Lorie Medina has never heard Barack Obama say anything good about America because she cannot comprehend that the word "we" could ever be spoken by someone who looks like him in a way that was meant to include someone who looks like her. She cannot conceive that "we" could be used in such an inclusive way because that is not how she uses the term herself -- not the way she understands it or is capable of understanding it. When she says "we" she is, emphatically, not including people who look like Barack Obama and so, when she hears him say it, she assumes he must likewise be excluding people who look like her. Read more

Slate's Ruth Graham on the latest Mark Driscoll scandal and the Matthew 18 dodge. Reporters, of all people, should know that people don't usually do things months ahead of deadlines. Mother Jones: 194 children killed by guns in the year since Newtown. Philadelphia failing on maternal mortality and newborn health. YNATKC: The U.S. is still killing people at weddings. You have enormous power. Read more

The letter recommends that Prison Fellowship should state more clearly "the criteria by which it claims that churches and millions of their faithful congregants are to be excluded from assisting the imprisoned and their children, who, consequently, will not receive joy and love in the form of gifts at Christmas." Ouch. The problem, of course, is that Prison Fellowship thought they had stated this criteria clearly with that bit about "upholding the Bible in all matters of faith and life." They assumed that "uphold the Bible" means the same thing as "excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians." Read more

Cuba annexes the Sudetenland. Schrodinger's lost colony of Roanoke. Brave gun-owner protects Walmart parking lot from a disabled child. It's really dangerous not having offshore wind farms. Fundie curriculum offers really weird, really easy multiple-choice tests. Bryan Fischer says the First Amendment only protects the free exercise of Christian religion. Read more

Reagan's Bind" describes the conundrum in which one is unable to explain or defend one's actions except by ascribing them to either: A) malicious intent; or B) glaring stupidity and/or incompetence. Read more