Here & Now is a “daily news magazine” on public radio produced by WBUR in Boston. It’s name has never been more appropriate than today, as the program reported live from a city in turmoil. Their compelling reporting today doesn't help to make sense of any of this, but perhaps it helps us to understand the kind of senselessness at the heart of this story. Read more

Vermont adopted civil unions and the sky did not fall. Over the following decade other states followed suit and none of the monstrous evils that the fraudsters insisted would happen have come to pass. And on a more intimate, more personal level, more and more of the people in that potential market for these scary stories have gotten to know gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people — gotten to know them as people rather than as some amorphous Other — and so have come to realize that they’re not the monsters the scary stories make them out to be. Read more

Some more sad news in an already sad week: the passing of three remarkable people. Jonathan Winters was a hilarious, confounding comic genius. Singer George Beverly Shea bows with humble adoration. And Ragamuffin writer Brennan Manning's influence lives on in his grace-full readers. Read more

This is not an unusual story. The Indian River district is not unique. So why is it that so many American Christians have become so vehemently disdainful of both the Constitution and the Sermon on the Mount? Why is it that these Very Nice People see their determined embrace of an un-Christian, un-American position as evidence that they are good Christians and good Americans? And how is it that the CHINO majority can bully a single Jewish family into leaving town while simultaneously pointing to that as evidence that they, the majority, are "persecuted"? Read more