A Saturday ago at the annual conference of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal accused President Obama and other Democrats of waging a war against religious liberty and all but openly threatened a violent revolution, AP reported:

‘I can sense right now a rebellion brewing amongst these United States,” Jindal said, ‘where people are ready for a hostile takeover of Washington, D.C., to preserve the American Dream for our children and grandchildren.”

Of course, Jindal’s speech didn’t come out of nowhere. Jindal is notorious as a weather vane, not a leader. So this is a clear sign of the need to take threats of right-wing violence seriously – and to look to its justifications as formulated on the Christian right.

As the latest wave of theocratic violence continues to play out in Iraq, it must feel exotic for most Americans, for whom theocratic violence is something that happens elsewhere. Yet, the idea of such violence coming to America – something Jindal is apparently eager for – is hardly far-fetched. Violence against abortion providers has been with us for decades, after all, and as Jindal’s pandering suggests, there could well be much worse to come, according to […]

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The second largest religious tradition among Arizona residents is Hinduism. That’s right. In Arizona-where only four months ago, Governor Jan Brewer was pressured into vetoing a ‘ religious freedom bill” that would have allowed corporations to decline service to homosexual customers out of religious conviction-Hindus are the runner-up religious group. This is just one of many surprising findings in a state-by-state map of the second largest religious traditions made by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. While a 2012 Gallup poll reported that 77% of Americans identify as Christian, this map helps paint a far more diverse, geographically distinct, and demographically shifting portrait of religious belief in what is all too often assumed to be a homogeneously Christian country.

In the West, Buddhism ranks in second place, while Islam is the second most reported religious tradition in some twenty states across the South and Midwest. In the Northeast, meanwhile, Judaism is the runner-up. While these numbers only represent a small fraction of the population in each state, suggesting that the US is just as religiously uniform as certain conservative politicians would like to believe, it is important to take two factors into account: immigration and the distinction between a […]

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Two studies published in the past six months reveal a disturbing finding: glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup® appear to suppress the growth of beneficial gut bacteria, leading to the overgrowth of extremely pathogenic bacteria.

Late last year, in an article titled Roundup Herbicide Linked to Overgrowth of Deadly Bacteria, we reported on new research indicating that glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup® may be contributing to the overgrowth of harmful bacteria, both in GM-produced food and our own bodies. By suppressing the growth of beneficial bacteria and encouraging the growth of pathogenic ones, including deadly botulism-associated Clostridum botulinum, GM agriculture may be contributing to the alarming increase, wordwide, in infectious diseases that are resistant to conventional antibiotics, such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which the CDC’s director recently termed a ‘nightmare bacteria.’
GMO Herbicides May Lead To The Overgrowth of Harmful Bacteria, Including Deadly Clostridum Botulinum

Now a new study published in the journal Anaerobe titled, “Glyphosate suppresses the antagonistic effect of Enterococcus spp. On Clostridum botulinum,” confirms this herbicide’s ability to adversely affect gut bacteria populations (i.e. generate dysbios).[i] In an attempt to explain why Clostridum botulinum associated diseases in cattle have increased during the last […]

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The Midwest evangelical denomination declined to study its position on evolution and human origins because professors at its affiliated colleges are supposedly already producing rigorous scholarship on those issues. But in fact, the CRC allows them to be harassed, muzzled, and fired when conservatives don’t like their discoveries.

The evangelical Christian Reformed Church (CRC), an evangelical denomination centered mostly in the Midwest U.S. and Canada, voted last week not to set up a committee to examine the denomination’s theological positions involving the origins of the world and of human sin. The CRC’s 2014 Synod decided that there was no need for a six-year study of the complex issues surrounding the relationship between modern science and Christian theological beliefs because its affiliated scholars-especially at its flagship institution, Calvin College-were already conducting rigorous scholarship on the issue.

‘The ongoing work of [CRC-affiliated colleges] doesn’t warrant us putting resources and money into [the study committee] for six years,” said Chris De Vos, the reporter for the synod’s advisory committee.

The trouble is, while CRC scholars have indeed been a significant force in advancing the evangelical understanding of science, their work has also been the target of reactionary attacks so intense some of them eventually left the […]

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Outside Las Vegas’s Bellagio hotel tourists gasp in amazement as fountains shoot 500ft into the air, performing a spectacular dance in time to the music of Frank Sinatra.

Gondolas ferry honeymooners around canals modelled on those of Venice, Roman-themed swimming pools stretch for acres, and thousands of sprinklers keep golf courses lush in the middle of the desert.

But, as with many things in Sin City, the apparently endless supply of water is an illusion. America’s most decadent destination has been engaged in a potentially catastrophic gamble with nature and now, 14 years into a devastating drought, it is on the verge of losing it all.

‘The situation is as bad as you can imagine,” said Tim Barnett, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. ‘It’s just going to be screwed. And relatively quickly. Unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere Las Vegas is out of business. Yet they’re still building, which is stupid.”

The crisis stems from the Las Vegas’s complete reliance on Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, which was created by the Hoover Dam in 1936 – after which it took six years to fill completely.

It is located 25 miles outside the city and supplies […]

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