This problem's a snap to solve -- just change the name of the joint to 'Big Valley 'Cretin' Science 'Museum' "

Welcome to the Big Valley (Alberta) Creation Science Museum. Edgar Nernberg, the man who discovered five 60-million-year-old fish fossils, serves on the board of the "museum."

"This can go down as one of the best examples ever of why it's downright impossible to convince someone who's 'opposed' to evolution that it's a basic fact: If you think the very tenets of science are misguided, pretty much any evidence presented to you can be written off as fabricated or misinterpreted."

-- the Washington Post's Rachel Feltman, in "Whoops! A
creationist museum supporter stumbled upon a major fossil find"

by Ken

I think frequently of a pungent quote passed on to me by my college roommate Brian, who had grown up in Manchester, NH, and apparently once boasted, "Once I make up my mind, I don't let facts get in the way of my opinion." To which there's not a whole lot to be said.

In this spirit, imagine the situation of a confirmed creationist, secure enough in his comical delusions to put his money where his mouth is, actively supporting a "creation science museum" -- Canada's first, in Big Valley, Alberta (it opened in 2007), devoted to the "science" of the proposition that the earth is 6000 years old -- who while digging in a basement in Calgary stumbles across the fossilized remains of five fish a mere 60 million years old.


Calgary Sun caption: "An assemblage of fossilized fish was recently found during the excavation of a basement in a new development in northwest Calgary, Alta. Five fish were found in a block of sandstone in the Paskapoo Formation -- a roughly 60 million-year-old rock formation that underlies Calgary and much of the surrounding area. The discovery was made by Edgar Nernberg. Photo provided by the University of Calgary"

Actually, for Edgar Nernberg there doesn't appear to be any problem. The discovery "hasn't changed my mind," he's told the Calgary Sun. "We all have the same evidence, and it's just a matter of how you interpret it. There's no dates stamped on these things."

Which prompted this from the Washington Post's Rachel Feltman:

No sir, no dates. Just, you know, isotopic dating, basic geology, really shoddy stuff like that. To be fair, I'm not any more capable of figuring out when a particular fossil is from than Nernberg is. I'd be one sorry paleontologist, given the opportunity. I've never even found a fossil, so he's got me there. But the science of dating fossils is not shaky -- at least not on the order of tens of millions of years of error -- so this fossil and the rocks around it really do give new earth creationism the boot.

But this can go down as one of the best examples ever of why it's downright impossible to convince someone who's "opposed" to evolution that it's a basic fact: If you think the very tenets of science are misguided, pretty much any evidence presented to you can be written off as fabricated or misinterpreted.

Even if you dig that evidence up with your own hands.

Notwithstanding the discoverer's inability to understand what he discovered, it's a significant discovery, Rachel notes.

The scientific community is thrilled and grateful for the find, and the University of Calgary will unveil the five fossils on Thursday. These fish lived in a time just after the dinosaurs were wiped out, when other species were able to thrive in the giants' absence. It's an important point in Earth's evolutionary history, because new species were popping up all over to make up for the ecological niches dinos left behind. Creatures from this era give us some breathtaking glimpses of evolution in progress. But it's rare to find fossils of that age in Calgary, since most of the rocks are too old and yield dinosaurs instead.

In Edgar Nernberg's fundyworld, of course, those dinosaurs cohabited with humans, all within earth's 6000-year history.
"Ironically," writes Rachel, "Nernberg's contributions at the Creation Science Museum are almost certainly what scientists have to thank for the find."

He's an amateur fossil collector, and he knew the fish were special as soon as he spotted them. "When the five fish fossils presented themselves to me in the excavator bucket, the first thing I said was you’re coming home with me, the second thing was I better call a paleontologist," Nernberg said in a statement.

“Most people would have overlooked these. When these were uncovered, Edgar right away recognized them,” Darla Zelenitsky, paleontologist and assistant professor of geoscience at the University of Calgary, told the Sun. "He’s apparently interested in fossils, and that’s probably how he saw them. An ordinary person might have just seen blobs in the rock.”

Nernberg is reportedly seeking a cast of one of the fish so he can put it on display at the creationist museum.

Well, sure Edgar'd like that for his "museum." After all, those fish could be thousands of years old!

#

Here at last is the TRUE story of Creation (courtesy of Roz Chast)

HERE'S ONE VERSION OF THE CREATION --
from the Fourth Day: The lighting of the firmament

THE ANGEL URIEL: In full splendor rises now
the sun, streaming:
a wondrous bridegroom,
a giant, proud and happy
to run his path.

With gentle motion and soft shimmer
the moon steals through the silent night.

Waldemar Kmentt (t), Uriel; Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, Eugen Jochum, cond. Philips, recorded July 1966

NOTE: We originally heard this excerpt, along with a snippet from the First Day ("And a new world, and a new world springs up, springs up at God's word"), and then fuller versions of both, in February 2013. We heard the orchestral introduction to Haydn's Creation, "The Representation of Chaos," and the ensuing first steps of the Creation, in August 2012.

by Ken

I had an interesting encounter in the comments section last week growing out of my post "How nice to have a straight person point out that "marriage is for procreation" isn't just legal but religious BS." In the post I tried to explain that as long as religious cultists pretend to have a "definition" of marriage that's based on a link between marriage and procreation, it's moronic, lying bullshit, since no denomination I'm aware of makes any effort to require procreation as a condition of marriage. (Sure, banning contraception is a step in that direction, but it's a small step. The right to marriage isn't altered if a couple is unable to procreate or even chooses not to.) Which elicited this (anonymous) comment:

Marriage was established by God and is a ancient tradition. It cannot be defined by the state. Thus, by pure definition of the original creator, same sex people cannot create a union of marriage. It is just not possible.

I replied focusing on (a) the commenter's apparent unawareness that in fact marriage is defined by the state, in vast quantities of federal, state, and local laws; and (b) the utter bogosity of the non-defining "traditional" definition of marriage. What I didn't get into was the commenter's touching, idiotic, and ultimately pathetic notion that he has the basis for any idea of what God may have said about anything. All our commenter has to go by is a pile of gibberish and lies smooshed together over a long period of time by a daisy chain of clueless drudges and purveyors of gibberish and lies. Having faith is one thing, but being a total ignoramus and tool is another.

Since there aren't many aspects of religious faith more controversial than the Creation, I thought it would be entertaining to juxtapose a couple of versions. Above we've heard a snatch of one, which I hasten to add isn't biblical, although Haydn's great oratorio The Creation is of course based on the account in Genesis. It is, however, the vision of a great artistic humanist.

SO HERE'S OUR OTHER VERSION
OF THE CREATION -- THE TRUE ONE
(from the August 11 and 18 issue of The New Yorker)

#

Is playing with poisonous snakes a demonstration of "faith" or just craziness? How about believing nonsensical religious dogma?

Reports Gallup Politics: "Gallup has asked Americans to choose among these three explanations for the origin and development of human beings 11 times since 1982. Although the percentages choosing each view have varied from survey to survey, the 46% who today choose the creationist explanation is virtually the same as the 45% average over that period -- and very similar to the 44% who chose that explanation in 1982. The 32% who choose the "theistic evolution" view that humans evolved under God's guidance is slightly below the 30-year average of 37%, while the 15% choosing the secular evolution view is slightly higher (12%)."


"Camera in hand, I watched as the man I'd photographed and gotten to know over the past year writhed, turned pale and slipped away, a victim of his unwavering faith, but also a testament to it. A family member called paramedics when Mack finally allowed it, but it was too late. Mack Wolford drew his final, labored breaths late Sunday night. He was 44."

-- Washington Post photographer Lauren Pond, in "Why I watched a snake-handling pastor die for his faith"

by Ken

So, according to the Gallup folks, "In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins."

OK, it's kind of a creepy, crappy poll, with respondents being offered only three options. As paraphrased by the Gallupies: humans evolved, with God guiding (32%); humans evolved, but God had no part in process (15%); God created humans in present form (46%).

I suspect that many people hearing these possible responses don't even understand how they're related, or how each choice may or may not reflect their beliefs. Still, the 46% winner does indeed state: "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."

So that's what the 46% are giving their nod to, and it's small comfort that the report notes that the "ooh that God, he's such a creator" camp has averaged 45% over the two decades that Gallup has been running this loopy poll.

I know we Americans pride ourselves on not "judging" other people's religions, though of course we do it all the time. (Anyone for Islam?) Still, I don't have much hesitation in saying that the respondents who chose "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so" are all dunces -- either imbeciles or loons.

Of course it's very likely that many respondents picked that option because it's closer to what they believe than either of the others. They may not, for instance, really and truly believe in the "last 10,000 years or so" hokum. Still, they didn't tell the pollster that they couldn't pick any of his/her cockamamie choices, so I say bring on the dunce caps! This way people who aren't imbeciles or loons will know better than to pay attention to anything said by any of these clowns.

It's no knock on the ancients who wrote the Bible (and again, I'm sorry, but if people want to say that the writing of the Bible was inspired by God, fine, but if they want to pretend that any of it was written by God, then again, they're either imbeciles or loons) to point out that they had a limited understanding of the world around them. Heck, we still do. But we understand a lot more than they did, because we have all those shoulders to stand on.

Nevertheless, the Bible was written with the extremely limited understanding of that time, and therefore is filled with all manner of guesses, a few of which turned out to be in the ballpark, but most of which were just plain wrong. Like the notions that: (a) humans came into existence all at once in their present form, and (b) this happened 10,000 or so years ago. It would be just about impossible to claim anything wronger than either of these claims -- the wrongness quotient is 100%. And people who not only don't know that but use their wrongness as a weapon to bully people who are not either imbeciles or loons are thugs and monsters.

Talk of religion-based crackpottery brings me to the strangely fascinating piece by Washington Post photographer Lauren Pond, agonizing over the ethics of her standing by watching a snake-handling pastor whom she had befriended die without doing anything except taking pictures.

I admit, the headline rubbed me the wrong way: "Why I watched a snake-handling pastor die for his faith." Of course I recognized the story of the nutjob pastor down in Crackerland whose "faith" called on him to play with poisonous snakes, one of which did what its species is designed to do: bit the stupid sumbitch. And since the nutjob's "faith" forbids seeking medical care, which presumably would demonstrate a lack of perfect "faith," he suffered for a number of hours and then died. As, incidentally, his father had done before him.

I'm sorry, boys and girls, but this isn't a story about "faith." This is a story about imbeciles and loons.

Lauren Pond explains her connection to the deceased:

He wasn't just a source and a subject in my year-long documentary project about Pentecostal serpent-handling; he was also a friend: We shared a meal at the cafe where members of his family work; he screened videos about himself for me at his house; I once stayed the night on his couch.

And she explains how fate happened to place her on the scene for the faithful pastor's demise.

I decided to attend the worship service Mack was holding at Panther Wildlife Management Area, in the southwestern part of the state, on a whim, thinking that it would be good to see him again, and that I'd make the seven-hour drive back to Washington the following morning. But I haven't returned. I have been staying at a friend's house close to Bluefield, speaking with Mack’s family members, and gradually allowing myself to feel some of the raw emotion that has been percolating for days.

Oh, it's not as if Lauren doesn't get that this business of clergymen playing with deadly snakes rubs a lot of people the wrong way. She describes it, rather picturesquely, as "an enigma to many":

The practices of the Signs Following faith remain an enigma to many. How can people be foolish enough to interpret Mark 16: 17-18 so literally: to ingest poison, such as strychnine, which Mack also allegedly did at Sunday's ceremony; to handle venomous snakes; and, most incomprehensible of all, not to seek medical treatment if bitten? Because of this reaction, many members of this religious community are hesitant to speak to the media, let alone be photographed.

So they're maybe not total imbeciles or loons. They understand that the world considers them a tad, shall we say, enigmatic. Ah, "but Mack was different," Lauren says.

But Mack was different. He allowed me to see what life was like for a serpent-handler outside church, which helped me better understand the controversial religious practice, and, I think, helped me add nuance to my photographs. His passing, my first vivid encounter with death, was both a personal and professional loss for me.

Oh jeez, gimme a break. Hey, nobody dislikes snakes more than I do, but what "serpent-handlers" do is animal abuse.

There's much talk of the stoic suffering of the crackpot pastor's family: mother, daughter, wife, and niece. Like this from Mom, who remember has been through this before:

I couldn’t give up when his dad died, and now that [Mack]’s given his life, I just can’t give up. It’s still the Word, and I want to go on doing what the Word says.

We learn that "after her son was pronounced dead at Bluefield Regional Medical Center, she added, 'I kissed him and I promised him that I would see him again.' Her voice broke."

The only people who show even the tiniest lick of sense are some of the pastor's shaken followers.

Some of the people who attended last Sunday’s service have struggled with Mack's death, as I have. "Sometimes, I feel like we're all guilty of negligent homicide," one man wrote to me in a Facebook message following Mack's death. "I went down there a 'believer.' That faith has seriously been called into question. I was face-to-face with him and watched him die a gruesome death. . . . Is this really what God wants?"

That's a good question.

Well, no, actually it's an idiotic question -- unless it's truly never occurred to the person, in which case congratulations on taking the first step toward the light.

And I have to say that Lauren's great ethical quandaries don't seem to me much better questions.

Her first question is whether she can justify, even to herself, standing by and doing nothing, when in fact -- as she demonstrates -- there wasn't anything she could do. The pastor was adamant about not permitting any call for medical help, and considering that he knew exactly what lay in store for him, if nothing else from his father's experience (and I'm imagining that when you go through the experience of losing your father that way at the age of 15, it tends to stay with you), I don't see how an outsider like a photographer has any options.

(The family members -- that's a different story. But since none of them appears to have a lick of sense or sanity, it's a pretty simple, and stupid, story. I understand that if the good pastor had survived via medical intervention, he might well have blamed the family member who betrayed his faith. He might even have hated that person. Fine. Would you rather live with that or live with standing by and letting the imbecile die?)

Bizarrely, Lauren thinks that other photojournalists' experiences that involve genuine ethical quandaries involve "situations similar to mine."

Pulitzer Prize winner Kevin Carter photographed an emaciated Sudanese child struggling to reach a food center during a famine -- as a vulture waited nearby. He was roundly criticized for not helping the child, which, along with the disturbing memories of the events he had covered and other factors, may have contributed to his suicide. As photojournalists, we have a unique responsibility to record history and share stories in as unbiased and unobtrusive a way as possible. But when someone is hurt and suffering, we have to balance our instincts as professionals with basic human decency and care.

Now that's a toughie. Boy, could we argue the ethics of Kevin Carter's quandary, and probably come to no good conclusion. Now that's an honest-to-goodness ethical quandary.

In my mind, Mack's situation was different from that of a starving child or a civilian wounded in war. He was a competent adult who decided to stand by what he understood to be the word of God, no matter the consequences. And so I've started to come to peace with the fact that everyone in the crowded trailer, including myself, let Mack die as a man true to his faith.

That's all fine, if a little obvious -- up to the "true to his faith" malarkey. True to his imbecility or lunacy would be more like it.

Lauren's second quandary is in some ways even more bizarre: "The more challenging issue for me has been what to do with my images of Mack’s death."

I'm going to say that this question is even easier than the first one. No, actually, I'm going to answer this question with a question: What the f*@k were you doing taking pictures? I understand that it was an enormously stressful time, and someone in that position may not have had the clarity of mind to answer the first question -- shouldn't I do something for this poor man who doesn't have to die? -- so easily in the moment. And I understand that she is, after all, a photographer, and what do photographers do but take photographs?

Except in a situation like this. No, you can't actually help the poor soul -- except maybe by trying to talk sense to the family members who could have. But what the f*@k were you doing taking pictures?

Once the media learned that I was a witness to this tragedy, I was inundated with phone calls and e-mails asking for details of that day, and some seeking permission to use my images. I faced an internal tug of war. What was most important: revealing what had happened, or protecting the privacy of the family and the integrity of my photographic project?

Ultimately, in the face of the criticism and degrading commentary that has followed Mack's death, I've decided that I owe it to his loved ones to communicate what they knew about him and his faith -- as well as what I've learned and observed -- and to publish select images with this essay.

Though I was asked to use discretion in Mack's final hours, not once did anyone force me away or prevent me from photographing the events that unfolded before me on May 27. Perhaps Mack wanted me to be at that oppressively hot and humid park site to document the bite and its lethal aftermath. Perhaps he wanted me to witness his incredible display of conviction, so that I could share with the world a side of his faith that few have gotten to see.

Oh, puh-leeze! (For the morbidly curious, the Post indeed has a whole online gallery of those quandarific photos. I'll be damned if I'm going to filch any of them for DWT readers.)

I suppose I could go on to suggest that some -- perhaps a great deal -- of what is passed off by religious authorities as "faith" is just as loony as playing with deadly snakes, albeit less flashily so. But I'm not going to suggest that. Do I really need to?

#

Have You Had Sex With A Really Stupid Southern Governor?

Bruce Bartlett: "Rick Perry's an idiot, and I don't think anyone would disagree with that"

Wednesday Texas Congressman Ron Paul (R) told a gaggle of libertarians in New Hampshire that the Republican governor of Texas is even more of a kook than he is himself. "Now we have a Southern governor, I can't remember his name," joked Paul. "He makes me look like a moderate. I have never once suggested Bernanke committed treason." Although Paul's loyal and dedicated supporters propelled him to a very close second against another deranged extremist among Republicans competing in last weekend's Ames Poll, the media treats him as though he were just some also-ran, vanity candidate joke like Herman "the Hermanator" Cain, Rick Google Santorum, Newt Gingrich or Buddy Roemer. Nor does the media take the only non-weird mainstream conservative in the race, Jon Huntsman, seriously. In fact, yesterday Huntsman was also pointing out to his followers how very different he is from the demented sociopaths-- particularly Perry-- who are offering themselves up as alternatives to Obama:


No, we won't call him crazy. But the rest of them... they all flew over the cuckoo's nest. This is what a combination of a determined anti-education agenda plus Fox's anti-reality/anti-intellectual broadcasting has done to America. Respectable mainstream media-- so not Fox-- takes candidates seriously who assert that evolution and global warming are hoaxes or that there are two competing points of view to examine before we can decide one way or the other. Although Rick Perry did acknowledge, when pushed by a child in New Hampshire, that the earth is "pretty old... it goes back a long, long way."



To which conservative pundit/former Bush speechwriter, David Frum, responded that... well, as everyone knows... it's Romney's turn.


I suppose it's better having Perry stumble around babbling nonsense about creationism than thundering about how Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional and must be abolished. And like the other members of his part-- including Willard this time-- Perry is allergic to science, wants, in fact, to secede from science. Watch:



One has to wonder who took out the ad in the Austin Statesman this week asking for the young men-- both the hookers and the merely hooked-up-- who have had sex with Perry over the years, to come forward for a little chat. Unfortunately, it isn't the kind of thing Democrats have the guts to do. It thoroughly stinks of Karl Rove, wouldn't you say?


Below is a cut graphic that shows some commonly discussed Texas myths, about how great Rick Perry and his reactionary policies have been for the economy. They never want to talk about how Massachusetts' economy, with what they call the "job killing healthcare system," consistently has a far smaller unemployment rate than Texas-- not to mention much higher wages and better working conditions (as well, obviously, as health insurance for its people, which Texas doesn't). Less talked about, at least in polite company, is another Texas myth, the one that makes believe Rick Perry is a straight man, the myth that prompted the ad above. Believe it or not, though, I'm not going to end this post with a discussion of Perry's hypocrisy or his homosexual serial dalliances.

Was I was growing up the overwhelming reason it was so important to root gays out of government service of any kind was that they could be blackmailed by the Soviet Union. Michele Bachmann notwithstanding, there is no longer a Soviet Union. Whether or not they were ever the greatest blackmail threat to politicians is open to debate, debate because the CIA and FBI have always been eager to get closeted gay politicians into their clutches. The CIA can't blackmail Barney Frank (D-MA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) or Jared Polis (D-CO), all of whom are openly gay Members of Congress. The CIA can blackmail Lindsey Graham (R_SC), Miss McConnell (R-KY), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Aaron Schock (R-IL), Trent Franks (R-AZ) and, most of all, Patrick McHenry. Oh... and that southern governor who wants to be president. Don't you think that assertion deserves a post of it's own? Workin' on it.

Chris Buttars And Bill Maher-- One Believes In Education And One Holy Underpants

But normal people live in Utah too

I don't know if he's related to the Buttars family of South Park but Utah state Senator Chris Buttars has made quite the name for himself over the years as one of his benighted state's most racist, most homophobic and most delusional legislators. He first came to prominence outside of his own lunatic asylum of a state by proposing a bill to teach "Divine Design" in the Utah public schools. No, not a cross between John Waters and HBTV; this was his idea of countering Darwin's Theory of Evolution. It isn't the only time he's tried interfering in the school system. When he introduced a bill to ban gay bars and gay dance clubs, he threw in a ban on gay-straight alliances in public schools to boot. Even the Mormon Church was embarrassed enough by him to issue an official statement reminding their followers that "Senator Buttars does not speak for the church."

Well, yesterday he was on his anti-education jihad again. This time he's trying to eliminate 12th grade.

The notion quickly gained some traction among supporters who agreed with the Republican's assessment that many seniors frittered away their final year of high school, but faced vehement opposition from other quarters...

Education, of course, has always been the biggest enemy of superstitions, religionist hucksters and conservatives like Buttars and the Utah Republican Party. I don't know if Bill Maher has ever heard of Buttars but he sure seemed to be talking about him the other night on his HBO special:

Catholic Church Finally Agrees: "Creationism" Isn't Science, Just A "Cultural Phenomenon"... Like Paris Hilton

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Culture led the Church on a major backflip concerning Darwin and his work on Evolution. While agreeing that the Catholics may have been a little hostile to Darwin from time to time, he points out that the Church "had never formally condemned Darwin" (let alone burned him at the stake), "and he noted that in the last 50 years a number of Popes had accepted evolution as a valid scientific approach to human development." Besides, he said, it was St Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine who actually discovered evolution in the first place! (Last year, in preparation for the marking of the 150th anniversary of the publication of his On The Origin of Species, the Anglicans started discussing owning up to their own backward attitude towards him and are talking about issuing an apology.)

The Catholic Church will be hosting a conference on Darwinism next month and, although they first planned to ban the kooks pushing Creationism, they relented and now say they "consider Intelligent Design as a 'cultural phenomenon' rather than as a valid scientific theory, giving US-based IDers the chance to be smirked at by a room full of Monseigneurs, Cardinals and Bishops. Don't expect an apology from the Vatican, however. Ravasi doesn't care what the Anglicans do; the Pope is infallible. "Maybe," he said, "we need to abandon the habit of issuing apologies and treating history as if it were a court always in session... "Science can purify religion of superstition, but religion can purify science from false absolutes," Ravasi said, quoting John Paul. In fact it's been nearly two decades since Pope John Paul "publicly expressed regret" on how another infallible Pope "dealt with Italian scientist Galileo Galilei who was forced to retract his observation that the Earth and the other planets revolved around the Sun," something even many Republicans now accept.

And even many who have been sucked into the bizarre and backward Mormon cult endorse evolution. Most Republicans, however, are sticking with their firm stance against science and reality. Still, Monday's NY Times-- just in time for the Catholics' embracing of Darwin-- reported that it's time to move beyond him-- or to accept that we already have.

Using phrases like “Darwinian selection” or “Darwinian evolution” implies there must be another kind of evolution at work, a process that can be described with another adjective. For instance, “Newtonian physics” distinguishes the mechanical physics Newton explored from subatomic quantum physics. So “Darwinian evolution” raises a question: What’s the other evolution?

Into the breach: intelligent design. I am not quite saying Darwinism gave rise to creationism, though the “isms” imply equivalence. But the term “Darwinian” built a stage upon which “intelligent” could share the spotlight.

Charles Darwin didn’t invent a belief system. He had an idea, not an ideology. The idea spawned a discipline, not disciples. He spent 20-plus years amassing and assessing the evidence and implications of similar, yet differing, creatures separated in time (fossils) or in space (islands). That’s science.

That’s why Darwin must go.

Almost everything we understand about evolution came after Darwin, not from him. He knew nothing of heredity or genetics, both crucial to evolution. Evolution wasn’t even Darwin’s idea... [O]ur understanding of how life works since Darwin won’t swim in the public pool of ideas until we kill the cult of Darwinism. Only when we fully acknowledge the subsequent century and a half of value added can we really appreciate both Darwin’s genius and the fact that evolution is life’s driving force, with or without Darwin.

God only knows (obviously) what to expect from the Vatican next-- an argument with Thomas Friedman that the earth is round after all?


UPDATE: TWITTERING IDIOT JEFFREY FREDERICK WON'T BE GETTING AN INVITATION TO THE VATICAN COUNCIL

Virginia Republicans elected this imbecile to be their leader. He's got a birthday message for Charles Darwin: