Missouri has been a lot in the news recently and not in a good way. In addition to the terrible situation in Ferguson, now comes another story from the small town of Parma where for the first time a black person was elected to the office of mayor. Tyrus Byrd, who was born and raised in the town and has also served as city clerk in the past, was elected mayor displacing the incumbent who had held office for 37 years.
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Thanks to reader Norm, I received a copy of the above book and it is incredible. It is a compilation of all the people in the world who are known to be atheists or skeptics of some sort, along with biographical sketches as to their beliefs. The book is by Warren Allen Smith and it is clearly a massive labor of love, clocking in at 1,237 large 8½ x 11 inch pages in two column format, on good quality paper with clear font and not a single typo, at least in the entries that I have read.
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What has emerged about the state of policing in the town of Ferguson, MO in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown has been ugly, revealing a city in which the police and legal system has been treating the residents, especially poor people and people of color, appallingly. Now a class action lawsuit has been filed in the US District Court in the Eastern District of Missouri by people who charge that they have been abused by the city, and the descriptions by the individuals in the suit make for appalling reading.
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In his latest investigative report on the show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver takes a look at the mess that the US patent system has become and why it needs to be reformed. His report just looks at the way that patent trolls use the legal system for what is in effect a shakedown.
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The Boston marathon is being run today. One of the people broadcasting the race is Kathrine Switzer, as she has done for the past 37 years. But her connection to the race is far more groundbreaking.
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The great danger with the way that cattle rancher Cliven Bundy has managed to avoid paying grazing fees for his use of federal land by having a militia threaten to shoot at any federal agents that enter his property is that it would encourage others to imitate his example. These people are just itching to force a confrontation with the government while the latter wants to avoid a repeat of the disastrous Ruby Ridge and Waco tragedies.
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Elizabeth Bentivegna, a senior at Oberlin College, was invited for an interview for a summer job at a Cleveland software company. Although she had alerted them that she would be late for her 4:00pm interview and in fact did arrive about 20 minutes after, she felt the interview went really well and so she was devastated when she was turned down.
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Jon Stewart and Bassem Youssef discuss on The Daily Show the situation in the Middle East and try to understand what is going as a result of the many conflicts that have followed the US invasion of Iraq, who is on who’s side and who is winning and who is losing, and conclude that the ultimate winner is clear. And they are right.
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The US Supreme Court, in a very confused ruling, decided in the case Greece v Galloway that ceremonial opening prayers were acceptable at the beginning of government sessions provided the prayers were not sectarian in their delivery or in the selection of prayer givers. Even some of the so-called liberal members of the court like Elena Kagan, while dissenting from the verdict approving the Greece prayers, said that “such a forum need not become a religion-free zone.”
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