assault by “active shooters” who were, in reality, members of the school staff. But those few seconds left everybody plenty scared.
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A study out Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined attitudes about energy efficiency in liberals and conservatives, and found that promoting energy-efficient products and services on the basis of their environmental benefits actually turned conservatives off from picking them. The researchers first quizzed participants on how much they value various benefits of energy efficiency, including reducing carbon emissions, reducing foreign oil dependence, and reducing how much consumers pay for energy; cutting emissions appealed to conservatives the least.
The study then presented participants with a real-world choice: With a fixed amount of money in their wallet, respondents had to “buy” either an old-school lightbulb or an efficient compact florescent bulb (CFL), the same kind Bachmann railed against. Both bulbs were labeled with basic hard data on their energy use, but without a translation of that into climate pros and cons. When the bulbs cost the same, and even when the CFL cost more, conservatives and liberals were equally likely to buy the efficient bulb. But slap a message on the CFL’s packaging that says “Protect the Environment,” and “we saw a significant drop-off in more politically moderates and conservatives choosing that option,” said study author Dena Gromet, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
Got that? With all other factors being equal, conservatives were less likely to buy the exact same lightbulb if you told them it would help the environment.
Another source:
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In the second study, 210 volunteers were interviewed and then given $2 each to purchase a light bulb. The light bulbs offered for sale were either “normal” or an energy efficient variety (with a higher price.) The higher priced bulbs were identical but were advertised in two different ways: one made claims about how the light bulb was good for the planet, the other claimed to save the buyer money by using less electricity. The researchers found those with more conservative views were less inclined to buy the special bulbs when the labeling touted its planet-saving features. When it was labeled as a money-saver however, conservatives were quite willing to buy them. Those with a more liberal view were found willing to buy the special bulb regardless of which advertising was used. In another variant of the study, the researchers found that both conservatives and liberals bought the special bulb over the “normal” bulb if they were priced the same.
The researchers suggest that those people in the study with conservative ideology were not necessarily against buying so-called green products, but have been conditioned to associate such terms with liberalism, and thus, shy away from products labeled as such.
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Smith’s “High Quality Research Act,” embedded below, scraps the NSF’s current peer-review process, which solicits the opinions of independent experts as to the “intellectual merit” and “broader impacts” of proposed research. In its stead, a new set of non-scientific standards for science funding are proposed.
Those proposed standards are three-fold, requiring the NSF’s director to certify that all accepted research proposals are: “in the interests of the United States to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science; the finest quality, is groundbreaking, and answers questions or solves problems that are of utmost importance to society at large; and not duplicative of other research projects being funded by the Foundation or other Federal science agencies.” The draft bill also requires that the NSF director report to Congress how the same criteria can be applied to “other Federal science agencies.”
In addition to the problem of stripping out a transparent, peer-review process, the new standards also discount the importance of research duplication, an important part of the scientific process. Without overlapping research, scientists cannot independently verify experimental results from other laboratories.
Science Magazine goes on to note that Smith also recently sent a letter to NSF director Cora Marrett requesting more information on five specific grants — an action without precedent for a chairman of the House Science committee, particularly one who is personally lacking in scientific expertise. That letter reportedly drew a rebuke by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), who wrote to Smith warning that interfering with the peer-review process threatens to “undo everything that has enabled NSF to contribute so profoundly to our national health, prosperity, and welfare.”
Anybody want to bet this is just to get creationism and climate change denial accepted as good research subjects deserving of lots of grants?
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Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down.
These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.
(…)
Sadly, we have been conditioned to believe that the job of the government is to keep us safe, but in reality the job of the government is to protect our liberties. Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties. That is what happened in Boston.
*speechless*
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The Anne Frank Diary is ‘pornographic’ according to one mother who has lodged a formal complaint over the book being used in school to educate her own child.
Mom, Gail Horalek, has filed a formal complaint against her daughter’s school district over its use of the Anne Frank Diary, saying that many of the passages contained in the book are way to graphic for seventh graders like her daughter.
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Last year in Norristown, Pa., Lakisha Briggs’ boyfriend physically assaulted her, and the police arrested him. But in a cruel turn of events, a police officer then told Ms. Briggs, “You are on three strikes. We’re gonna have your landlord evict you.”
Yes, that’s right. The police threatened Ms. Briggs with eviction because she had received their assistance for domestic violence. Under Norristown’s “disorderly behavior ordinance,” the city penalizes landlords and tenants when the police respond to three instances of “disorderly behavior” within a four-month period. The ordinance specifically includes “domestic disturbances” as disorderly behavior that triggers enforcement of the law.
After her first “strike,” Ms. Briggs was terrified of calling the police. She did not want to do anything to risk losing her home. So even when her now ex-boyfriend attacked her with a brick, she did not call. And later, when he stabbed her in the neck, she was still too afraid to reach out. But both times, someone else did call the police. Based on these “strikes,” the city pressured her landlord to evict. After a housing court refused to order an eviction, the city said it planned to condemn the property and forcibly remove Ms. Briggs from her home. The ACLU intervened, and the city did not carry out its threats, and even agreed to repeal the ordinance. But just two weeks later, Norristown quietly passed a virtually identical ordinance that imposes fines on landlords unless they evict tenants who obtain police assistance, including for domestic violence.
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Fox News ignored economic history to forward the absurd claim that former President George W. Bush exercised “fiscal discipline.”
On the April 25 edition of Fox & Friends, former Bush White House Chief of Staff Andy Card claimed that President Bush “probably has the best track record of any modern president in terms of fiscal discipline,” a statement that went unchallenged by the Fox & Friends co-hosts:
Just like Reagan cut the debt into triple.

Let me answer that for you, Senator: Civilized first world countries.
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Sources told FOX 25 there was an American Airlines flight that was headed to Chicago. There were two men on that plane – not sitting next to each other – and speaking Arabic.
There were some concerned marathoners on the flight so the plane was brought back to the gate and the two men were escorted off the plane.
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From Public Policy Polling: “Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies, or not?”
Do 4%
Do not 88%
Not sure 7%
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“Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber. “This text wrote the Canadian teen idol Justin Bieber in the guestbook of the Anne Frank House, reports the museum Saturday on his Facebook page.Bieber Friday visited the premises on the Prinsengracht during his visit to the Netherlands. Twitter appeared on dozens of photos of the singer in front of an army of bodyguards looked at the house where the Jewish Frank family during the war three years went into hiding. Bieber was further Friday signaled by, among others, the Van Gogh Museum and the Conservatorium Hotel.
In his self-centered, pampered celebrity existence it totally makes sense. Since being a Belieber is all there really is, he’s mourning her early passing and loss in the only way he knows how to do anything: in relation to himself.
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“The reason that we are not launching our prototype at this stage is that the Chinese will steal the idea and produce it in millions overnight.”
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An Idaho high school science teacher has found himself under investigation by the state after parents complained that he used the word “vagina” during a lesson on the human reproductive system and explained the functional aspects of orgasm.
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A California creationist is offering a $10,000 challenge to anyone who can prove in front of a judge that science contradicts the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.
Dr Joseph Mastropaolo, who says he has set up the contest, the Literal Genesis Trial, in the hope of improving the quality of arguments between creationists and evolutionists, has pledged to put $10,000 of his own money into an escrow account before the debate. His competitor would be expected to do the same. The winner would take the $20,000 balance.
The argument would not be made in a formal court, but under an alternative dispute resolution model known as a minitrial. Mastropaolo said he would present the argument in favor of a literal interpretation of the creation story once he had found a willing scientist to argue that a non-literal interpretation of Genesis is more scientific.
“They [evolutionists] are not stupid people, they are bright, but they are bright enough to know there is no scientific evidence they can give in a minitrial,” Mastropaolo said.
A minitrial differs from a regular trial because it does not need to be held in a courthouse and does not require the presence of traditional court figures. Mastropaolo plans to have a bailiff and court reporter in attendance, along with the judge. Contest rules state that evidence must be scientific, which means it is “objective, valid, reliable and calibrated”.
Before you go “well, MY science is calibrated all-right!” describe this for what it is: It’s a $10,000 bet that you can’t beat his goal-posts in a race.
Because if it wasn’t, simply pointing to Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District would suffice.
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The paranoia that Fox News created is turning against them, as tea party activists are boycotting the network for being too far left.
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The Internet—the global system of interconnected networks that’s become an increasingly central means of commerce and communication capable of bringing far-flung civilizations together—reached its apex this week, after a man claiming to be the fiancé of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic character Twilight Sparkle contacted a user of online community DeviantArt to demand he stop drawing sexual pictures of his imaginary pony-bride. The request was made in a letter that was then published in full on the Internet, which no longer has any reason to exist, having achieved everything it has ever set out to do.
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The public education system in Maryland has officially gone off the deep end.
The Old Line State — where kids have been suspended for making guns with their fingers and with toaster pastries — now boasts a school district that prohibits hugging and homemade food in public elementary schools for anyone except a parent’s own children.
Parents must also register to enter the playground and they can’t push anyone except their own kids on the swings.
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Norman Tebbit is the only British peer known to have physically attacked a ceremonial Chinese dragon at a New Year’s celebration. He was 80 at the time, I think. He was famous long ago for having a dad with a bike.
Like that would be any worse than the procession of bumblers, twits, tyrants, and philanderers that have come before …
I didn’t know you knew so much Belgian history!
Lord Tebbit’s attempt to make the succession to an irrelevant post a matter of any interest to anyone other than the handful of inbred snobs lined up to get on the gravy train is pathetic. Now if he had made the statement while wearing an ermine robe and riding a bike, that would have been noteworthy and possibly grounds for commitment.