In News: No Joy in Trumpville, Warnock Victory, Why Right Needs Hunter Biden, and Hate Speech on Twitter

Photo of stack of newspapers by Daniel R. Blume, Wikimedia Commons

Jay Kuo, "There Is No Joy in Trumpville": 

This has been a disastrous week—one for the record books, truly—in Trumpland. Three separate calamities went down this week, and we would be remiss to focus on just any one of them.

Robert P. Jones's White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity — Excerpts Worth Noting

As I did recently with Sarah Posner's new book Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, I'd like to share with you some excerpts from Robert P. Jones's book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2020), which I recently read. This book is very important, as Jones's Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) issues a report today entitled, "Summer Unrest over Racial Injustice Moves the Country, But Not Republicans or White Evangelicals." This reports summarizes recent PRRI polling findings which show that, even as other white Americans are gradually coming to see and admit the depths of racial injustice everywhere in American society, Republicans and white evangelicals — who are to a great extent one and the same — refuse to budge. These groups continue to want to claim that white citizens are the real victims of injustice.

As Churches Re-Open Across US, CDC Issues Report on Arkansas Church in Which a COVID Cluster Spread into Wider Community

In the current pandemic, churches and church gatherings have proven repeatedly to be a perfect petri dish for spread of coronavirus infection. Churches within which infection begins to circulate then bring the infection into the wider community. Yet many Americans continue clamoring for churches to be re-opened even as medical officials urge caution, and. as they clamor, they want to weaponize the pandemic with claims that shutting churches down is an attack on religion.

Election Aftertakes: "Democrats Led Republicans by More Than 12 Million Votes in Senate Races" — And Vote Count Problems from Arizona to Georgia to Florida

Notice that the caravan totally disappeared as an issue as soon as the votes were cast -- not just Fox News, but mainstream media too. Guys, you really need to take a hard look in the mirror and ask why you're so easily played 2/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 9, 2018

Sabrina Siddiqui:

Among the most eye-catching was a statistic showing Democrats led Republicans by more than 12 million votes in Senate races, and yet still suffered losses on the night and failed to win a majority of seats in the chamber.

U.S. Bishops Fire Tony Spence of Catholic News Service for Tweeting Criticism of Hate Legislation in North Carolina and Georgia Targeting Queer Community: Twitter Reacts

Attacks on .@TonySpence of .@CatholicNewsSvc by conservative bloggers "too much for .@USCCB " Spences asked to quit https://t.co/QTPcQZN7lS

— Dennis Coday (@dcoday) April 14, 2016

The Confederate Flag: With One Great-Grandfather Who Was a CSA Soldier and Three Others Who Had Brothers in the CSA, I Could Not Be Happier to See It Come Down

To repeat myself: one of my great-grandfathers was a Confederate soldier in Alabama, and my other three great-grandfathers in Louisiana and Arkansas all had brothers who served in the Confederate army. And I could not be happier to see the racist Confederate battle flag taken down from public buildings and now recognized for what it always was and remains — a symbol of white supremacy.

Pharmacist in Georgia Refuses to Fill Doctor-Prescribed Medicine to Complete Miscarriage: Why We Need to Keep Thinking about "Religious Freedom" Legislation

Here's a story that illustrates (for me, at least) why I think it's worthwhile to keep ranting about "religious freedom" laws that allow for-profit businesses to refuse to serve or sell goods to others on grounds of conscience: as Amanda Marcotte reports at Slate, a woman in Georgia, Brittany Cartrett, recently posted on Facebook an account of what happened when her doctor prescribed Misoprostol as she was miscarrying at about five weeks of pregnancy. Cartrett indicates that her doctor wanted her to take this pharmaceutical, which can also cause abortion, to complete the miscarriage.

Bigotry Continuing to Masquerade as "Religious Liberty" in Indiana: Governor Pence Meets the Press, Finds His Pants On Fire

Marriage Equality Comes to Alabama, as Grandstanding of "Faith-Based" Southern Leaders Continues

Olanda and Dinah are getting married pic.twitter.com/NJcwZEua8r
— Clare Huddleston (@Fox6Clare) February 9, 2015