Catholic church’s obsession with sex

One of the main functions of many religions is to control people’s sexuality. They hate the idea that men and women may have sexual lives that are not under the control of the usually male leaders of the religions and many of the rules and taboos that religions promote can be traced back to this desire to make sure that women especially not have that freedom.
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The United States of Secrets-Part One: The Program

Last night I watched online the above two-hour Frontline program that was broadcast earlier this week on public television and it is well worth seeing. It tells the history of the NSA’s secret surveillance programs, focusing on the period from just before the events of 9/11 and leading up to soon after Barack Obama took office as president in 2008. The story of Edward Snowden and his leaks are used to bracket this story but is not the main focus. Part 2 deals with the role of the major internet companies and will be broadcast next week on public television stations and will also be on the internet.
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Glenn Greenwald reveals more about the upcoming big story

In an extended interview on The Colbert Report, Glenn Greenwald reveals more about the upcoming big NSA news. When asked directly what it will be about, he says that “One of the missing pieces is about who are the people on whom the NSA is spying on in America, who are they targeting, for what purposes, who are these people that they are declaring to be sufficient threats that it warrants reading their emails and what is the pattern of people that they have targeted. Are they political dissidents, are they critics of US foreign policy, or are they actual terrorists?”
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The Great Cleveland Balloon Caper

Apparently as part of its fundraising efforts, in 1986 United Way decided to release over 1.5 million helium-filled balloons from the Cleveland city center, breaking the existing record for the Guinness book of records. Unfortunately, an impending thunderstorm required the premature release of the balloons and even then the weight of the rain resulted in the balloons being brought down within a limited area rather than rising up and being spread far and wide as originally intended.
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The growing menace of religion-based laws

Jonathan Turley has been diligently following the disturbing rise in anti-blasphemy laws in many Islamic nations and their attempts to get these restrictions on criticizing religion expanded globally under the guise of ‘religious tolerance’. They have been somewhat successful in getting the US and European countries to consider adopting an international standard that would prosecute anti-religious speech.
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Tragic story of the death of an atheist

Greta Christina is appealing to the secular community to come to the aid of three young children who have become orphaned as a result of their mother being the victim of a murder-suicide. The mother was a nonbeliever just getting publicly involved in organized atheism, still very much a difficult thing to do in the US especially in the African-American community.
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The effect of executions

Oklahoma is the state where the botched execution of Clayton Lockett brought the issue of capital punishment back into the spotlight. It turns out that that state is the most gung-ho when it comes to killing people, having the most executions per capita in the US (although Texas which comes in second has the greatest absolute number ) and taking an almost perverse pride in doing so.
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NSA tampers with routers to gain backdoor access

By now it should be no surprise that whenever the US accuses another country of doing something wrong, it is also very likely the case that they are doing the same thing. This hypocrisy has become so routine that one wonders whether one should even both to comment on it, but it is still necessary. The latest is the revelation about what the US has been doing with routers.
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