God is good to the US because Americans honor him, according to supreme court justice Antonin Scalia, who added on Saturday that he does not believe the country’s constitutional traditions enshrine the idea of religious neutrality.
Scalia was speaking Saturday at Archbishop Rummel high school in Metairie, Louisiana.
Scalia, who was appointed by president Ronald Reagan in 1986, has become known as one of the court’s most conservative members and the author of colorful and scathing opinions.
He told the audience at the Catholic school that there is “no place” in the country’s constitutional traditions for the idea that the state must be neutral between religion and its absence.
He also said there is “nothing wrong” with the idea of presidents and others invoking God in speeches. He said God has been good to America because Americans have honored him.
The justice courted controversy in December when he suggested that minority students could be better off at “lesser schools”.
“There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to […]
Kansas Republican Governor Sam Brownback
Credit: Thad Allton/AP|
Kansas tax revenue plummeted $27 million below expectations in December, figures released Monday showed, returning the state to its pattern of less-than-expected tax receipts.
The large missed estimate comes after revenue forecasters this fall lowered expectations for the next several months, and a week before lawmakers return to Topeka.
The state broke out of an eight-month-long streak of missed estimates in November. But December’s lower than expected receipts quash hopes the November figures were the start of a new, positive trend.
For the month, individual income tax receipts were nearly $26 million below estimates. December sales tax revenue, which counts sales made in November, was $14 million off estimates.
In total, the state’s tax collections came up 4.37 percent short. Despite falling short, the collections still received a bump from about $8 million more than expected in insurance premiums. Without the boost, total tax collections were $35 million below estimates.
The Kansas Department of Revenue did not offer a cause […]
The same herb frequently eaten as salad in Asia has been shown to destroy cancer cells — without harming healthy tissue. Researchers at the University of Washington have created a compound based on traditional Chinese medicine that is 1,200 times more effective in killing malignant cells than chemotherapy drugs. Combined with iron, the herb selectively targets cancerous cells and has proven to be a powerful tool in combating the disease. Tomikazu Sasaki, senior author of the study and chemistry professor at the University of Washington, describes the compound as “… a special agent planting a bomb inside the [cancer] cell.”
Since traditional chemotherapy is rife with severe side-effects and kills healthy cells, researchers are encouraged by the findings. Standard chemotherapy destroys as many as 1 normal cell for every 5 cancer cells. The compound developed by Sasaki and his team is far more specific, killing 12,000 cancer cells for each healthy cell affected, which minimizes adverse side-effects. Because of this, the effectiveness of the treatment is increased as higher doses can be tolerated.
Portrait of a 2,000-Year-Old Medicinal Treasure
Sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua L.) has been used for over two millennia in traditional Chinese medicine for a variety […]
Fighters from the al-Qaida linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) marching in Raqqa, Syria. Credit: AP Photo
Michael Flynn, 56, served in the United States Army for more than 30 years, most recently as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he was the nation’s highest-ranking military intelligence officer. Previously, he served as assistant director […]
Republican state senator Jim Tomes
If Indiana hopes to overcome its reputation for being an anti-LGBT state, 2016 is not shaping up to be a productive year. The state’s top conservative groups are suing to overturn the “fix” tacked onto last spring’s “religious freedom” bill in the hope it will allow them to discriminate against LGBT people in cities where that is prohibited. A Republican-proposed so-called LGBT nondiscrimination bill has so many religious exemptions it wouldn’t actually be enforceable. And now a new bill would actually criminalize transgender people for using the restroom.
Sen. Jim Tomes (R) calls his legislation “a simple bill,” and he’s not wrong. SB 35 does two things. First, it would prohibit schools from ever allowing transgender students from using restrooms that match their gender identity. Students would only be identified by the sex assigned to them at birth as determined by their anatomy and chromosomes, and that sex would determine which facility they can and cannot use.
This would force schools to violate Title […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
