Should religious colleges not be accredited?

Our university is currently going through the very last stages of renewing its accreditation as an institution of higher learning. It happens every ten years and is a big deal. We have to show the accrediting body that we are meeting our mission of providing a quality education to our students and have the resources to do so, so that our degrees actually mean something. The process requires a lot of work for the university because we have to collect all the evidence to support our case.
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The Daily Show on the Indiana law against gays

We see in Indiana a repeat of what happened with Chik-fil-A a few years ago when that company got calls for a boycott for the anti-same sex marriage statements of the owner. People opposed to equal rights for gays rallied around the company in solidarity and there were long lines of people waiting to buy products. In Indiana, a similar thing occurred with people sending lots of money to support a pizzeria that got a lot of flak and death threats for saying they would not cater a same-sex wedding.
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p.s. I also need war plans for Iran by 3:00 pm today

Via Tom Levenson, I learned about the 12th anniversary of this memo from then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to then Under Secretary for Defense Donald Feith.

Unbelievable. Read it and weep.

This is how our great minds think. With such arrogance, no wonder the neoconservatives got this country in such a string of messes and caused death and mayhem and misery to millions of people. Why they are allowed anywhere near any job that requires thinking is beyond me.

Using children as a weapon of religious coercion

One of the most powerful weapons that highly controlling religious groups have to prevent defections is to threaten apostates that leaving would mean they would lose contact with family members, especially their children. We know that Scientology does this as do fundamentalist religious groups such as the Westboro Baptist Church and the Exclusive Brethren. Mormons who defect also tend to be shunned by those who remain but it is not a formal policy of the church or as severe an excommunication.
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Changing of the guard on The Daily Show

South African-born comedian Trevor Noah has been announced as the new host of The Daily Show when Jon Stewart leaves later this year. I was surprised by this move since he is a newcomer to the show having just joined in November of last year. It is also interesting that Noah is, after John Oliver of Last Week Tonight, the second foreign-born host of a political show.
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Yet another reason to abolish the death penalty

There are many reasons to hate the death penalty. But one of the main ones is because poor defendants are often sent to death row by prosecutors who simply don’t care if they are guilty of the crime or not but simply want to get a conviction. The latest example of this is that of Anthony Ray Hinton who was sentenced to death and spent 28 years in jail in solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit. He has just been released at age 58 after vigorous efforts on his behalf. But he could well have ended up dead, one more innocent person killed because our society’s obsession with vengeance is matched by a shocking lack of concern about fairness and justice.
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The Iran deal

It looks like the P5+1 nations (US, Russia, China, France, UK, and Germany) have arrived at a framework for a deal with Iran on partially reducing the sanctions regime against that nation in return for concessions on its nuclear program, and both sides are claiming satisfaction with the deal. Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks explains what the preliminary deal struck between Iran and the western powers involves, and says that Iran had made some extraordinary concessions.
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