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Jeff Schweitzer heralded the discovery of an apparent Earth-like planet as a nail in the coffin for religion in a Thursday item on Huffington Post. Schweitzer, a scientist, "rationalist," and former Clinton administration senior policy analyst contended that "with this discovery, we come ever closer to the idea that life is common in the universe," and added that religions would "all will come out and say such a discovery is completely consistent with religious teachings. My goal here is to declare this as nonsense before it happens."The Huffington Post contributor led his article, "Earth 2.0: Bad News for God," by...

There’s a basic difference in the traditions of political science between “authoritarians” and “totalitaritarians.” People throw both of these words around, but as is so often the case, they’re using words they may not always understand. They have real meaning, however, and the difference between them is important.Simply put, authoritarians merely want obedience, while totalitarians, whose rule is rooted in an ideology, want obedience and conversion. Authoritarians are a dime a dozen; totalitarians are rare. The authoritarians are the guys in charge who want to stay in charge, and don’t much care about you, or what you’re doing, so long...

(CNN)—Weeks after making headlines amid accusations that she is a white woman passing herself off as African-American, Rachel Dolezal says she is no longer confused about who she is. She is a black woman, she told Vanity Fair. "It's not something that I can put on and take off anymore," Dolezal said. "Like I said, I've had my years of confusion and wondering who I really (was) and why and how do I live my life and make sense of it all, but I'm not confused about that any longer. I think the world might be -- but I'm not."...

All you white America-hating limousine liberals pushing the "white privilege" nonsense can kiss my white Irish arse!!

At the risk of sounding like Paul Krugman — who returns to a handful of cherished topics over and over again in his New York Times column — I want to revisit one of my hobby horses, which I most recently raised in my discussion of Hobby Lobby. My own cherished topic is this: Liberalism's decline from a political philosophy of pluralism into a rigidly intolerant dogma. The decline is especially pronounced on a range of issues wrapped up with religion and sex. For a time, electoral self-interest kept these intolerant tendencies in check, since the strongly liberal position on...

How long will it be until we begin to see a movement — egged on by activists, encouraged by receptive judges — to revoke the tax exemptions currently enjoyed by churches? A few months? A year? I don't know precisely when it will happen. But I do know that it's going to happen. The arguments have already begun. New York Times religion columnist Mark Oppenheimer recently made the case against such tax exemptions in a much-discussed essay for Time. We also know that the solicitor general of the United States believes that the opposition of religiously affiliated institutions to same-sex...

It is time for Americans to realize that Hillary Clinton's politics and voting record resemble not Barack Obama's or Bill Clinton's, but those of Bernie Sanders. All of the talk about Mrs. Clinton "moving to the left," which has been reported regularly in the media, is a waste of breath. This implies that there is somewhere on the left for Hillary to move. But based on her voting record over eight years in the Senate, as well as statements and proposals she has made or plans to make as a candidate, Hillary Clinton is already on the leftwing fringe.

It was a deadly weekend on the streets of Baltimore City, with police investigating four homicides and ten shootings. Police say two people died of shootings Saturday: a 40-year-old found suffering from gunshot wounds in the 1800 block of N. Durham Street and an 18-year-old found in the 4300 block of East Wabash Avenue. Police say two more people died Sunday. There were five shootings on Saturday. Baltimore City Police also say two men shot on Friday have died.

An Arkansas woman who went to pick up the class ring she ordered from Walmart left disappointed, after store officials told her the retailer's new policy barred them from turning the item over -- because it bore an image of the Confederate flag. Elaine Glidewell told KFSM someone from the store in Fort Smith called her to pick up the ring she'd ordered for her nephew, but when she arrived on Tuesday, a clerk told her she couldn’t have it. The ring had been ordered before Walmart stopped selling items bearing images of the flag, in the wake of controversy...

(CNN)—Coca-Cola wants everyone to imagine a world without labels. And as an example, the beverage company is dropping its own. Coke has introduced a new version of its iconic red-and-white can in Middle Eastern countries for Ramadan, the Muslim holiday that ends July 17. The new red cans feature Coke's signature dynamic ribbon but not the words "Coca-Cola" and are intended to promote open-mindedness and tolerance. The backs of the cans bear the message "Labels are for cans, not people."

If you’ve been out and about in Manhattan over the past six weeks and you have eyes and ears, you know something’s happening — something worrisome. The urban streetscape is ­degrading. Take a walk down Broadway on the Upper West Side from the 100s to the 70s, as I did Sunday, and you’ll see it everywhere. It seems every barren storefront with a rental sign in the window has ­become impromptu outdoor housing for a homeless person. There are many such storefronts — ironic signs of prosperity, not recession. Rents have risen so high that small businesses often can’t afford...

CHICAGO LAWN — When Marshall Hawkins walks around his neighborhood, he carefully picks a route based on the places where people haven't been shot. "If there are flowers on the block, you can go there," the 38-year-old said. "If there's been police tape or gunshots, you avoid it." Such is life for the former North Sider in his adopted Chicago Lawn neighborhood. Same for his kids: 5 and 7. "On days that I can't pick them up and drive them to school, I give specific directions. 'Don't take this street. Go this way. Not that way,' " Hawkins said.

LOS ANGELES — A GENERATION ago, this West Coast metropolis became a “third world city.” At least in the rhetoric of certain East Coast thinkers. A 1991 book by David Rieff cited visitors who were stunned by “seeing nothing but brown faces, hearing nothing but Spanish on the streets.” The arrival of coffee-colored Latino masses (like me and my Guatemalan-American family), together with the spread of Mandarin and Korean logograms on street signs, led Mr. Rieff to call this the “capital of the third world.” As a native of the city, I was offended to hear it tagged with such...

Nearly three quarters of Americans believe the news media reports with an intentional bias, according to a new survey. The 2015 State of the First Amendment Survey, conducted by the First Amendment Center and USA Today, was released Friday. It shows that only 24 percent of American adults agree with the statement that "overall, the news media tries to report the news without bias," while 70 percent disagree. When the question was asked last year, 41 percent agreed, a 17-point difference. [Snip] Other findings in the survey: • 38 percent agree that business owners should be required to provide services...

Complete Headline: Flying the Confederate flag over a U.S. state capitol building is like flying the Nazi flag over a synagogue Flying the Confederate battle flag — the symbol of the deadliest war in our country’s history — over a state capitol dome is like flying the Nazi flag over a synagogue. It symbolizes everything that the institution is not. As Americans, we’re better than that. Really. The Confederacy was about breaking apart the union, not its unification. That’s why we’re called the United States, not the Divided States of America.

Steven Crowder takes on a viral video from the Newsroom being passed around by leftists everywhere, a video that shows Jeff Daniels going on a rant about why America is NOT the greatest country in the world. Crowder does a fantastic job rebutting much of this nonsense.

So she lied. She portrayed herself as being something she's not, in order to serve a political cause. Is that really so terrible? There are gays who hide their sexual orientation in order to get ahead in the Republican Party. There are nonbelievers who get married in church just to please their parents. It's even been rumored that some people doctor their own photos on dating sites. Where's all the outrage about that? [Snip] We ought to start by remembering that race is a social and political concept, not a biological one. There is far more genetic variation within racial...

I am a 60-something Caucasian Yankee, born and raised in Michigan. My mother was British. My father was the first in his Canadian-immigrant family born in the USA. I have lived in North Carolina for almost 40 years, longer than my next door neighbors who were born and raised here. I understand a lot about the South, except for one thing: The pride in the Confederacy, its history and symbols. I do understand the reverence for General Robert E. Lee. I share it. He was a great general and a good and great man. He could have fought on but...

Our inalienable—God given—rights as set down in the Constitution are under attack. It’s the agenda of the American left to implement an unholy, “live for today” secularism which will destroy the virtues and truth contained in our founding documents. The strength of our republic was derived from a higher authority. Our government was designed to prevent any group amassing so much power that the society at large would be harmed. It is our culture that should drive politics, not the other way around. Today’s politicians demean that culture and subject the American people to tyranny. The Obama Regime in particular...

A recent poll [2] found that 51 percent of Democrats supported criminalizing hate speech. It also found that the same number of self-described liberals supported its criminalization.Liberal self-identification has hit its highest mark [3] in decades while the ranks of the moderates have declined. And while the idea that the liberal and the moderate are opposites may be a troubling one to those who still think of liberalism in classical terms, the modern liberal is really a leftist in denial.When William Voegeli writes in the Claremont Review [4] about the crisis of political correctness, it is about a clash between...