This day is not imagination’s child

Last updated on: May 1, 2015 at 6:36 pm By Fred Clark

Texas Republican slaps down right-wing nonsense: "I am horrified that I have to choose between the possibility that my governor actually believes this stuff and the possibility that my governor doesn't have the backbone to stand up to those who do. I'm not sure which is worse." Plus: Privatized red-lining, Wanksy to the rescue, Bill Lindsey, Mallory Ortberg, and the 10,000th (10 millionth?) example of so-called pro-lifers demonstrating that they're more concerned with controlling women that whatever else it is they claim to be concerned about. Read more

Left Behind Classic Fridays, No. 31: ‘Scream 2 morality’

Last updated on: April 30, 2015 at 4:29 pm By Fred Clark

The lesson, I suppose, is that our heroes are allowed to be selfish because they are our heroes. Other people, like poor Chris Smith, are not. So just like the peripheral characters who die for their "sins" in a slasher movie, we know that Smith is doomed. The next time we see him we can expect he'll be dead, another bloodied corpse in the woods of Camp Crystal Lake. Read more

Congress sides with predatory lenders vs. military families

Last updated on: April 30, 2015 at 2:58 pm By Fred Clark

The protections against legal loan-sharking here are appallingly modest -- 36 percent interest remains perfectly legal. And those protections are weirdly restricted, applying only to a single sub-set of the public: military families. If it makes sense to protect military families from this kind of sleazy, coercive lending -- and it does -- then it shouldn't make sense that such protection applies only to military families. Read more

Scenes from the class war (4.30)

Last updated on: April 30, 2015 at 1:53 pm By Fred Clark

"Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire." Read more

The earth spins on and on and so much news is bad

Last updated on: April 29, 2015 at 4:46 am By Fred Clark

Something the size of a mustard seed can produce a nasty invasive weed ... or a hilariously inept piece of graphic design. Also: Residency incentives; civilian courts prove capable; "5 Christian Books I WIsh I'd Never Read;" and the archetype the gatekeepers require us to describe as a historical person. Read more

‘See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum …’

Last updated on: April 29, 2015 at 4:01 am By Fred Clark

I wouldn't like this story at all if I thought it ended with Batman choking the Joker to death while laughing maniacally. I think that ending would ruin this story for me -- and would probably ruin all the other Batman stories as well. That's how Tim LaHaye wants his stories to end -- with the Good Guys punching the Bad Guys to death. And I don't think that ending fits with the rest of the story. Not at all. Read more

How Bruce and Patti prove that Huckabee and Scalia are lying (and that they know full well they’re lying)

Last updated on: April 28, 2015 at 5:22 pm By Fred Clark

Antonin Scalia is also fully aware of the Roman Catholic Church's teaching and practice on divorce and remarriage. He is fully, completely aware that any Catholic with a valid civil divorce has every legal, civil and constitutional right to remarry. And he is fully, completely aware that this has never in any way, shape or form ever meant that a Catholic priest could be legally compelled to consecrate such a wedding. Justice Scalia knows this. Everyone knows this. Read more

James Baldwin is still urgently relevant. The Senate GOP is not.

Last updated on: April 28, 2015 at 2:20 pm By Fred Clark

"This is why those pious calls to 'respect the law,' always to be heard from prominent citizens each time the ghetto explodes, are so obscene. The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer. To respect the law, in the context in which the American Negro finds himself, is simply to surrender his self-respect." -- James Baldwin in 1966, reading like he's writing in 2015. Read more

Once again here I am

Last updated on: April 28, 2015 at 3:47 am By Fred Clark

If you're a teenager in Harrison County, Mississippi, and you've been sentenced to write a 1,000-word essay on the book of Revelation as a plea-deal for underage drinking, then I hereby invite you to copy-and-paste anything on that subject from this blog. Also: Laura Turner follows up on that "Tinder for Christians" app; The Liar Tony Perkins demonstrates yet again how he earned that title; and John Oliver offers a wagonload of mystery chicken to the Lords of the Sweatshops. Read more

Sunday WTF?

Last updated on: April 26, 2015 at 8:05 am By Fred Clark

"And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, 'No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Since this man is my guest, do not do this vile thing. Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do whatever you want to them; but against this man do not do such a vile thing.'" Read more

After healing a leper, Jesus sternly warned him to tell no one but show himself to the priest. Did the man obey?