Despite Left Behind's intended "Bible-prophecy" premise, I still haven't ruled out the space-alien theory. I'm not thinking of the almond-eyed grays of "Close Encounters," but of something like the powerful creature in "Star Trek V" who masquerades as God. Yeah, I know. The odd-numbered Trek movies mostly suck, but bear with me here. ... Read more
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker stumbles on history, and arithmetic. No wonder he wants to cut education funding. Plus: What actually works to repel mosquitoes; Bill O'Reilly doesn't care for you kids today and your race music; and "Congrats, you have an all-male panel!" Read more
Harriet Tubman was Robin Hood. Later in her life, after the law had been changed and the Constitution rewritten, Tubman was praised and honored as a war hero and a humanitarian. But make no mistake, during her years as a "conductor on the Underground Railroad," Harriet Tubman was an outlaw and a thief who regularly stole the property of wealthy Maryland farmers. Read more
Cheer up, Huck. Some things in life are bad. They can really make you mad. But 30 years later you'll realize the sky didn't fall. Plus: Historical Adam listicles, moving your neighbor's ancient boundary stone, millions still subscribing to AOL, and a speech from the accidental senator. Read more
For those keeping score at home, if you're white, you can apparently refuse to take your hands out of your pockets and threaten to kill a cop while sporting a tattoo of the Number of the Beast on your forehead. But Freddie Gray is dead because he "made eye contact" with a police officer. Read more
Candida Moss on the pedagogy of Hell. Libby Anne on "Orgies, Bisexuality, James Dobson, and Evangelicals." Ronald Osborn on misreading Genesis and mistreating animals. Matthew Frost on the Bible on its own terms. And the Associated Press finds that "Your seafood might come from slaves." Read more
James Dobson isn't alone in making this claim. The legal-abortion-is-worse-than-the-Holocaust line is so frequently repeated by anti-abortion white evangelicals that Dobson's remark is really just a bit of "pro-life" boilerplate. But repetition hasn't made this claim any less outrageous or any more credible as something anyone could possibly say in good faith. If you try -- really try -- to imagine the implications of someone saying such a thing whole-heartedly and in good faith, you'll be forced to conclude that can't be what Dobson is doing. Read more
One way to avoid the kind of scandal that forced Richard Land out of the Southern Baptist ERLC would be for Southern Baptist leaders, going forward, to not spout racist garbage on the radio and not commit serial plagiarism. But Samuel James suggests another approach: suppressing all dissent and smothering public accountability under a fluffy pillow of sanctimonious blather. Read more
"Immediately she fell down at his feet and died. When the young men came in they found her dead, so they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things." Read more
David Brooks expects poor people to learn moral lessons from people like him. It has never occurred to him that people like him might need to learn moral lessons from the poor. Thus when he writes for himself and for people like himself, his columns read like a knock-off of Ecclesiastes, but when he writes about other (non-wealthy, non-white) people, his columns read like a glib, ignorant knock-off of Proverbs. Read more
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