Glenn Kirschner – Trump’s advisors tell him to “cut all contact” with Mark Meadows. Has Meadows flipped on Trump?
Meidas Touch – Beto O’Rourke convinces TRUMP SUPPORTER to flip and vote for him in EPIC video
The Lincoln Project – Kansas
Thom Hartmann – Will Churches Finally Be Taxed? (Boy, is he right about the IRS being “emasculated”!)
Armageddon Update – The Troops
Beau – Let’s talk about Jones, phones, and the committee….
Yesterday, the radio opera was actually four short operas, two each by two different composers, all from the time that Louis XIV was living in Versailles. They were not presented by an opera company, but by the Boston Early Music Festival – both their Chamber Ensemble and their Vocal Ensemble. However, the program was performed and recorded in the Broadcasting Hall in Bremen, Germany. I can tell you it sounded a whole lot better then the Bremen Town Musicians in the folk tale of the same same (not that that would be difficult.) I’m familiar with Charpentier’s music and I’ve heard of Lalande, but not with these operas and I know virtually zero French, so I just sat back and enjoyed them as early Baroque music – or late Renaissance music (The novel “The Man in the Iron Mask” by Alexandre Dumas is set in Louis Xiv’s Versailles, but it is also the final novel in the Three Musketeers series, or as we might say today, franchise. Athos isn’t in it, nor is his son, who more or less takes his place after the second book, “Twenty Years After” – but D’Artagnan, Aramis, and Porthos are all critical to the plot. But I digress.) The production was lightly staged, fairly heavily costumed (it looks like the same costumes for all four operas, which would certainly be true to period) – in one photo parts of the orchestra can be seen, including three lute players.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
ProPublica – A Right-Wing Think Tank Claimed to Be a Church. Now, Members of Congress Want to Investigate.
Quote – Reps. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., and Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., raised transparency concerns in a letter to the heads of both agencies following a ProPublica story about the Family Research Council, a right-wing Christian think tank based in Washington, D.C., getting reclassified as a church. Thirty-eight other lawmakers, including Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., signed onto the letter.
Click through for details. Thom Hartmann, in today’s Video Thread, talks a bit about how this happened – and he points ou that it wouldn’t have happened if we had had Democratic Presidents for the last 30 years or so. The ones we did have clawed back Republican irresponsibility some, but not enough … and then came Trump**
HuffPost – Republicans Say Economy Is In Recession After It Added Half A Million Jobs In July
Quote – HuffPost asked the five Republican senators at the presser how July’s job growth could happen in a recession. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) pointed out that in the first and second quarters of the year, the U.S. saw negative growth in gross domestic product, an important economic metric. “The definition of recession is negative GDP growth in two successive quarters,” Cassidy said…. But economists don’t use a simple rule of thumb to figure out when the economy is in recession ― they follow the determinations of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private nonprofit organization that’s served as custodian of the business cycle’s ups and downs since the 1960s.
Click through for full talking points. I assur you that if we were in a recession Maria Bartiromo would not have melted like Frosty the Snowman while trying to put a negative spin on the jobs report on Fox.
Food For Thought
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
Separration of church from state is enshrined in our constitution, and for goos reason. It’s a short and sweet line item in the First Amendment, but there is also plenty of commentary on it in the writings of, to name just two, Jefferson and Madison, and the Treay of Tripoli (negotiated under and signed by John Adams). How any Christian could be in favor of theocracy, when Jesus Christ Himself is recporded as having said, “Render therefore unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s,” is quite beyond me. (Incidentally, he also spoke about government officials doing their duty to that government, in a context which to me implies that anyone in any form of employment has a duty to their employer, different and separaate from their religious duties.)
Of course, everyone who reads the Bible has their own favorite and other not-so-favorite parts of it, and I am no different, and likely have some things wrong – and the same is probably true of all religious scriptures. But history cannot show us any state, any time, any where, in which a theocracy was compatible with our founding principle that “all men are created equal,” or a theocracy existed under which living conditions were not godawful. So it’s understandable that this report from ProPublica distresses me.
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by Andrea Suozzo
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
The Family Research Council’s multimillion-dollar headquarters sit on G Street in Washington, D.C., just steps from the U.S. Capitol and the White House, a spot ideally situated for its work as a right-wing policy think tank and political pressure group.
From its perch at the heart of the nation’s capital, the FRC has pushed for legislation banning gender-affirming surgery; filed amicus briefs supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade; and advocated for religious exemptions to civil rights laws. Its longtime head, a former state lawmaker and ordained minister named Tony Perkins, claims credit for pushing the Republican platform rightward over the past two decades.
What is the FRC? Its website sums up the answer to this question in 63 words: “A nonprofit research and educational organization dedicated to articulating and advancing a family-centered philosophy of public life. In addition to providing policy research and analysis for the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government, FRC seeks to inform the news media, the academic community, business leaders, and the general public about family issues that affect the nation from a biblical worldview.”
In the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service, though, it is also a church, with Perkins as its religious leader.
According to documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act and given to ProPublica, the FRC filed an application to change its status to an “association of churches,” a designation commonly used by groups with member churches like the Southern Baptist Convention, in March 2020. The agency approved the change a few months later.
The FRC is one of a growing list of activist groups to seek church status, a designation that comes with the ability for an organization to shield itself from financial scrutiny. Once the IRS blessed it as an association of churches, the FRC was no longer required to file a public tax return, known as a Form 990, revealing key staffer salaries, the names of board members and related organizations, large payments to independent contractors and grants the organization has made. Unlike with other charities, IRS investigators can’t initiate an audit on a church unless a high-level Treasury Department official has approved the investigation.
The FRC declined to make officials available for an interview or answer any questions for this story. Its former parent organization, Focus on the Family, changed its designation to become a church in 2016. In a statement, the organization said it made the switch largely out of concern for donor privacy, noting that many groups like it have made the same change. Many of them claim they operated in practice as churches or associations of churches all along.
Warren Cole Smith, president of the Christian transparency watchdog MinistryWatch, said he believes groups like these are seeking church status with the IRS for the protections it confers.
“I don’t believe that a lot of the organizations that have filed for the church exemption are in fact churches,” he said. “And I don’t think that they think that they are in fact churches.”
The IRS uses a list of 14 characteristics to determine if an organization is a church or an association of churches, though it notes that organizations need not meet all the specifications. The Family Research Council answered in the affirmative for 11 of those points, saying that it has an array of “partner churches” with a shared mission: “to hold all life as sacred, to see families flourish, and to promote religious freedom.” The group says there is no set process for a church to become one of the partners that make up its association, but it says partners (and the FRC’s employees) must affirm a statement of faith to do so. It claims there are nearly 40,000 churches in its association, made up of different creeds and beliefs — saying that this models the pattern of the “first Christian churches described in the New Testament of the Bible.”
Unlike the Southern Baptist Convention, whose website hosts a directory of more than 50,000 affiliated churches, the FRC’s site does not list these partners or mention the word “church” anywhere on its home page. The FRC’s application to become an association of churches didn’t include this list of partner churches, nor did it provide the names to ProPublica.
To the question of whether the organization performs baptisms, weddings and funerals, the FRC answered yes, but it said it left those duties to its partner churches. Did it have schools for religious instruction of the young? That, too, was the job of the partner churches.
The FRC says it does not have members but a congregation made up of its board of directors, employees, supporters and partner churches. Some of those partner churches, it says, do have members.
Does the organization hold regular chapel services? According to the FRC’s letter to the IRS, the answer is yes. It wrote that it holds services at its office building averaging more than 65 people. But when a ProPublica reporter called to inquire about service times, a staffer who answered the phone responded, “We don’t have church service.” Elsewhere in the form, it says that the employees make up those who attend its services.
The organization’s claim to be an association of churches is disingenuous, said Frederick Clarkson, who researches the Christian right at nonpartisan social justice think tank Political Research Associates.
“The FRC can say whatever bullshit things they want to,” he said. “The IRS should recognize it as a bad argument.”
Three experts told ProPublica that the IRS is failing to use its full powers to determine who gets the special privileges afforded to churches. And when a group like the FRC appears to push the limits of what charities are allowed to do — particularly relating to their partisan political activity — the IRS doesn’t often step in to crack down. The IRS did not answer a list of detailed questions for this story or make anyone available for an interview.
David Cary Hart, an activist and writer who received the FRC’s reclassification documents via a Freedom of Information Act request, wrote a letter to the IRS questioning the decision, saying the approval “defies regulatory logic.”
When ProPublica relayed details of the FRC’s new church designation to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., he decried the loss of transparency and lax IRS oversight. “It is far too easy for powerful special interests to hide their donors using webs of nonprofits,” he said in a statement. “Form 990 filings provide valuable, and often the only, insight into a tax-exempt organization’s income and spending. But lax enforcement at the IRS and DOJ encourage more game-playing, which leaves the door wide open for enterprising dark-money schemes to exploit the system further.”
The current wave of nonprofit-to-church conversions appears to have gained steam after 2013, when the head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Associationaccused the IRS of targeting BGEA and another charity he heads with audits after the group took out newspaper ads supporting a North Carolina constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. The groups, BGEA and Samaritan’s Purse, retained their tax-exempt status, and in 2015, they applied for church status and got it.
In 2018, Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based legal nonprofit, was reclassified as an “association of churches” — though it had been categorized as a “church auxiliary” affiliated with Jerry Falwell’s megachurch since 2006, granting the organization many of the same exemptions that churches get. The organization represents Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue licenses for same-sex marriages. Just days after the Supreme Court cited a Liberty Counsel brief in its June decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a staffer for the organization was recorded saying she prays with conservative justices inside the court building — raising questions about conflicts of interest. (Liberty Counsel denies that the staffer prayed with justices.) In a written statement, founder and chairperson Mathew Staver said that the organization’s legal work is just one part of its activity, and that it made the change “to accurately reflect the operation of the ministry.”
The American Family Association, a Tupelo, Mississippi-based group that runs the influential American Family Radio network, as well as a film studio and magazine, changed its designation to a church in early 2022, according to IRS data. The association sends out frequent “action alerts” to subscribers asking them to sign petitions opposing government appointees or boycott media and brands that it has identified as supporting LGBTQ rights or abortion access. The organization declined to respond to a request for comment.
In its letter to the IRS, the FRC argued that the classification change would protect its religious liberty rights. As an example, it pointed to Treasury Department rules exempting church organizations from the mandatory coverage requirements for contraceptives.
Churches also have a “ministerial exemption” to hiring discrimination laws for religious leaders — meaning, for example, that a Catholic church may exclude women when hiring priests. Courts have interpreted this protection broadly, shielding churches from claims of discrimination for sexual orientation as well. Recent Supreme Court rulings have broadened the umbrella of staffers who may be included under the exemption.
According to IRS data, the FRC has submitted a 990 tax return for its 2021 fiscal year, but the agency has not yet released the filing. The organization is also a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, a voluntary membership organization that collects revenue, expenses, assets and a small number of other top-line financials from its members. The organization does not collect more detailed financial data reported on the 990.
Over the five years ending June 2020, the FRC saw average revenues of $15.9 million each year, and it spent an average of $15.6 million. In its fiscal year 2021, the FRC reported to ECFA, it brought in $23.1 million and spent $20 million. In the most recent 990, Perkins made about $300,000.
The IRS did not answer questions about how many groups apply to become a church and how many applications it denies. Samuel Brunson, a law professor specializing in religion and tax exemption at Loyola University Chicago, said the federal government, and especially the IRS, are typically very cautious when it comes to making judgments about defining religion.
“The First Amendment makes [defining a religion] really hard,” he said.
Brunson pointed to the Satanic Temple, which received IRS church recognition in 2019, as an example of an organization that people may not consider one. The group has made headlines over the years for mounting First Amendment challenges such as suing to have a statue of the goat-headed occult icon Baphomet placed next to statues of the Ten Commandments in public places. The temple is now suing Texas, claiming that the state’s abortion restrictions inhibit the liberty of the organization’s members to practice their religious rituals.
Lucien Greaves, a founder of the Satanic Temple, said groups like Liberty Counsel and the FRC have for years implied his organization is too political to be a church — one of the reasons the group finally sought official recognition. The fact that those same organizations are now themselves churches, he said, is hypocritical.
“People act like … we’re trying to get away with something: ‘Look, these guys want to be a church, and yet they’re active in these public campaigns,’” he said. “And they never apply those same questions to the other side.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the FRC, Liberty Counsel and the American Family Association as hate groups for their anti-LGBTQ stances and advocacy. But Clarkson, the researcher, said focusing on that designation misses the larger sphere of the FRC’s political influence. In recent years, he said, the FRC’s rhetoric and actions have influenced politics away from democracy and in a direction that is “distinctly theocratic.”
“Abortion and LGBT issues are not the war,” he said. “They’re battles in the war.”
IRS rules prohibit public, tax-exempt charities including churches from “directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.” That rule, known as the Johnson Amendment, dates back to 1954. Short of explicit political endorsements, these groups may participate in what’s known as “issue advocacy” including voter education. They can also lobby for political causes connected to their core missions, as long as the lobbying activity is not a “substantial part” of their activities.
To run its more direct political activities, the FRC has another tax-exempt organization, called a social welfare organization, that actively endorses candidates and lobbies for legislation — Family Research Council Action. The arms separate out messaging on two websites, with the FRC hosting issues-based content supporting its Christian worldview and linking to the Family Research Council Action website for content that explicitly endorses candidates.
Family Research Council Action is registered at the same address as the FRC and shares all five of the part-time employees it lists on its tax form, including Perkins. This is legal so long as the organizations are careful to separate activities and accounting, such that tax-deductible charity dollars aren’t supporting political work by the social welfare organization, said Philip Hackney, a tax law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Experts say ideally a group like Family Research Council Action would have at least one independent staffer to indicate that it’s actually operating as an independent entity.
But FRC Action lists zero full-time employees on its most recent tax filing. When Perkins — who is president of both organizations — is speaking, he rarely makes a delineation about whether he is speaking as the head of the FRC or the head of Family Research Council Action.
But even for charitable operations, the lines around political activities are open to interpretation. While the FRC and other evangelical groups have pushed for the removal of all restrictions on political speech by churches for years, the FRC also releases guidelines encouraging pastors to discuss political matters while staying within the bounds of the law, noting that “there are legal limits to what churches may do, but your hands are not completely tied. In fact, you may be surprised at how much influence you can have.”
On Perkins’ radio show, “Washington Watch,” he hosts a bevy of pro-Donald Trump lawmakers and political figures every day. Its annual Pray Vote Stand Summit, formerly known as the Values Voter Summit, is one of the largest and most influential gatherings for those on the Christian right, where politicians, including Trump during his presidency, talk strategy with religious organizers. In 2021, the event’s schedule included “The Battle for America’s Classrooms: Fighting Indoctrination on a National Scale,” “The End of Roe and Beyond: The Outlook for the Unborn in America” and “A Mandate for Disaster: How States Are Fighting Biden’s Vaccine Tyranny” — the last event featuring the Ohio and Arkansas attorneys general and Perkins. The event was hosted by both the FRC and FRC Action.
In December 2020, Perkins — reportedly a close confidant of Trump’s during his presidency — signed a letter containing the false claims that state officials violated election laws and that “there is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election.” The letter called on state lawmakers to appoint a new slate of electors to override the election President Joe Biden won. Perkins signed as “President, Family Research Council.”
Experts say it’s not clear whether seeking to influence an election after it’s already happened would run afoul of the nonprofit campaign prohibitions.
But it’s rare for a nonprofit to face a challenge for political campaign speech. A 2020 Government Accountability Office report found that, between 2010 and 2017, the IRS examined just 226 of more than 1.5 million tax-exempt organizations for political activity. It sent a written warning to 56% of the organizations it examined and took additional action in just 10% of cases.
Scrutinizing the fuzzy line between FRC and FRC Action, or getting involved in how far out of the gray area a charity may have strayed, is not something that authorities are keeping a close eye on, said Frances Hill, a law professor specializing in tax and election law at the University of Miami. “It would take some sort of an earthquake to make the IRS use its time looking into these matters,” she said.
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ProPublica does not allow us to use their images (not that this story had a lot), and I respect that. But I don’t think they’ll mind if I slip in the short (uner two minutes) video, which is not from them, but from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)
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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, the IRS (not by that name, it has had a couple of name changes) originated in 1862 as an entity in the Executive Branch, under the Deartment of the Treasury. After the Civil War, it was allowed to lapse until 1913, when the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified, and it has been reorganized a few times, notably in the 1990s (some of its teeth which were pulled then might have been helpful to maintain church-state separation now as applied to taxation.) It is still in the Executive Branch, but the IRS Code is a Congressional product, and of course the courts have had a few things to say also about how it is run.
I sympathize with the IRS, which I have often seen work to maintain proper shurch-state separation and get slapped down repeatedly. And, just as no matter how you define a gun (such as an assault rifle), manufacturers will tweak the product slightly so that the definition no longer applies, so no matter how you define a church, grifters and theocrats will tweak their organization to get it classified as one when it isn’t. And, frankly, the theocrats scare me far more than the grifters. This is our job, Furies, not yours. But if you have any ideas….
The Furies and I will be back.
Glenn Kirschner – New reporting disclosing Trump’s statement about Pence suggests Trump committed the crime of treason
Meidas Touch – Desperate Republican makes DISGUSTING ATTACK on Stacey Abrams
Robert Reich – Why We Need a Windfall Profits Tax
Farron Balanced – Russian State Media Slams Trump And Calls Him A Fascist
PBS – Trailer for the National Memorial Day Concert – TONIGHT – Check local listings
Liberal Redneck – On the Horrific Texas Shooting
Beau – Let’s talk about renaming military bases….
Yesterday,I finished a trifle early ans spent some time looking on the net for icons. I have a few on my desktop I think could be better, and looking is not all that time-consuming unless one falls into a rabbit hole. There are three things I am looking for in a desktop icon, which I call the three C’s – I want them colorful, cute, and clear. Colorful so they stand out, and clear so it’s obvious to me what they are. Cute just because I like cute. And I did find some that made me smile. They are very small files and I don’t keep than on my main hard drive anyway but on my portable hard drive, so they don’t clog things up. I know, not everyone’s idea of fun, but I enjoy it.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
Robert Reich – We need a hope machine. Anyone know how to build one?
Quote – But let me say something else as clearly as I can. I’ve been at this fight a very long time, and right now I find lots of reasons for hope. Ten, to be exact. (Here’s where the hammers, nails, and solar panels for Paula’s hope machine come in.)… 7. The myth of the decline of the West and the rise of the East — propounded by China and Russia — is proving itself bankrupt. Putin’s war on Ukraine is showing the world that totalitarian systems can’t even execute a war efficiently. Because dissent is stifled, accurate information doesn’t get back to headquarters. Because oligarchs have ravaged government funds, weapons systems don’t work. Because hierarchies are rigid and education in short supply, armies lack the training they need. Putin’s war is also revealing how fragile the Russian economy is, as is any economy whose strength turns on raw materials.
Clck through for the other nine. We do, sadly, need to avoid too much hope (or the wrong kind of hope) which can engender a sense of false security. But the reasons he cites tend to produce motivating hope, I think.
CPR News – Whistleblowers say they falsified patient records at Western Slope mental health center
Quote – The state overlooked what former workers describe as a long practice by the Grand Junction-based Mind Springs Health of intentionally writing patient evaluations that may not be based in reality. The three departments that regulate Colorado’s mental health safety net system failed to notice the problem reports during a recent multi-agency audit of the center, and over years of lax oversight. “You’ve got to wonder how closely these so-called regulatory agencies are really looking,” said Sunny Sullivan, one of 29 current and former Mind Springs workers who have come forward to tell the Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) about what they see as legal and ethical breaches.
Click through for details. Colorado currently has a Democratic governor and Democratic majorities in both state houses. But Colorado also has a TABOR problem, because it wasn’t always this way. When you have a Constitutional amendment requirig you to give back any excess funds to taxpayers, you can never build for the future by using state funds wisely. So you will always be under-funded – and worse, unmotivated. (And, in the public mind, failures like this are always the fault of the government, no matter how tightly the government’s hands are tied.)
The Conversation – Online data could be used against people seeking abortions if Roe v. Wade falls
Quote – In overturning Roe, the anticipated decision would not merely deprive women of reproductive control and physical agency as a matter of constitutional law, but it would also change their relationship with the online world. Anyone in a state where abortion becomes illegal who relies on the internet for information, products and services related to reproductive health would be subject to online policing. As a researcher who studies online privacy, I’ve known for some time how Google, social media and internet data generally can be used for surveillance by law enforcement to cast digital dragnets. Women would be at risk not just from what they reveal about their reproductive status on social media, but also by data from their health applications, which could incriminate them if it were subpoenaed.
Click through for explanation. I am happily post-menopausal – but every woman, pre, during, or post – needs to be aware this. We are accustomed to “having nothing to hide.” Well, now we have something to hide.
Food For Thought
I tried embedding this for the Video Thread, but the English subtitles disappeared. To me the most interesting thing isn’t exactly that he is telling straight truth (although that is very intresting indeed), but the way that Russian Fox News Barbie keeps trying to tell this hardened, clear-sighted professional soldier what war is really about.
Yesterday, our spring winds started. So did the spring fund drive of my reguar radio station (I’m sure there’s no connection), so I switched over to the one in Denver. Colorado Springs is not seeing any precipitation, nor is Denver (which, though it’s not warm, is having a red flag fire danger day, while up in the mountains there is a winter storm warning, and about 50 miles north a ski area is closed. At least out governor is well aware that climate change is a thing, but there is a limit to what he can do, and so much damage has already been done. Sure, at this altitude we don’t have o worry about sea level rise, but that is far from the only consequence.
Cartoon 06 0406Cartoon.jpg
Short Takes –
Robert Reich – Why Biden’s plan to tax the super rich is moving from unlikely to likely, and why it’s really really important
Quote – Last week Joe Biden unveiled two tax proposals that would revive Teddy Roosevelt’s original vision, and could possibly slow or even reverse America’s march toward oligarchy: (1) a minimum income tax that Biden calls a billionaire tax but would in reality apply to households with a net worth of $100 million or more, and (2) a separate tax at death on gains from appreciated assets, even if the assets are not sold. The odds are growing that at least one of these proposals will get through the Senate in April or May via “reconciliation” requiring only a bare majority (i.e., all fifty Democratic senators plus the vice president). I’m told Joe Manchin is mostly on board (which means the other Democratic holdout, Kyrsten Sinema, will sign on as well).
Click through for the full essay, including some cartoons. I do hope his analysis is correct (not his analysis of the economy, we know that’s correct, but his analysis of the bills’ chances.)
Crooks and Liars – Fox Viewers Paid To Watch CNN Changed Their Minds After 30 Days
Quote – The results: Not only did CNN and Fox cover different things during the September 2020 survey period, but the audience of committed Fox viewers, which started the month with conservative predispositions, changed their minds on many issues.
Click through for methodology and result numbers, as well as a link to the Washington Post story. This may be the absolute best news of the year. Now if we can only figure out how to use it.
Mother Jones – What Can Indigenous Worldviews Bring to Space Exploration? As It Turns Out, a Lot.
Quote – Language and thought have influenced SETI and science writ large, said Rebecca Charbonneau, a historian at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. During Europe’s Scientific Revolution, the philosopher Francis Bacon described nature as something to be subjugated, she said: “a thing for mankind, in his words, to control. And that’s kind of formed the basis for the way we think about science.”
Click through for thoughtful analysis. If there is carbon-based life (and/or non-carbon-based life – possibly even more important) anywhere we are likely to reach. this kind of thinking is an absolute necessity As good as we are at self-sabotage, however, I’m not convinced we can get there.
Food For Thought:
Glenn Kirschner – Legal Recap, March 2022: From Resignation of NY Prosecutors to DOJ Expanding Criminal Probe of Trump
The Lincoln Project – Trump and Russia: Partners in Crime
Thom Hartmann – Didn’t Putin Call for Regime Change in America?
The Ring of Fire – Biden Pushes For Wealth Tax On Obscenely Rich Americans
Rebel HQ – Mitch McConnell PROVES He’s A Partisan Hack
Cracked – If Insurance Companies Were Honest
Beau – Let’s talk about mom and social constructs…
Glenn Kirschner – Congress to Hold Navarro & Scavino in Contempt, Refer them to DOJ for Prosecution. Will DOJ Indict?
American Bridge – Fox News confronts Republican about GOP tax hike plan
Political Voices Network – John Fugelsang (on the Stephanie Miller Show with a guest host.)
Farron Balanced – Mo Brooks Says Trump STILL Asks Him To Overturn 2020 Election
Ojeda Live – Lindsay Graham’s SCOTUS Hearing Antics Through the Years
Service Dog Wasn’t Playful — Until He Met His Kitten Sister
Beau – Let’s talk about a question about gender….