Daycare center
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Religious daycares across the country take millions in government subsidies — and due to a “God Loophole” based in complaints regarding the separation of church and state, they’re often exempt from typical regulation and even licensing that keeps the children that attend them safe.

As flagged by David McAfee at Patheos’ “The Friendly Atheist,” a recent investigation by The Virginian-Pilot found that in Virginia alone, religious daycares received at least $6.8 million through the state’s Child Care Subsidy Program.

“Licensed day cares have to undergo frequent inspections, background checks and staff training, much of which religious day cares can avoid,” the Virginian-Pilot report reads. “Centers that take subsidies have to comply with some, but not all, of those rules.”

As McAfee notes, however, the issue is far from contained to Virginia — and the dangers of such unregulated centers were exposed more than 18 months ago in an April 2016 exposé by Reveal News.

Reveal found that six states are the “most hands-off” culprits that take advantage of the loophole: “Alabama, Indiana, Missouri, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia offer […]

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Electric vehicles will soon be superior to gasoline-powered vehicles in every single respect — with longer range and possibly even faster fueling. That’s the key takeaway from the latest product announcements by Tesla’s Elon Musk and other car companies.

Major media coverage in recent days has focused on Musk’s unveiling of a sleek new electric truck with a 500-mile range. But the news of the last week also includes Musk rolling out the Tesla “Roadster” with a 620-mile range “to give a hard-core smackdown to gasoline cars. You’ll be able to drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back” without recharging.

To much less fanfare, however, Fisker Inc. (formerly Fisker Automotive) filed patents last week on a solid-state […]

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When my daughter was growing up, she often wanted to rush off to do fun things with her friends — get into the water at the beach, ride off on her bike — without taking the proper safety precautions first. I’d have to stop her in her tracks to first put on the sunscreen, or her bike helmet and knee pads, with her standing there impatiently. “Safety first, fun second,” was my mantra.

Keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe from harm is perhaps our strongest human motivation, deeply embedded in our very DNA. It is so deep and important that it influences much of what we think and do, maybe more than we might expect. For example, over a decade now of research in political psychology consistently shows that how physically threatened or fearful a person feels is a key factor — although clearly not the only one — in whether he or she holds conservative or liberal attitudes.

[A political scientist has discovered a surprising way to increase voter turnout. It starts in childhood.]

Conservatives, […]

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Former President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland was never confirmed, thanks in part to the efforts of a conservative nonprofit called the Judicial Crisis Network.
Credit: Andrew Harnik/AP

WASHINGTON — When a small nonprofit called the Judicial Crisis Network poured millions into a campaign to stop the Senate from confirming Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick last year, and then spent millions more supporting President Donald Trump’s choice for the same seat, political observers assumed conservatives from around the country were showering the group with donations.