"Plutocracy Triumphant"Cartoon Compendium
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"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
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Funny Signs
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Creationism
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Sarah Palin: Ardent Supporter Of Wealth Redistribution
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It is important to re-frame "wealth distribution" in terms of "national patrimony."
Otherwise, gringos will persist in their puerile belief that plutocrats are entitled to "every penny they can fleece."
Otherwise, gringos will persist in their puerile belief that plutocrats are entitled to "every penny they can fleece."
In this regard, I am greatly encouraged by Sarah Palin's ardent endorsement of patrimony.
No American politician -- including socialist Senator Bernie Sanders -- has worked harder to re-distribute money seized from Fortune 500 companies to each and every man, woman and child in their home state.
Robin Hood would blush at her boldness.
If Sarah can see the good sense of patrimonial wealth distribution, any American can.
Who knows?
"PWD" may be poised to sweep the nation.
We've already got The Poster Girl!
"Socialist Super Star Sarah Palin Demands Oil Companies Be Stripped Of $6 Billion"
Paz contigo
Alan
PS Here is another notable Palin position:
Sarah Palin: "Alaska Feels The Impact Of Global Warming More Than Any Other State"
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"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"
"Plutocracy Triumphant"Cartoon Compendium
"Plutocracy Triumphant"
Cartoon Compendium
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Under Francis, Catholic Leaders Prepare to Debate Whether Church Should Change
Lighten up.
ROME — From the outset of his papacy, Pope Francis has encouraged a robust and open debate over the contentious social issues that have long sundered the Roman Catholic Church. Now, with a critical meeting on the theme of family about to begin at the Vatican, he is seemingly getting what he wanted: a charged atmosphere with cardinals jousting over how and whether the church should change.
Conservatives, in particular, are trying to stop any prospects for allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the sacrament of holy communion. A group of powerful conservative cardinals has released a handful of books — timed to coincide with the opening of the Vatican meeting on Sunday — that are fashioned as rebuttals to such proposals but that some analysts see as thinly veiled swipes at Francis.
“The conservatives have already mobilized,” said Marco Politi, a longtime Vatican analyst and the author of a new book, “Francis Among the Wolves.” “Now it is up to the reformers to come out.”
For Francis, the two-week gathering is the beginning of a yearlong process that could determine what sort of changes he will, or will not, bring to the church’s approach to social issues such as divorce, gay civil unions or single parents. The meeting, known as an Extraordinary Synod, is an open forum at which 191 bishops, cardinals and other church leaders are expected to debate these and other issues, and to set the agenda for a final, decisive synod next October.
Having enjoyed a mostly charmed papacy, Francis is now plunging into contested terrain that requires confronting entrenched power blocs in the Vatican and beyond. He set the synod schedule early in his papacy, and while he has remained opaque about what specific changes he is seeking, he has spoken about a more merciful, inclusive approach. Some analysts believe he sent a pointed signal last month when he oversaw a wedding of 20 couples in St. Peter’s Basilica, including couples who had been living together and a person whose previous marriage had been annulled.
Recent history hangs over the proceedings. In 1980, Pope John Paul II convened a synod on the theme of family, but analysts say it served to stanch reformist dissent and further concentrate authority in the Vatican. Many synods since then have largely been vehicles to rubber-stamp policies handed down from the Vatican, many experts say.
By contrast, Francis has sought to let conflicting voices be heard, while also issuing a questionnaire to gather opinions from ordinary Catholics.
“The synod is dedicated to the family because the context of the family has changed from the way it was 33 years ago,” said Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri during a news conference at the Vatican on Friday. Cardinal Baldisseri, appointed by the pope to oversee the synod, added, “We need to be able to put the church’s reality in today’s reality.”
Cardinal Baldisseri said that Francis would attend the daily meetings, in which a range of people are expected to speak, but that he would mostly be an observer, other than offering a daily prayer and a speech to conclude the proceedings on Oct. 19.
He noted that although the Western news media and many Western Catholic leaders have fixated on certain social issues, the talks would be wide-ranging, given the church’s global scope, to include issues like poverty, migration and polygamy.
Yet for many, the bellwether topic will be whether church leaders will ease the process for allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion. The church already uses annulments to declare that a marriage was never actually valid, clearing the way for Catholics who have divorced and remarried to receive communion. But annulments are usually a cumbersome, time-consuming process. Recently, Francis appointed a commission to simplify procedures.
In February, Francis chose Walter Kasper, an emeritus cardinal from Germany, to give the opening address that month at a consistory of cardinals considered the first step in the synod process. Cardinal Kasper, regarded as a liberal on social issues, has proposed a mechanism whereby some divorced or remarried Catholics could serve a period of penance and then be allowed to receive communion.
Some cardinals have spoken out against the proposal as a violation of Catholic doctrine, a stance he recently rejected. “Catholic doctrine is not a closed system, but a living tradition that develops,” Cardinal Kasper was quoted as saying recently by Il Mattino, an Italian daily newspaper. “They want to crystallize the truth in certain formulas,” he said, “the formulas of tradition.”
Cardinal Kasper, noting that the pope had endorsed his February speech, questioned the motives of some critics. “I am not the target; the target is another,” he said, suggesting the target was Francis.
The opposition is led by a group of conservative cardinals who this week published a book, “Remaining in the Truth of Christ,” that included essays intended to rebut Cardinal Kasper. In a conference call with journalists this week, one of the authors, Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, said the church could not change teachings on marriage and bluntly criticized Cardinal Kasper.
“He was urging a direction which in the whole history of the church has never been taken,” said Cardinal Burke, prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura and a former archbishop of St. Louis. He added that church teaching “is handed down to us from the apostles.”
“The synod is not meeting to create some new teaching in the church, or to break with that tradition,” Cardinal Burke said.
(He also criticized Cardinal Kasper’s comment that people were criticizing him to attack the pope. “I find it amazing that the cardinal claims to speak for the pope,” Cardinal Burke said, adding: “The pope is not mute. He can speak for himself, and if this is what he wants, he will say so.”)
Some Catholic scholars note that the church has demonstrated considerable flexibility over the centuries when facing changing societal problems. Stephen J. Pope, a professor of theological ethics at Boston College, said the new discussions over social issues are unsettling to some bishops, who ascended by toeing an ideological line but are now being encouraged to speak their personal views, even as Francis seems to want to bring change.
“It’s clear that Pope Francis is signaling that, but he wants that result from dialogue within the church,” Mr. Pope said. “He wants it to emerge organically from discussions, rather than impose it.”
Mr. Politi, the Vatican analyst, said the emerging political fault lines were actually a boon to Francis, who organized the synod over two meetings — divided by a year — in order to stir the sort of deep conversation needed to bring a mandate for change.
“You can only have big changes to the Catholic Church if all the bishops and cardinals are involved,” Mr. Politi said. “For Pope Francis, it is important that people speak out, even if they speak out against him.”
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Jane Goodall On Empathy And How To Reach Our Highest Human Potential
Jane Goodall on Empathy and How to Reach Our Highest Human Potential
The question of what sets us apart from other animals has occupied humanity for millennia, but only in the last few decades have animals gone from objects to be observed to fellow beings to be understood, with their own complex psychoemotional constitution.Hardly anyone has contributed more to this landmark shift in attitudes – or, rather, this homecoming to the true nature of things – thanJane Goodall (b. April 3, 1934), who has spent the past half-century fusing together the scientific rigor of a pioneering primatologist with the spiritual wisdom of a philosopher and peace advocate.
In this wonderful short video from NOVA's series The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers, Dr. Goodall considers how empathy for other animals brings us closer to our highest human potentiality:
Empathy is really important... Only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achieve our true potential.
Empathy is really important... Only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achieve our true potential.Complement with Dr. Goodall's answers to the Proust Questionnaire, her beautiful poem about science and spirituality, and her meditation on our human responsibilities.
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Joan Didion Answers "The Proust Questionnaire"
Joan Didion Answers the Proust Questionnaire
In the 1880s, long before he claimed his status as one of the greatest authors of all time, teenage Marcel Proust (July 10, 1871–November 18, 1922) filled out an English-language questionnaire given to him by his friend Antoinette, the daughter of France's then-president, as part of her "confession album"– a Victorian version of today's popular personality tests, designed to reveal the answerer's tastes, aspirations, and sensibility in a series of simple questions. Proust's original manuscript, titled "by Marcel Proust himself," wasn't discovered until 1924, two years after his death. Decades later, the French television host Bernard Pivot, whose work inspired James Lipton's Inside the Actor's Studio, saw in the questionnaire an excellent lubricant for his interviews and began administering it to his guests in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1993, Vanity Fairresurrected the tradition and started publishing various public figures' answers to the Proust Questionnaire on the last page of each issue.In 2009, the magazine released Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire: 101 Luminaries Ponder Love, Death, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life(public library) – a compendium of answers by such cultural icons as Jane Goodall, David Bowie, Allen Ginsberg, Hedy Lamarr, Gore Vidal, and Julia Child.
Unsurprisingly, some of the most wonderful answers come from 69-year-old Joan Didion – a woman who has endured more personal tragedy than most and has written about it with great dignity and grace, extracting from her experience wisdom on such subtle and monumental aspects of existence as grief, self-respect, keeping a notebook.
Didion's answers are particularly poignant for their timing – she answered The Proust Questionnaire in October of 2003, several weeks before her husband died of a heart attack while her only daughter lay comatose in the ICU; though Didion's daughter did recover from the coma, acute pancreatitis took her life eighteen months later.
What is your greatest fear?
I have an irrational fear of snakes. When my husband and I moved to a part of Los Angeles County with many rattlesnakes, I tried to desensitize myself by driving every day to a place called Hermosa Reptile Import-Export and forcing myself to watch the anacondas. This seemed to work, but a few yeas later, when we were living in Malibu and I had a Corvette, a king snake (a "good" snake, not poisonous, by no means anaconda-like) dropped from a garage rafter into my car. My daughter, then four, brought it to show me. I am ashamed to say I ran away. I still think about what would have happened had I driven to the market and noticed my passenger, the snake, on the Pacific Coast Highway.What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?I find "speaking one's mind" pretty overrated, in that it usually turns out to be a way of aggrandizing the speaker at the expense of the helpless listener.What is your favorite journey?A long time ago, before they showed movies on airplanes and decided to make you close the blinds, I used to love flying west and watching the country open up, the checkerboarded farms of the Midwest giving way to the vast stretches of nothing. I also loved flying over the Pole from Europe to Los Angeles during the day, when you could see ice floes and islands s in the sea change almost imperceptibly to lakes in the land. This shift in perception was very thrilling to me.On what occasion do you lie?I probably lie constantly, if the definition of lying includes white lies, social lies, lies to ease a situation or make someone feel better. My mother was incapable of lying. I remember her driving into a blinding storm to vote for an acquaintance in an S.P.C.A. election. "I told Dorothy I would," she said when I tried to dissuade her. "How will Dorothy know?" I asked. "That's not the point," my mother said. I'm sorry to report that this was amazing to me.What do you dislike most about your appearance?For a while there I disliked being short, but I got used to it. Which is not to say I wouldn't have preferred to be five-ten and get sent clothes by designers.Which words or phrases do you most overuse?Most people who write find themselves overusing certain words or constructions (if they worked once, they get hardwired), so much so that a real part of the exercise is getting those repetitions out.When and where were you happiest?Once, in a novel, Democracy, I had the main character, Inez Victor, consider this very question, which was hard for her. She drinks her coffee, she smokes a cigarette, she thinks it over, she comes to a conclusion: "In retrospect she seemed to have been most happy in borrowed houses, and at lunch. She recalled being extremely happy eating lunch by herself in a hotel room in Chicago, once when snow was drifting on the window ledges. There was a lunch in Paris that she remembered in detail: a late lunch with Harry and the twins at Pré Catelan in the rain." These lunches and borrowed houses didn't come from nowhere.What talent would you most like to have?I long to be fluent in languages other than English. I am resigned to the fact that this will not happen. A lot of things get in the way, not least a stubborn fear of losing my only real asset since childhood, the ability to put English sentences together.If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?I'm afraid that "one thing" would just lead to another thing, making this a question only the truly greedy would try to answer.What is your most treasured possession?I treasure things my daughter has given me, for example (I think of this because it is always on my desk), a picture book called Baby Animals and Their Mothers.What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?Misery is feeling estranged from people I love. Misery is also not working. The two seem to go together.Where would you like to live?I want to live somewhere else every month or so. Right now I would like to be living on Kailua Beach, on the windward side of Oahu. Around November, I'm quite sure I will want to be living in Paris, preferably in the Hotel Bristol. I like hotels a lot. When we were living in houses in Los Angeles I used to make charts showing how we could save money by living in a bungalow in Bel-Air, but my husband never bought it.What is your favorite occupation?I like making gumbo. I like gardening. I like writing, at least when it's going well, maybe because it seems to be exactly as tactile a thing to do as making gumbo or gardening.What is your most marked characteristic?If I listened to other people, I would think my most marked characteristic was being thin. What strikes me about myself, however, is no t my thinness but a certain remoteness. I tune out a lot.Who is your favorite hero of fiction?Axel Heyst in Joseph Conrad's Victory has always attracted me as a character. Standing out on that dock in, I think (I may be wrong, because I have no memory), Sumatra. His great venture, the Tropical Belt Coal Company, gone to ruin behind him. And then he does something so impossibly brave that he can only be doing it because he has passed entirely beyond concern for himself.
Sample Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire further with answers fromJane Goodall and David Bowie, complement it with LIFE magazine's similarly-spirited compendium of wisdom from cultural icons The Meaning of Life, then revisit Didion's remarkable meditation on grief.
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Diane Rehm On Aging. We Want Safety For Our Loved Ones; Autonomy For Ourselves
Modern medicine has advanced dramatically in the past century: Average life expectancy has increased from the mid-40s to the mid-70s today. But as medicine has advanced and people are living longer, children are more likely to live far away from aging parents. Nursing homes and assisted living facilities are popular destinations, but often focus on safety and routines at the expense of quality of life and human interaction. Harvard physician and author Atul Gawande argues that making mortality a medical experience is failing society. And he says end-of-life treatments often end up shortening lives instead of extending them. A Harvard doctor on a smarter approach to aging and dying.
Guests
Dr. Atul Gawande
general surgeon, Brigham & Women’s Hospital; professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health; staff writer at The New Yorker magazine; author of “The Checklist Manifesto,” “Better” and “Complications.”
Related Items
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Urban Legends Infect Conservatives More Easily Than Ebola Infects Family Members
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"People Who Watch Only Fox News Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"
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"People Who Watch Only Fox News
Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"
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Yet Another Conservative Urban Legend Takes Root
| Wed Sep. 18, 2013
Yesterday I noticed an item reporting that Warren Buffett thought Obamacare should be scrapped. It took about ten seconds of googling to figure out that (a) Buffett's statement was made three years ago, and (b) he was lobbying for a better bill, not for health care reform to be abandoned. In fact, he specifically said that given a choice between the status quo and the bill wending its way through Congress, he'd take the bill. I considered writing a post about this, but the source seemed to be pretty obscure and nutballish, and anyway, my big toenail needed clipping. So I didn't bother.
That might have been a mistake. It turns out that this is an object lesson in how eager conservatives are to pick up even on things that are so plainly wrong they'd embarrass a five-year-old. Jon Chait does the honors:
The quote was picked up by Jeffrey H. Anderson of the Weekly Standard — “You know things are bad for President Obama when even Warren Buffett has soured on Obamacare and says that ‘we need something else’” — and ricocheted around the conservative-news world....In fact, the Buffett quote came from comments he made in 2010, when the health-care law was being cobbled together in Congress. His denunciation of “what we have right now” refers to the pre-Obamacare status quo.....Anderson hilariously issued an “update” to his completely false item, in which he notes: “It appears that Buffett made his anti-Obamacare comments in 2010, thereby showing that he, like most of the American people, has opposed Obamacare since even before it was passed.”
Buffett immediately issued a statement calling these reports "100 percent wrong," and pointing out that he's supported Obamacare from the very start.
Too late, Warren! This is now officially a conservative urban legend that will never, ever go away. Whether it's true or not doesn't really matter.
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The Top 100 "Star Trek" Episodes Of All Time!
Star Trek gave us six TV series, spanning over 700 episodes, because it's such a rich universe. And a Federation starship is the perfect vehicle to tell unforgettable stories. But which Star Trekstories are the best? To find out, we painstakingly compiled the 100 greatest Trek episodes, from any of the series.
What makes for a great Star Trek episode? Obviously, the fun quotient has to be high, and there need to be awesome character moments. But I'd argue that a really notable Trek story explores some ideas, or some ethical quandaries, in a way that sticks with you after you're done watching. If one thing has defined Trek throughout its run, it's that.
So here's our list of the 100 best Star Trek episodes. Please let us know which episodes we missed, or ranked incorrectly!
Warning: some spoilers below, although we try not to give away all the plot twists.
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100) Bride of Chaotica! (Star Trek: Voyager) - A hilarious pastiche of old-school science fiction serials, this story puts the Voyager crew in the middle of a space-opera fantasy gone very, very wrong.
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99) Day of the Dove (Star Trek) - An alien entity wants the Enterprise crew and some Klingons to slaughter each other, and Kirk has nearly as much trouble with his own crew as with the "enemy."
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98) Paradise (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Sisko and O'Brien find themselves in a "perfect" society where no technology functions, and the society's matriarch tests Sisko's will with some pretty brutal treatment.
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97) Borderland/Cold Station 12/The Augments (Enterprise) - In this three-part episode, we delve into the past of Khan Noonien Singh's genetically augmented crew, and also meet the ancestor of Data's creator. And connecting those two dots allows the story to get into some weird questions about the nature of "superior" people.
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96) Lineage (Star Trek: Voyager) - B'Elanna and Tom are expecting a baby... but maybe they can genetically engineer it to be more human and less Klingon? More than any episode about Khan's people, this episode digs into the thorny ethics of eugenics.
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95) The Most Toys (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Data is taken prisoner by an unscrupulous collector, and the android finds out just how far he's willing to go to win his freedom.
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94) Disaster (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - A calamity cuts off the different sections of the ship from each other, leaving Deanna Troi in charge, and Worf having to deliver a baby.
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93) Future's End (Star Trek: Voyager) - An evil Bill Gates-type in the 1990s has gotten hold of a 29th century ship, and even the Voyager crew might not be able to keep him from changing history.
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92) The Magnificent Ferengi (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Of all DS9's "Ferengi comedy" episodes, this is one of the funniest — Quark has to rescue his mother from the Dominion, but everything goes absolutely pear-shaped and Quark has to improvise.
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91) The Killing Game (Star Trek: Voyager) - The Hirogen love to hunt, so what could be better than turning Voyager into a recreation of World War II? (Lots of things. But that's what they do, anyway.)
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90) Booby Trap (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - The Enterprise is trapped in a weird space trap, and Geordi can't find a solution until he makes himself a new colleague... who's the woman of Geordi's dreams.
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89) Court Martial (Star Trek) - Kirk is put on trial, and along the way he shows what it really takes to command a starship.
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88) Favor the Bold/Sacrifice of Angels (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - This episode is a turning point in the "Dominion War" arc. But more to the point, it features a ginormous, amazing space battle, featuring hundreds of starships.
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87) Déjà Q (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Q has lost his powers, and now he's learning to cope with being human. If he can survive the wrath of Guinan, that is.
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86) Memorial (Star Trek: Voyager) - Voyager was at its best when coping with strange thought experiments, and here's a doozy: a memorial forces you to experience a terrible war first-hand. Should it be allowed to remain operational?
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85) Little Green Men (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Quark gets stranded on mid-20th century Earth, and for once even he can't figure out how to profit from this, in a hilariously weird episode.
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84) Parallels (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Worf keeps jumping to various (and highly entertaining) alternate realities, showing how different his life could be with just a few changes.
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83) Timeless (Star Trek: Voyager) - One of the many "alternate future crewmembers averting a past tragedy" storylines, this one features the beautiful image of Voyager crashed into an ice planet, and Chakotay going to extremes to save his friends.
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82) Conundrum (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - The entire crew of the Enterprise suffers memory loss, but luckily First Officer MacDuff is here to help. When their identities are stripped away, will the Starfleet officers still do the right thing?
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81) The Enemy Within (Star Trek) - The one where Kirk gets split into good and evil versions by a transporter accident — Richard Matheson's script manages to get into some thorny questions about the nature of evil.
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80) The Wounded (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - The Federation is trying really hard to have peace with the Cardassians, but some people in Starfleet aren't quite so ready to forgive and forget... and it's up to Picard to help out his enemies.
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79) I, Mudd (Star Trek) - The most famous rogue in Star Trek has landed in a great spot — surrounded by beautiful androids who cater to his every whim. Except that he can't leave.
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78) Remember Me (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Dr. Crusher is faced with a mystery that gets at her fear of abandonment, but also questions of existence, when people start vanishing around her.
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77) Our Man Bashir (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - The goofiest of DS9 episodes (well, one of the goofiest) sees Bashir stuck in a holosuite program where he's a James Bond-style spy.
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76) Wolf in the Fold (Star Trek) - Mr. Scott is accused of being a serial killer... but the truth is a lot more bizarre.
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75) The Raven (Star Trek: Voyager) - One of the best "Seven of Nine tries to become more human" episodes actually sees her coping with her memories of being part of the Borg.
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74) Living Witness (Star Trek: Voyager) - Hundreds of years after Voyager visit a planet, its crew are remembered as war criminals, as shown in a historical reenactment.
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73) Family (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - This episode is revolutionary, purely because it shows the consequences of a big "event" episode — Picard is still shaken by his experiences with the Borg, when he goes home to visit his family.
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72) Who Mourns For Morn (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - The barfly who hangs out in Quark's bar has apparently died, but will Quark really inherit all his worldly goods?
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71) A Piece of the Action (Star Trek) - One of many "visiting Earth's past on another planet" episodes, this is the funniest and also the most trenchant. Kirk and friends have to outwit a whole planet of gangsters, while teaching them the arcane game of Fizzbin.
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70) Sarek (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Peter S. Beagle wrote this episode where Spock's father reappears, and he's not the Vulcan he used to be — a bittersweet exploration of aging and loss.
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69) What You Leave Behind (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - The DS9 finale packs a lot of punches, including the final showdown with the Dominion, and Sisko embracing his destiny.
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68) Tin Man (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - a powerful Betazoid telepath is obsessed with a giant sentient spaceship, but also develops a friendship with Data, the only person whose thoughts he can't read.
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67) Errand of Mercy (Star Trek) - The first Klingon episode is also the most daring, as Kirk is portrayed as being nearly as warlike as his foes, in the face of godlike pacifist aliens.
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66) Dark Frontier (Star Trek: Voyager) - Seven of Nine starts to remember her past before she became a Borg drone, as Janeway schemes to steal from the Borg.
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65) In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - One of the most shocking of the "Dominion War" storylines, this two-parter reveals a terrible secret about Bashir, and changes the balance of power in the Alpha Quadrant.
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64) The Slaver Weapon (Star Trek: The Animated Series) - Written by Larry Niven, this episode sees the Enterprise crew meeting the Kzinti... and dealing with a self-aware ultimate weapon.
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63) Assignment: Earth (Star Trek) - Kirk and Spock go back to the 1960s, but they're not the only interloper. This was the "backdoor pilot" for a spin-off show that never happened, but it's still bizarrely entertaining in its own right.
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62) Cause and Effect (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - The one where the Enterprise keeps blowing up over and over. The most explosive, bewildering time loop ever.
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61) Course: Oblivion (Star Trek: Voyager) - These alternate versions of a starship crew aren't evil — just very, very fragile. This is one of those episodes whose nihilism makes it almost like a weird dream.
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60) Shore Leave (Star Trek) - One of the goofiest original-series episodes also has a major dark side, as the crew arrives on a planet where anything they imagine can become real. Anything.
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59) The Quickening (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Dr. Bashir's miracle-worker image faces an extra challenge when he faces a genetically-engineered plague.
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58) Dagger of the Mind (Star Trek) - In the Federation's utopian future, the rehabilitation of criminals is much more humane. Much, much more humane. The psychological cruelty in this one is actually pretty intense.
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57) The Sound of Her Voice (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Everybody falls in love with a stranded Starfleet captain who's sent out a distress call. But can she be saved?
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56) Tuvix (Star Trek: Voyager) - The Voyager crew face another huge ethical conundrum... and arguably, this time they choose wrong.
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55) The Pegasus (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Riker's long-buried secret comes to light, and he's forced to lie to Captain Picard.
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54) Caretaker (Star Trek: Voyager) - Greg Cox argued (in our comments) this is the best first episode of any Trek, and he has a point: it shows Captain Janeway making two tough choices: stranding her crew, and adopting a crew of rebels.
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53) The Conscience of the King (Star Trek) - This episode about a Shakespearean actor who may be a legendary mass murderer is also our first glimpse of the flaws in Trek's perfect future.
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52) Relics (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Old Starfleet engineers never die — they just come back decades later, eager to tinker with another warp engine.
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51) Necessary Evil (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - The best of the episodes about the shapeshifting Odo doing detective work, because his digging turns out to reveal some dark secrets.
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50) I Borg (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Another episode with a guest star who poses a huge ethical question — the Enterprise finds a disconnected Borg drone, and tries to turn him into a weapon.
49) The Wire (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - The mysterious Garak finally has to reveal a little bit about his past to his friend Dr. Bashir, to save his life — but which stories are lies, and which ones are true? Or is there really any difference?
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48) The Enterprise Incident (Star Trek) - Kirk and Spock pull an elaborate hustle on the Romulans, in an episode that shows just how unethical our heroes are prepared to be.
47) Perfect Mate (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Picard falls for a woman (Famke Janssen!) who is destined to marry a warlord in an arranged marriage, and he has to put his feelings aside for the sake of peace.
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46) Blink of an Eye (Star Trek: Voyager) - In yet another high-concept Voyagerouting, the starship appears in the sky over a planet for a relatively brief time, but that's long enough for it to loom over the life and death of an entire civilization.
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45) Dear Doctor (Enterprise) - Doctor Phlox relates his experience dealing with a plague affecting a relatively primitive planet, which turns out to pose an impossible dilemma.
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44) It's Only a Paper Moon (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Like "Family," this is an episode that takes a hard look at the process of recovering from trauma... and doesn't sugar-coat the truth.
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43) Obsession (Star Trek) - Kirk's judgment is called into question when he becomes fixated on revenge, showing once again just how dangerous an out-of-control captain can be.
42) Hard Time (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - The best of the many "Let's torture O'Brien" episodes, in which he receives false memories of 20 years of imprisonment.
41) Rocks and Shoals (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Sisko's crew are stranded on a planet with some of the enemy Jem'Hadar... and the Jem'Hadar's unquestioning drug-induced loyalty is put to the test, horribly.
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40) In A Mirror Darkly, Parts 1 & 2 (Enterprise) - The best of the "Mirror Universe" sequels, this episode shows us a more unscrupulous version of Jonathan Archer... who's just inherited a Federation ship from the future.
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39) Journey to Babel (Star Trek) - Most notable for introducing us to Spock's parents, this episode also shows a Federation diplomatic mission gone horribly wrong.
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38) The Way of the Warrior (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - With the Federation facing war with the Dominion, it's a good thing the Klingons are here to help. Except sometimes your allies can be more dangerous than your enemies.
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37) Lower Decks (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - This episode follows four junior officers aboard the Enterprise, and lets us see the command staff through the eyes of their underlings.
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36) Galileo Seven (Star Trek) - A shuttlecraft full of people is stranded on a planet, and it appears that not all of them can survive. Good thing Spock is in charge, and he has zero hesitation about making the tough call... Right?
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35) Inter Arma Silent Leges (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Bashir has always wanted to play at being a spy... so how does he like doing it in real life? One of the episodes that exposes the terrible underbelly of the Federation.
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34) The Drumhead (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - An Admiral subjects the Enterprise to an inquisition, and starts finding conspiracies behind every bulkhead, providing an object lesson in the dangers of paranoia.
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33) Twilight (Enterprise) - In the future, Archer has dementia, and the human race has lost a devastating war. And both things are equally terrible to behold.
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32) Trials and Tribble-ations (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - One of several time-travel episodes, this one sends Sisko's officers back to the original series episode "The Trouble With Tribbles," and provides a great love letter to Trek's history.
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31) Call to Arms (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - This is the one where Sisko makes the tough choices, and a highly symbolic baseball is the only hint of Sisko's endgame.
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30) Yesteryear (Star Trek: The Animated Series) - Spock travels back in time and saves himself as a young boy on Vulcan, in an episode that reveals a lot about Spock's life.
29) The Void (Star Trek: Voyager) - When Voyager gets trapped in a pocket space with a bunch of other ships that prey on each other, Janeway has to convince everybody to work together to escape. Janeway's finest hour.
28) Homefront/Paradise Lost (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Nowadays, everybody trots out the "security versus freedom" question, but DS9 asked it first, and best, with this story of paranoia about shapeshifters in Starfleet.
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27) Where No Man Has Gone Before (Star Trek) - The second Star Trek pilot is the best, facing Kirk with an impossible choice: condemn his friend to death, or risk his entire ship.
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26) The Year of Hell Parts 1 &2 (Star Trek: Voyager) - The luckiest ship in the Delta Quadrant finally has really, really bad luck.
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25) The Offspring (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Data creates an android daughter for himself, but some miracles are too great to last.
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24) Duet (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Kira suspects that a visiting Cardassian is actually a notorious war criminal, and she's willing to go to insane lengths to prove it.
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23) The Equinox (Star Trek: Voyager) - Captain Janeway's determination to uphold Federation principles far from home looks a lot more impressive when you meet another Starfleet crew that compromised, really badly.
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22) Tapestry (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Picard is dying of an old wound caused by his recklessness, so Q shows him what his life would be like if he'd played it safe.
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21) Arena (Star Trek) - Kirk faces two impossible challenges: making a weapon from scratch, and upholding his values in the face of a murderous Gorn.
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20) Measure of a Man (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Putting Data on "trial" to see if he's a person raises fascinating questions, but the best part is Riker's total ruthlessness as prosecutor.
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19) Yesterday's Enterprise (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - The Enterprise finds itself in an alternate universe, and restoring the original timeline will come at a high cost.
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18) The Doomsday Machine (Star Trek) - Kirk faces the ultimate weapon, but his real nightmare is an unhinged superior officer taking command of the Enterprise.
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17) The Siege of AR-558 (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Lots of DS9 episodes explored the notion that war is Hell, but this one made it visceral and unforgettable.
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16) Devil in the Dark (Star Trek) - The classic Star Trek scenario: a story in which the "monster" is misunderstood, and ignorant humans are the real danger.
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15) Space Seed (Star Trek) - The only Trek episode to get a movie sequel, this story introduces a suave former dictator who's a perfect foil for Kirk.
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14) The Corbomite Maneuver (Star Trek) - This episode isn't named after the villain or the McGuffin, but after Kirk's cunning gambit — with good reason. Never play poker with Kirk.
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13) Far Beyond The Stars (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Sisko hallucinates he's a pulp science fiction author writing about the impossible: a black captain named Ben Sisko.
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12) Amok Time (Star Trek) - Our first visit to Spock's homeworld also shows how friendship and cunning are more powerful than mating rituals and ancient traditions.
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11) Chain of Command (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Picard is captured by a ruthless Cardassian torturer — and gets pushed to his limits.
10) Mirror, Mirror (Star Trek) - Meeting alternate crewmembers, including Bearded Spock, is cool — but the fascinating part is seeing our heroes try to pretend to be barbarians.
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9) All Good Things (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - The best Q story sees Picard tested at three points in his life, with the whole universe in the balance.
8) The Inner Light (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Picard lives a whole life on a doomed planet, and becomes a living memorial, with just a flute as souvenir.
7) In the Pale Moonlight (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - How far will Sisko go to get the Romulans to join the war? All the way.
6) The Trouble with Tribbles (Star Trek) - The funniest Trek, it also faces Kirk with the most insidious threat: an organism that's born pregnant.
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5) Darmok (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Quibble about the alien language all you want, this parable of learning to communicate remains powerful.
4) The Visitor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - Jake Sisko has grown old as a famous writer, but he's willing to give it all up to save his father in the past. Absolutely beautiful.
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3) City on the Edge of Forever (Star Trek) - Kirk, Spock and McCoy visit the 1930s, and Kirk faces an impossible choice that proves time travel is heart-breaking.
2) The Best of Both Worlds (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - The Borg turn Picard into their mouthpiece, and our heroes nearly lose.
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1) Balance of Terror (Star Trek) - Kirk's battle of wits with a Romulan is spellbinding, but so is the exploration of prejudice, and the idea that noble people fight on both sides.
Portions of this list originally appeared in a "top 10" list back in 2011. Thanks to everybody who suggested stuff for this list over at the Observation Deck, especially Pessimippopotamus, Dr Emilio Lizardo, Erodgenator, JurassicBark, omgwtflolbbqbye, Gilese, Ghost in the Machine,Quasi Hatrack, KeithA0000, LizTaylorsEarrings, MasterChef_117, Kegg, Robert James, Poet Desmond, Erinaceus, Onelittledetail, Pie 'oh' Pah, Fauxcused, Terror and Love, Buck-Bokai,McGiggins, cohentheboybarian, Maveritchell, hyattch, Mudbud, sbtblab, Siete Ocho, Eesti,WiessCrack, Steven Lyle Jordan, tsalonich, llaalleell, KKGrotto, KiraNerys42,owensa42,Indiebear, tetanusRacing, Max Hansen, Kevin Bradley and everybody else who contributed. Thanks!
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The NRA: A Quasi-Caliphate Terrorizing The Nation Into Normalization Of Lawlessness
Caliph Wayne LaPierre
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Five Laughably Paranoid Claims By Wayne LaPierre
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Wayne LaPierre Quotations
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Can This Canadian Coal Plant Stop Climate Change?
WASHINGTON — What if you could have all the energy benefits of cheap, plentiful coal, without the planet-warming gases it emits into the atmosphere?
That dream got a boost Thursday, as Canada’s Boundary Dam plant became the world’s first large-scale coal power plant to capture and store its carbon emissions. The $1.2 billion SaskPower project aims to capture 90 percent of the Estevan, Sask. plant’s emissions, or about 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year. That’s the equivalent of removing 250,000 cars from the road, according to the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.
While many look to carbon-free sources like wind and solar to rein in ballooning emissions, analysts say the most practical solutions to climate change will require carbon capture and storage (CCS). Renewables are expanding at a rapid pace across the world, but coal continues to dominate global electricity supply, playing a major role in the development of rapidly growing economies in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere. Widespread carbon capture technology could go a long way toward meeting worldwide emissions reductions goals, even if the developing world continues to rely on coal.
But there’s a catch: the technology has so far proven expensive and difficult to implement on commercial coal-fired plants. The SaskPower project aims to demonstrate how it might be done better.
“It’s globally significant,” says John Thompson, director of the Fossil Transition Project at the Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based non-profit. “I believe that once these projects happen, the landscape is changed forever.” Proving CCS is commercially-viable shifts public perception, Mr. Thompson says, and could make carbon-heavy coal plants a thing of the past.
SaskPower isn’t alone. US energy firm NRG broke ground earlier this month on a $1 billion carbon capture project near Houston. The company aims to have it up and running in 2016. Another CCS project in Kemper County, Mississippi hopes to start up in May 2015.
CCS is critical if coal hopes to remain a viable source of energy in the US and elsewhere. Carbon intensive coal is an easy target for governments in the UK, US, Canada, and elsewhere as they tackle runaway emissions that threaten to increase global temperatures. CCS might offer a way for coal firms to meet those existing or new carbon limits, but it’s no silver bullet.
“The technologies that we’re bringing together aren’t revolutionary,” says Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative in Cambridge, Mass. CCS has long been used in smaller industrial plants and has been piloted on coal plants elsewhere. “To show that they can all fit together and work well is a major milestone, but not necessarily a game-changer.”
President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, announced in June, aims to slash US emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. But Obama’s regulations encourage a switch to cleaner-burning natural gas, Mr. Herzog says, rather than spurring investments in CCS technology that would make coal cleaner. Booming US natural gas production and corresponding low prices have made gas an attractive alternative to coal.
What would make CCS competitive with natural gas, and commercially-viable on a large scale? For Mr. Herzog, the answer is policy to actively incentivize CCS deployment. “We don’t have policy in place to bring the hundreds of [CCS] plants that we need to put a dent in climate change,” Herzog says in a telephone interview Thursday.
Natural gas has a cost advantage in much of Canada, too. The Boundary Dam plant only installed CCS after Canada implemented emissions limits similar to Obama’s proposed plan. And sticking with coal made sense at the plant because its in a coal-rich region, Herzog says; much of Canada will switch to other fuel to meet emissions standards, rather than retrofitting coal plants with CCS.
The potential to sell off captive emissions for use in “enhanced oil recovery” – the process of injecting carbon dioxide into oil wells to coax out extra crude – also helped make the Boundary Dam project economically feasible.
But enhanced oil recovery isn’t an option everywhere, and retrofitting a plant with CCS technology remains expensive. That means the technology may not have a longterm future in the US, where firms are already shifting to natural gas or renewables.
“The reality here in the US is, with the [natural] gas price so low, no one’s going to build a new coal plant,” Herzog says.
Across the world, it’s a different picture. The technology could prove useful for China, India, and others that are meeting enormous energy demands with plentiful stores of the carbon-heavy fuel.
“People are pretty optimistic,” Herzog says. “Worldwide, within a few years, we could see five capture and storage plants.”
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"Docs Join To Help Girl Attacked By Dogs After KFC Hoax Accusations"
The doctors come from three states and are donating their efforts to reconstruct the face of Victoria, who lost an eye in the attack earlier this year. A Florida doctor made Victoria a prosthetic eye, a local physician reconstructed the girl’s eyelid and a Las Vegas plastic surgeon has signed on to perform a series of operations that could continue for years.
"We are extremely optimistic about Victoria's recovery,” said Dr. Frank Stile, of Las Vegas. “We continue to track her progress as her facial bones and scars continue to heal."
“She’s back being active, playful. Back to her little, same-old three-year-old self.”- Janet Kellum, Wilcher family spokesperson
It was Dr. Raymond Peters, of Naples, Fla., who made and installed the prosthetic eye last month. But when doctors noticed the girl’s lower eyelid needed to be corrected in order to support the new eye, Dr. Kyle Lewis, of Jackson, made the fix with a skin graft.
There will be many more such operations for the brave little girl, but the doctors who have made her their cause say they are in it for the long haul.
“Victoria is going to have to go through at least four to five years of surgery," said Peters.
One operation in the near future will make the lid over Victoria’s good eye match the one on which Lewis operated.
"In the upcoming months, she will be arriving in Las Vegas, where her right eyelid reconstruction will help produce more symmetry of her facial structure," Stile said.
Victoria was attacked in April while visiting her grandfather. Two months later, her family claimed they were asked to leave a Jackson KFC because Victoria’s appearance repulsed customers. When word of the alleged snub got out, first on a family Facebook page, donations poured in for her medical bills. KFC even pledged $30,000.
But the incident proved impossible to document, and many began to suspect it never happened. Some of the donors who pledged a total of more than $100,000 through GoFundMe.Com requested refunds, but most seemed unwilling to hold the possible hoax against Victoria, whose injuries were most certainly real.
“Contrary to reports, a very small number of donors to the ‘Victoria’s Victories’ GoFundMe fundraising campaign have requested refunds,” the site said in a statement.
Janet Kellum, who is the stepmother of the Wilchers’ family attorney, Bill Kellum, and who has taken on the role of family spokesperson, told Fox News Victoria “is doing really well.”
“She’s back being active, playful,” Kellum said. “Back to her little, same-old 3-year-old self.”
Although there is a healthy balance being held in Victoria’s name, the doctors are offering their considerable skills for free. Money had already begun to trickle in before the alleged incident at KFC, after Victoria’s aunt, Teri Rials Bates, created a Facebook account called Victoria’s Victories.
KFC initially pledged $30,000 to the family, but because the company’s two independent investigations could not confirm the incident ever happened, they gave the money to Stile’s foundation instead of directly to the family.
Stile hopes the money can go toward the Wilcher family’s travel and hospital expenses as their daughter undergoes a series of procedures. They are set to travel to Vegas later this year for Victoria’s third operation.
“The trust is being prepared as we speak,” Kellum said. “And until that trust is prepared and finalized and a trustee has been appointed, there can be no distributions made for anything.”
Stile is considering returning the $30,000 check KFC donated because he doesn’t want to be associated with any controversy.
“I don’t need my reputation sullied by what someone else is doing,” said Stile, who vowed to see the surgeries through no matter what. “I’m doing what I am doing independently.” He pledges to go through with the surgeries no matter what.
Matt Finn and Kyle Rothenberg are part of the Junior Reporter program at Fox News. Get more information on the program here and follow them on Twitter: @FNCJrReporters
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Jihadists And Christian Fundamentalists Agree: The West Is Decadent
An Illinois teenager was arrested Saturday at a major airport as authorities say he was attempting to travel to the Middle East to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Mohammed Hamzah Khan, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen from Bolingbrook, appeared in court today to face charges for allegedly attempting to provide material support for a terrorist organization. If convicted, Khan could face up to 15 years in prison.
Federal authorities said Khan was arrested Saturday at Chicago’s O’Hare airport by members of the FBI’s Chicago Join Terrorism Task Force. In court today it was revealed he had purchased a ticket to Istanbul, via Vienna. Investigators allege he planned to slip through the porous Turkish border to Syria or on to Iraq.
In a criminal complaint, prosecutors said Khan had apparently penned a letter to his family, to be found in his bedroom after he left the country.
“My dear parents, there are a number of reasons I will be going to the blessed land of Shaam [Syria] and leaving my home,” the letter says, according to the complaint. Among other things, the letter said, “We are all witness that the western societies are getting more immoral day by day. I do not want my kids being exposed to filth like this.”
Khan purportedly asked them not to contact the authorities and instead invited them to join him in the Middle East.
The man's parents, who were present in court, declined to comment on the case.
Top U.S. security officials have estimated that around 100 Americans have traveled to the Middle East to take part in the conflict in Syria and Iraq with various militant groups, including ISIS.
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Illinois teen sought to join Islamic militants in Syria
Mohammed Hamzah Khan was charged Monday with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group. The Chicago-area teen was arrested Saturday while attempting to board an international flight.
A 19-year-old American left a letter expressing disgust with Western society before trying to board an international flight in Chicago, the first step in his plan to sneak into Syria to join the Islamic State group, according to a federal criminal complaint released Monday.
Mohammed Hamzah Khan, who lived with his parents in the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook, was arrested Saturday at O'Hare International Airport trying to board a plane on the first leg of connecting flights to Turkey, which borders Syria. He is charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group, which carries a maximum 15-year prison sentence.
Investigators said Khan left a three-page, handwritten letter in his bedroom for his parents that expressed anger over his US taxes being used to kill his "Muslim brothers and sisters," an apparent reference to a bombing campaign against Islamic State militants.
Recommended: How much do you know about the Islamic State?
"We are all witness that the western societies are getting more immoral day by day," he wrote, then signed letter, "Your loving son," according to court documents.
Khan appeared in a federal court Monday in orange jail clothes, calmly telling a federal magistrate he understood the allegations. As marshals led him away in handcuffs, the slight, bearded young man turned to smile at his parents – his father putting his arm around Khan's weeping mother.
About a dozen Americans are believed to be fighting in Syria, while more than 100 have either been arrested on their way to Syria or went and came back, FBI Director James Comey said recently without offering details.
Khan sought to fly Austrian Airlines to Istanbul by way of Vienna when customs officers stopped him going through security at O'Hare's international terminal. While FBI agents interviewed him there, investigators searched his home.
It's unclear why authorities stopped Khan. Prosecutors, Khan's federal defender attorney and his parents didn't comment after Monday's hearing.
In the letter found by FBI agents, Khan also pleaded that his parents not contact authorities. Other documents found during the search of his home included a notebook drawing of what appeared to be an armed fighter with an Islamic State flag and the words "Come to Jihad" written in Arabic, according to the complaint.
Also found were drawings with arrows indicating where Khan might cross the border into Syria from Turkey.
Khan allegedly told FBI agents that an online source gave him the number of a person to contact when he got to Istanbul who would lead him to Islamic State members. When asked what he would do once in territory controlled by the Islamic State, Khan allegedly said he would "be involved in some type of public service, a police force, humanitarian work or a combat role," according to the complaint.
Khan was ordered to remain jailed until at least a detention hearing Thursday. Prosecutors indicated they would ask he stay behind bars pending trial.
At a two-story house believed to be his family's home, no one would address reporters outside. But neighbor Steve Moore, 31, described Khan as a soft spoken and polite, saying the young man his family were always friendly and quick to say hello.
Another young man from the Chicago area also is accused of trying to join militants in Syria. Abdella Tounisi was arrested last year at O'Hare when he was 18. He has pleaded not guilty to seeking to provide material support to Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria.
Another Americna teen, Shannon Conley of Arvada, Colo., pleaded guilty to conspiring to assist Islamic insurgents in Syria in federal court Sept. 10. FBI agents apparently made several attempts to dissuade her from joining the Islamic State, but she reportedly insisted that she could not be deterred from her plans.
AP Writers Tammy Webber and Don Babwin also contributed to this report.
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A Big Part Of America's Suckiness: White Guys With Guns Duking It Out
Mickey Sudduth
What do you think?
2nd Amendment evangelist?
Death penalty advocate?
Votes Republican?
Considers himself a Christian?
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"Gun Cartoons and Gun Violence Bibliography"
"Gun Cartoons and Gun Violence Bibliography"
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Mississippi family gunfight leaves two dead, two wounded
(Reuters) - Two family members killed each other and wounded two relatives in a gunfight following a domestic altercation in rural northeast Mississippi last week, a law enforcement official said on Monday.
Mickey Sudduth and his father-in-law Robert Mize both fatally shot each other outside Mize's home near Aberdeen after a dispute involving Sudduth's estranged wife Jennifer on Friday afternoon, Monroe County Sheriff Cecil Cantrell said.
Sudduth got into an altercation with his wife, who is Mize's daughter, after arriving at his in-laws' house to pick up his two children for the weekend, Cantrell said.
She ran inside to tell her father that Sudduth tried to choke her. Mize then came outside with a Glock .40 pistol and engaged in a gunfight with Sudduth, who was also armed with a handgun, Cantrell said.
During the shootout, Sudduth and Mize shot each other dead, but not before Sudduth shot and wounded his wife and his mother-in-law, Janice Mize, Cantrell said. Both women were treated at a local hospital for non life-threatening injuries, Cantrell said.
The children, who are both under 10 years of age, were not hurt, Cantrell said. He described the incident as a case of domestic violence.
Monroe County Coroner Alan Gurley said each man was shot at least six times, local television news station WAPT reported.
Cantrell said Sudduth and his wife had been separated for at least four months. He said no charges would be filed.
Aberdeen is a city of about 5,600 people 122 miles (196 km) northwest of Birmingham, Alabama.
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NPR: "Why Even Top Tier Students Should Consider Community Colleges"
Community colleges in 21 states have added four-year bachelor’s degree programs.
Those in California will follow suit next year.
Photo by Long Beach City College Facebook page
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As a top student in high school, Amy Miramontes-Franco knew she was destined for college.
But she surprised even herself when, for financial reasons and because she hadn’t yet decided on a major, she began her higher education at a local community college.
“In all honesty, I had this mentality where I had worked so hard, I didn’t see myself going to a community college because of my negative view of them,” Miramontes said.
Having since graduated from Long Beach City College, a California community college, with a 4.0 grade-point average — at a fraction of the cost she would have paid to go to a four-year university and with faculty support she said was much more personal — Miramontes will enter UCLA this fall as a junior majoring in communications and economics.
And she’s changed her mind.“Now that I’ve experienced a community college, my perception is completely different,” she said. “They’re very underestimated.”
Long the Rodney Dangerfields of American higher education, community colleges are suddenly getting some respect.
Not all community college students have as good of an experience as Miramontes. Largely open to anyone who applies, they continue to suffer low graduation rates, for instance; just under four in 10 community college students finish a degree within six years, according to theNational Student Clearinghouse, which tracks this. And while community colleges attract 45 percent of all of the nation’s higher-education enrollment, only 15 percent of high-income students choose them, the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University reports.
So bad has the perception been of community colleges that they themselves are dropping the “community” from their names in many cases. Yet they remain the butt of jokes on late-night talk shows and in other popular culture.
“If I wanted to learn something,” said the character Jeff Winger, played by Joel McHale, on the television sitcom “Community,” “I wouldn’t have come to community college.”
But at a time when there’s huge pressure for reform in higher education, many community colleges are proving more responsive than their four-year counterparts.
Community colleges in 21 states have added four-year bachelor’s degree programs in high-demand fields, for example, and those in California will follow suit next year. They’ve connected closely with local businesses, and provide education so much more in tune with workforce needs that people who have bachelor’s and even master’s degrees return to community colleges for training that will get them jobs. Among students who transfer from four-year public universities, more than half now go in the opposite direction of Miramontes and switch to a community college, the National Student Clearinghouse says.
One reason for this may be that nearly 30 percent of graduates of community colleges make more money than their counterparts with bachelor’s degrees, other research by the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce shows. And while that advantage narrows by mid career, it’s also true that the community college graduates who benefit from it pay much less on average for their educations — $3,264 per year for tuition and fees, according to the College Board, compared to $8,893 per year at public and $30,094 per year at private four-year colleges and universities.
Their bachelors degrees, many students have discovered, “didn’t focus on them getting the job they need,” said Michael McCall, president of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. “Whereas they can get an allied health degree from us and go out and make $60,000 or $70,000 a year.”
Community colleges in Tennessee will go completely tuition-free next year, and the same idea is under study in Oregon and being discussed in Indiana, and has been proposed in Texas. Only one in five community college students has to take out loans to pay for school and other expenses, and the average debt for those who do is a comparatively low $2,000 each, The Institute for College Access and Success calculates.
Private foundations have been helping community colleges make themselves more desirable in other ways, too, by underwriting innovations such as programs thatspeed up the time students take to get degrees, and the federal government has allocated billions to help them train laid-off workers for new high-skill jobs and team up with businesses to create apprenticeships.
But a significant portion of the activity at community colleges has not resulted from money coming in. It’s been caused by money running out, as states cut back on spending for public higher education. Enrollment, too, has begun to slide; after jumping nearly 25 percent between the 2007-2008 academic year and 2010-2011, the number of students in community colleges fell nearly 4 percent from 2012 to 2013 and another nearly 3 percent since then, the American Association of Community Colleges reports.
Those realities, along with greater scrutiny and criticism of their performance, mean community colleges have “had to be innovative, had to be entrepreneurial, had to be very creative,” said Walter Bumphus, president of the American Association of Community Colleges.
“All of these things have come together all at once to force our community colleges to change,” said Eloy Oakley, president and superintendent of the Long Beach Community College District in California, which includes Long Beach City College.
“We have all had to innovate to meet the challenges of the economy and the challenges of state funding cuts. We’ve had to become more efficient, we’ve had to change the way we deliver education, and we’ve had to deal with the increased pressure not only to provide more access, but increase the number of degrees and certificates that we confer.”
The community college turnaround has not gone entirely unnoticed, especially by public universities in some states. Those in Colorado and Michigan unsuccessfully opposed letting community colleges give bachelor’s degrees. In California they blocked community colleges from offering four-year degrees that are already available from nearby state universities. And public universities in Tennessee resisted making community college there tuition-free.
“We had four-year schools that were going, ‘Wow, it’s going to be hard for us to compete with free,’” said Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, who helped push the idea through anyway.
Universities historically haven’t paid much attention to their lower-level counterparts, said Debra Bragg, director of the Office of Community College Research and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“Now it’s, ‘Golly, what are they doing over there at that community college?’”
Since President Barack Obama made community colleges a centerpiece of a campaign to increase the proportion of Americans with degrees, “That balance of who’s getting attention has shifted,” Bragg said. “A lot of the college completion agenda has been focused on the community colleges, because that’s where policymakers have seen the most room for growth.”
And, she said, the most room for improvement, given their poor graduation rates and other problems.
“‘We’re the underdog, but we can do it, we can innovate. We’re more nimble than the universities.’ That’s their culture and their image of themselves. Some people may look at that and say, ‘Not so much.’”
But the scrutiny seems to be having an effect.
“The leadership in community colleges has said, ‘Hey, we’re in the spotlight, we’d better start doing a little better job here and pay attention to retention and completion,” Bragg said. “They had less choice. They had to start doing something different.”
Or, as Oakley puts it, “However we got here, it’s a good thing.”
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University.
PBS NewsHour coverage of higher education is supported by the Lumina Foundation andAmerican Graduate: Let’s Make it Happen, a public media initiative made possible by theCorporation for Public Broadcasting.
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Before ISIS: A History Of Beheadings To Terrify And Punish
TRANSCRIPT
IVETTE FELICIANO: In rapid succession, ISIS’ recent beheadings of American journalists James Foley, Steven Sotloff and British aid worker David Haines shocked and outraged the public, and prompted an American military response.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.
IVETTE FELICIANO: And now another British aid worker, Alan Henning, has suffered the same fate ….. a story that prompted another round of intense coverage.
RASHID KHALIDI: I think that, you know, what bleeds, leads. And if it’s dramatic and if it’s violent it’ll be shown again and again.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Rashid Khalidi, Professor of Modern Arab studies at Columbia University, believes the media’s focus on the brutality of the recent beheadings is exactly what ISIS was hoping for.
RASHID KHALIDI: Showing the picture again and again creates panic. They want intervention. They want boots on the ground. They want the United States to be directly involved in fighting them.
Because that makes them out to be the leading group in the Islamic world that’s resisting– western imperialism as they see it. So we’re at– the reaction that they’re getting on Washington is precisely in my view what they want.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Despite the widespread coverage of the four recent ISIS beheadings, Dr. Dawn Perlmutter, an author and scholar who for years has studied ritualistic crimes and religious terrorism, says video-taped beheadings are nothing new, and that these recent events are actually just the tip of the iceberg.
IVETTE FELICIANO: She told us just yesterday it would be safe to say there have been at least 2 dozen beheadings around the world since the start of September …. Among them, four people killed by Mexican drug cartels; 4 by an extremist group in the Sinai Peninsula and another person beheaded by Boko Haram militants who posted their own video just this past Friday. Few, if any, of those incidents even made the news in this country.
DAWN PERLMUTTER: There’s hundreds of them. Hundreds of videos of– easily accessible online for anyone to view. I get alerts on at least four or five beheadings a day– in– in different parts of the world.
IVETTE FELICIANO: She says the beheadings that have occurred after ISIS fighters overran villages in northern and western Iraq and in Syria, have taken violence to a level that even Al-Qaeda has chosen to distance itself from.
DAWN PERLMUTTER: The one consistency in all of the formal beheadings of– of the different Al-Qaeda-linked groups has been that they have never– formally beheaded a woman. What differs with ISIS is that they are beheading women and children and sticking their heads on pikes.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Why is the way you choose to kill someone, especially publicly, so important? Why beheadings of all the ways?
DAWN PERLMUTTER: Beheading is the ultimate sign that you’re in power. It is so– I think just organic—primally of– offensive and frightening that it’s effective.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Perlmutter believes advances in cellphone technology have led to what she calls a “beheading epidemic” over the last 10 years. Hundreds of videos have been uploaded to the web by groups such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, and those drug cartels in Mexico.
DAWN PERLMUTTER: ISIS has– taken that technology further because now, we have Twitter. We have Instagram. It’s sort of this unbelievable new phenomenon of primal warfare combined with modern technology.
IVETTE FELICIANO: In fact beheadings in the form of punishment for crimes goes back centuries. It was common in the Greek and Roman empires. Henry the VIII had both Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard beheaded, and the French guillotine remained France’s standard method of judicial execution until 1981. Even today, beheading as a form of punishment is still allowed in several countries including Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iran. Yet Saudi Arabia is the only country that actually continues to behead offenders. There were reportedly 80 public executions there last year – most of them beheadings.
"Saudi Support For Wahhabi Radicalism Is The Taproot Of Islamic Terror"
ADAM COOGLE: As far as countries like, you know, western countries, including the United States, who have expressed their horror over the executions by the Islamic State Group in Iraq and Syria, we haven’t seen the same horror over just regular beheadings that take place in Saudi Arabia, several a month on average.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Adam Coogle is the Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch based in Jordan We spoke to him via skype a few days ago.
ADAM COOGLE: When you talk to Saudi officials about this they will usually tell you that their use of public beheadings is rooted in Islamic law and Islamic tradition.
ADAM COOGLE: If Saudi Arabia were to try to reform their practices on capital punishment they would face a considerable resistance and they would be accused by the core constituency of you know basically going back on their Islamic roots.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Some analysts say Muslim extremist groups like ISIS choose the act of beheading because they’re also aligning themselves with what they think is an authentic Islam, pointing to Qu’ranic passages they believe condone the act.
DAWN PERLMUTTER: That’s why they have to always have this reading of offenses, identifying– having the person– confess, having the person– in front of them, kneeling. It is an execution ritual.
RASHID KHALIDI: Therefore when you meet the unbelievers…presumably in a battle…smite at their necks.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Yet Islamic scholars, like Professor Khalidi, dispute that the Qu’ran offers any justification for beheading. He cites the lines coming immediately after one of the two used to justify beheadings.
RASHID KHALIDI: At length when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind the captives firmly. Therefore is the time for either generosity or ransom…
I’ve just read Sura 47 verse 4. If you cut off their heads you’re not going to bind them, and you’re not binding them to cut off their heads you’re binding them to either be generous to them, release them, or hold them for ransom.
So there is nothing about cutting off their heads in this passage. The people who are doing this act claiming this as justification for this practice. It is not. And it just shows that they know nothing about Islam and they don’t know how to read this properly.
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Women's Soccer Star Jillian Loyden Speaks Out Againstt Hope Solo
U.S. women's national soccer team goalie Hope Solo. (Mark Konezny/USA Today Sports)
"U.S. Soccer needs to send the right message," Loyden, a Vineland native, wrote in a USA Today op-ed piece. "They need to communicate that domestic violence is never OK and that it will not be tolerated."
In November, Solo pleaded not guilty to two counts of misdemeanor domestic abuse. Police in Kirkland, Wash., said she punched and scratched her 17-year-old nephew and then attacked his mother when she tried to help.
As discussion of domestic abuse among athletes has ratcheted up, Solo, who holds the international record for shutouts with 73, has continued to play in "friendly" matches for the United States. In one game last week, she wore the captain's armband.
The subject is an intensely personal one for Loyden. Her 23-year-old sister, Britton, was killed in a 2012 domestic-abuse incident. Ismael Pierce, the father of Britton Loyden's then-2-year-old son, has been charged with murder.
Solo's attorney said his client would have no comment on the article. Loyden did not immediately return a phone call.
"Speaking out on these issues is not always easy," Loyden wrote. "Solo is my teammate and a personal mentor. But I cannot stand by as young fans receive the message that this behavior - even if the allegations proved to be inaccurate - can go unnoticed."
Loyden, 29, who played professionally for seven years, also announced her retirement from soccer on Monday, in part to devote herself to raising her late sister's son. She has started the Jillian Loyden Foundation and dedicated it to ending domestic violence.
"Every nine seconds, a woman suffers from domestic violence in the United States," Loyden wrote. "One in four women will experience domestic violence during her lifetime. Millions of children witness domestic violence in their homes each year.
"Until recently, professional sports leagues have largely turned a blind eye towards domestic abuse. . . . In the past several months, the issue of domestic violence has been brought front and center in the sports community. . . . The landscape of professional athletics is changing.
The athletes and leaders of all sports need to recognize this fact."
The national team is standing by Solo, who was named Monday to the U.S. roster for this month's CONCACAF championship, which serves as qualifying for next year's World Cup.
The championships for soccer's North and Central American and Caribbean region will be played in four U.S. cities, beginning Oct. 15 in Kansas City, Kan. The championship will be played Oct. 26 at PPL Park in Chester, with the top three finishers earning a World Cup spot.
Only one other goalkeeper is on the 20-player roster for the CONCACAF championships: Ashlyn Harris, who played last season for the NWSL's Washington Spirit. The roster includes veterans Carli Lloyd of Delran, Abby Wambach, and Christie Rampone, forward Alex Morgan and midfielder Megan Rapinoe, and Virginia midfielder Morgan Brian.
ffitzpatrick@phillynews.com
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"Speaking out on these issues is not always easy," Loyden wrote. "Solo is my teammate and a personal mentor. But I cannot stand by as young fans receive the message that this behavior - even if the allegations proved to be inaccurate - can go unnoticed."
Loyden, 29, who played professionally for seven years, also announced her retirement from soccer on Monday, in part to devote herself to raising her late sister's son. She has started the Jillian Loyden Foundation and dedicated it to ending domestic violence.
"Every nine seconds, a woman suffers from domestic violence in the United States," Loyden wrote. "One in four women will experience domestic violence during her lifetime. Millions of children witness domestic violence in their homes each year.
"Until recently, professional sports leagues have largely turned a blind eye towards domestic abuse. . . . In the past several months, the issue of domestic violence has been brought front and center in the sports community. . . . The landscape of professional athletics is changing.
The athletes and leaders of all sports need to recognize this fact."
The national team is standing by Solo, who was named Monday to the U.S. roster for this month's CONCACAF championship, which serves as qualifying for next year's World Cup.
The championships for soccer's North and Central American and Caribbean region will be played in four U.S. cities, beginning Oct. 15 in Kansas City, Kan. The championship will be played Oct. 26 at PPL Park in Chester, with the top three finishers earning a World Cup spot.
Only one other goalkeeper is on the 20-player roster for the CONCACAF championships: Ashlyn Harris, who played last season for the NWSL's Washington Spirit. The roster includes veterans Carli Lloyd of Delran, Abby Wambach, and Christie Rampone, forward Alex Morgan and midfielder Megan Rapinoe, and Virginia midfielder Morgan Brian.
ffitzpatrick@phillynews.com
Julia Loyden
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American Explains Why He's Fighting Against ISIS
DERIKE, Syria — Like many Americans, Jordan Matson is outraged by the brutality of the Islamic State. But unlike virtually every other American, he decided to take on the militants head-on.
Now, the 28-year-old Racine, Wis., man is recovering in a hospital here in northeastern Syria from a shrapnel wound in his foot, the result of a mortar attack by Islamic State fighters in Jazaa, along the Iraqi border.
Tall with slightly graying hair, Matson conceded that people back home might call him crazy for joining Kurdish forces three weeks ago to help end the Islamic State's reign of terror.
"I couldn't just sit and watch Christians being slaughtered anymore," he said in an interview with USA TODAY. "I got sick of giving online sympathy. Five minutes of lip service does nothing. These people are fighting for their homes, for everything they have."
Matson was critical of the United States for being slow to launch air attacks on the Islamic State militants, who have been fighting in Syria for three years and seized large portions of Iraq earlier this year.
"It wasn't until an American was beheaded did we do anything," he said of the execution of journalist James Foley in August. "We just let the monster grow and grow.
"For the U.S. government, it's not about human life. It's about how they look in the opinion polls," added Matson, who was wearing a military uniform and a traditional Kurdish black and white scarf across his shoulders.
Matson, who now goes by the name Sadar, served in the U.S. Army as an infantryman from May 2006 until November 2007, attaining the rank of private first class, according to Army Human Resources Command.
His record does not indicate why he left the Army after less than two years, but he said in the interview that he was discharged because of an injury and did not deploy overseas.
Matson said he knows one other American who has joined the fight against the militants, but did not give his name. "We met one hour before we were attacked and we were joking how funny it would be if we were attacked when we'd just met one another," he said.
To get to the battlefield here, Matson said he worked as a delivery driver for a food service company for six months to save enough money for a flight and to support himself for the three years that he expects to be here.
"I was Googling the Syrian civil war looking for a military force fighting ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIL) that wasn't a terrorist organization. I found the YPG (Kurdish People's Protection Unit) on Facebook and saw it wasn't a terrorist organization so I contacted them," he said.
"They asked me a few questions to make sure I wasn't pro ISIS and then they told me I could come. I just flew by the seat of my pants."
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki declined to discuss Matson for privacy reasons, and said she was unaware of any law barring a U.S. citizen fighting with the Kurds.
Matson flew from Chicago to Warsaw to Istanbul, and then drove to Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey. There he was picked up by a YPG member who drove him to Iraq, where he crossed the border into Syria pretending to be a doctor.
"They don't pay me, but they treat me like family. If I need anything, they look after me," he said.
Able to speak a few words of Kurdish and with the help of sign language, he manages to get his point across to his comrades and the doctors at the rundown hospital filled with wounded fighters in this largely desolate city.
Matson said the Kurdish forces are very young with no heavy weapons or body armor "Sometimes it's just kids. That's the way it is. I have a Kalashnikov (automatic rifle), that's it."
"In the dark, with no night vision goggles, we can't see ISIS," he said. "The other night 12 black figures walked towards our base and just starting shooting at us."
He laughed as he recalled a young YPG fighter whose aim was so bad he wasn't able to shoot a chicken for dinner one evening.
Despite his comrades' shortcomings, he remains committed to the battle. "Once I can put a boot back on," he said, "I'm back there."
Contributing: The Army Times
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Richard Cohen: The Fundamental Aspiration Of College Is Not Economic But Educational
Frost reminds me that "The first duty of a Christian is to listen."
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Why?
Most putatively "educated" people confuse education with instruction.
"Education" - deriving from the Latin "ex ducare" - "leads out of" preemptive concern with individual good to re-focus attention on The Common Good.
In a word, "education" is social.
On the other hand, "instruction" - from the Latin "in struire" -- builds facts and skill-sets "into" atomistic individuals, enabling them to make their own way in private worlds. "Instruction" is essentially monadic and isolating.
Without education, instruction (the planet's default learning method) undermines The Common Good, by teaching people to treat the world as a money mine to be exploited like 49-ers staking claims to private land tracts used for personal advantage.
The goals charted by education and instruction are essentially antipodal although the latter can -- and should -- be used in service to the former.
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"How We Think" By John Dewey. Assertion, Guess, Opinion And Belief-Testing
Opinion writer
I never went to college to make money. (A totally successful business plan, by the way.) Instead, I went for an education. (Another totally successful business plan.) To fulfill a requirement, I took anthropology, and I have kept up with it ever since. I reveled in political science and history of all kinds, and I felt for a long time that I had discovered all the secrets of life in psychology, although its Freudian variety left me cold. The id never made much sense to me.
I value my education, but I cannot put a value on it. I know it has been worth some money to me — I don’t think The Post would have hired me if I had lacked a degree — but I probably could have earned about the same if I had stayed in the insurance business, where I worked while going to college at night. In fact, had I moved from claims to sales — no degree required, just, as Arthur Miller put it, “a smile and a shoeshine” — I could be downright rich. As it is, I am downright comfortable.
What prompts these observations is the barrage of news stories about the cost of college and whether it is worth it. Almost all these stories, most of them based on some report, answer with a money sign ($) but almost never in terms of education — knowledge, wisdom and, if I may be so bold, the pursuit of happiness. (Business majors are the most bored by their jobs, a recent poll found.) We learn that the cost of college has skyrocketed, that the average graduate goes out into the world with $33,000 in student debt, that entry-level jobs pay almost nothing, that the job market is tight and that Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, created something called the Thiel Fellowship to award money to young people to quit college and start their own businesses. Thiel is ranked No. 293 on the Forbes 400. I rank him No. 1 for questionable ideas.
As Naomi Schaefer Riley pointed out in a perceptive Post article in 2011, some of this is the fault of colleges and universities. They have done away with core curriculums and required courses. I know graduates of supposedly quality schools who have learned next to nothing . . . about American history, world history or literature. They are self-schooled in the plots of their generation’s TV shows, which doesn’t even prepare them to be screenwriters, since what they do know has already been done. If they feel that college is not worth the money, they have a point. They can stay home and watch reruns.
We should not be surprised that the value of a college education is measured only in economic terms. Everything is. In August, Josh Barrowrote for The New York Times that if the airline passenger behind him did not want him to recline his seat, that person should pay him. I have some basic questions. On the bus or subway, should I ask the pregnant woman standing before me how much she would pay for my seat? Barro calls this a matter of property rights. I call it civility, manners, consideration.
I apply my own set of metrics to my college education. I met some wonderful people, particularly fellow students who were so much more sophisticated and worldly than I was. I had some great teachers, one of whom became a mentor and taught me how to suffer criticism. (I’m still suffering.) Whole worlds opened up to me — philosophy, which I never would have read had I not been forced to; the clotted verses of Chaucer; and, of course, the aforementioned anthropology, both cultural and physical. The latter had me going from desk to desk. Upon each was placed a human skull. I had to determine the sex, the race and the age. I went five for five. This is not the kind of thing you’re likely to do on the job.
I came of age when jobs were plentiful and college not exorbitantly expensive. I graduated with debt, but it was manageable, and I set off to do something I loved — journalism. I had tried my hand at it in college. I know things have changed and I do not dismiss today’s economic conditions. But I tell you this — college made me a happier person. I don’t know what that’s worth in dollars, but I know what it is worth to me: everything.
Read more from Richard Cohen’s archive.
Read more about this topic:
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To "Open Carry" In Church Now Has Its Own Name: To "Church Carry"
"Gun Cartoons and Gun Violence Bibliography"
"Gun Cartoons and Gun Violence Bibliography"
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Question of the Day: Do You Church Carry?
I am blessed to live in a state where carrying a gun in a church is not verboten. However, I don’t think any of us are blessed to live in a society where the sight of a gun doesn’t bring at least a tinge of nervousness or, in many unfortunate cases, sheer panic. I attend church on a regular basis. I carry a gun on a regular basis. But I had not, until recently, carried a gun regularly to church. Even in my red, gun-friendly state, the topic of guns in church is about as comfortable as carrying a ma-deuce in a shoulder rig . . .
However, I eventually learned that our pastor owns guns, hunts with guns, and enjoys talking about guns. So do many of our elders. The pastor and I had several conversations about carrying and finally I up and asked him, “What are your thoughts on my carrying a gun to church?” I was delighted with his response. He said, “I can tell you with great confidence, that on any given Sunday, there are no less than three handguns in the congregation.” Well, now he has four.
However, there are still dilemmas for those who bring a heat when they worship. Are you prepared to deal with the possibility of being discovered? Do you carry in the nursery? What if you bend over to pick up a pukey toddler and you print? Have you thought about the consequences of being “caught with a gun around kids?” The horror! Church clothes are often make it more difficult to conceal a full size pistol on your hip. Are you prepared to be one hip-hug away from the public knowing that you brought an instrument of death to the holy house of God?
Be sure to browse comments at http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/02/john-sprague/question-of-the-day-do-you-church-carry/
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