Earlier this year, attorney Richard Trahant discovered that a chaplain at (private Catholic) Brother Martin High School in New Orleans, Louisiana had previously been accused of sexual misconduct. Trahant contacted the school and informed them of what he had just learned. Within days, that chaplain, Paul Hart, announced his “retirement.” That lawyer has now been […]
Law
Posted inLaw, Reproductive rights
Supreme Court declines fetal personhood case
Personhood is a notoriously tricky philosophical term to define, let alone argue about in court. Indeed, the argument that a fertilized human egg has personhood is an incredibly difficult claim to establish. Nonetheless, it is an argument that anti-choicers have been desperate to see debated within the hallowed confines of the highest US court. Unfortunately […]
Posted inLaw, News, Politics
Is the nearly $1B Alex Jones verdict enough to deter fake news?
In the second of three major trials against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the jury’s verdict was overwhelming: Jones has been ordered to pay $965 million to families of Sandy Hook victims. These are grieving people whose lives were further upended by years of harassment thanks in strong part to Jones’s insistence that the massacre of […]
Posted inCritical thinking, Healthcare, Law, Psychology, Sociology
What we don’t talk about when we talk about the Satanic Panic
Imagine yourself for a moment in a painfully far-too-common scenario. A loved one, suffering from a growing sense of insecurity and deepening depression, begins seeking a destructive and delusive sense of purpose in wildly improbable conspiracy theories. Day by day, this person that you once felt a strong common rapport with drifts further and further […]
Posted inDrugs, Law, News, Politics, Racial justice
A long overdue pardon on marijuana possession calls for further change
On October 6, US President Joe Biden announced a pardon for all current citizens and lawful residents of the US convicted for the simple possession of marijuana. This pardon restores “full political, civil, and other rights” to some 6,500 individuals convicted between 1992 and 2021 under federal or District of Columbia law. It does not […]
Posted inLaw
Abuse victim says Denton Bible Church in Texas ignored all the red flags
Last year, Rob Shiflet, a former youth pastor at Denton Bible Church in Texas who had been repeatedly accused of sexual abuse, was sentenced to 33 months in prison for sexually assaulting two girls on church trips. He’ll be released next April and have to register as a sex offender. That allegations that became public […]
Posted inHistory, Law
Originalism: Why is the US Constitution being held hostage in 1788?
Whenever the deeply conservative ideology of “originalism” versus “living constitutionalism” is raised, we should remind ourselves of the sordid history of American slavery that the US Constitution once purposefully accommodated. More on that later. Because five current religiously devout US Supreme Court justices—a majority—are widely considered “originalists,” a closer consideration of this reactionary ideology has […]
Posted inCulture, Law, LGBTQ News, News, Politics, War and Peace
This week in progress: Colombia, Cuba, and the Indian Supreme Court
With Russia having formally annexed four occupied regions in Ukraine after a series of sham referendums, to strong rebuke and promises of escalating consequences from the EU and NATO, one can be forgiven for thinking this was an altogether bleak week. (The recent press of an extreme hurricane in Florida, and ongoing energy grid destabilization […]
Posted inLaw
In stunning reversal, TX judge can continue his coercive courtroom prayers
Yesterday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 in favor of Wayne Mack, a Texas judge who opens each courtroom session with coercive Christian prayers, reversing an earlier decision against him. It’s the latest example of a conservative court further eroding church/state separation in favor of performative Christianity. This isn’t even a complicated case. […]
Posted inBooks, Law, Politics
‘American Crusade’: How the Supreme Court is weaponizing Christianity
Three years ago, constitutional attorney, atheist, author, and “fake Christian” Andrew Seidel wrote about the threat of Christian nationalism in his book The Founding Myth, arguing that we were never a “Christian Nation” in any real sense of that phrase. Yet even though we weren’t founded as a Christian country, and even though we won’t […]