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A New Jersey animal shelter’s annual pet blessings has prompted a federal lawsuit by a group called American Atheists Inc. of Cranford. The Bergen County Animal Shelter is accused of violating the First and 14th amendments of the U.S. Constitution over two events held in 2016 and 2017. Each event featured a member of the Franciscan Order of the Divine Mercy in North Arlington. Plaintiffs say that animal blessings at the facility are tantamount to an endorsement of religion. They seek an injunction to stop the annual event, and legal fees.

Jessika Edwards told CNN that she and Devin Kelley worked together at Hollomon Air Force Base in New Mexico from 2010 to 2012. Kelley was released from the military on a bad-conduct discharge in 2014 after serving time for assaulting his wife and stepson. Edwards said that when the two made contact on Facebook in 2014, Kelley said he had been purchasing dogs through Craigslist and then using them for “target practice.” While in the Air Force, she said, Kelley was preoccupied with mass murders and made jokes about killing people. ..." In 2014, the same year he allegedly made...

The following media outlets cited Kelley’s atheism: ABC (“Good Morning America”) Boston Globe CNN CNN Wire Fox News Los Angeles Times New York Times TMZ Washington Times The following did a profile of Kelley’s background but said nothing about his hateful brand of atheism: Associated Press CBS cbsnews.com NBC PBS USA Today Time.com Washington Post The following left-wing Internet sites covered Kelley’s background but did not report his militant atheism: Alternet Daily Beast Daily Kos Huffington Post Mother Jones Salon Slate Think Progress

Ex-facility official says Kelley made death threats and tried to buy weaponsHOUSTON - Channel 2 Investigates obtained law enforcement documents revealing Devin Kelley escaped from a behavioral center in New Mexico a little more than five years before Sunday’s deadly rampage in Sutherland Springs. The incident report, filed by the El Paso Police Department, states Kelley was picked up at a bus terminal in downtown El Paso before midnight on the evening of June 7, 2012. The report states two officers were dispatched to the terminal to look into a missing-person report. READ: Incident report on Devin Kelley When they...

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) says he walked out of a moment of silence on the House floor for victims of the mass shooting in Texas, saying he “will not be silent” after yet another massacre. Lieu posted a video on his Facebook page Monday night after the moment of silence, during which he said he was “heartbroken about the children and adults that were killed in the worst mass shooting in Texas history this Sunday.” “My colleagues right now are doing a moment of silence in the House of Representatives’ chambers,” Lieu said. “I respect their right to do that...

The federal government's firearm transaction record, which buyers must legally fill out, asks about felony convictions. Kelley bought a Ruger AR-556 rifle, used in the attack on the church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in April of last year from an Academy Sports & Outdoors store in San Antonio, a law-enforcement official told CNN. The purchase of the gun took place two years after Kelley had been court-martialed, imprisoned, and discharged from the military.

An atheist woman seeking citizenship in Massachusetts is suing to remove the phrase “so help me God” from the United States citizenship oath. Olga Paule Perrier-Bilbo, a French national who has lived in the U.S. since 2000 with a green card, says that the inclusion of the phrase is an unconstitutional violation of her religious freedom. Her lawyer, Michael Newdow, drew attention for a similar Supreme Court case in 2004, when he argued that the Pledge of Allegiance should be rewritten to omit “under God.”

The Texas church shooter who mercilessly shot dead 26 people and injured 24 others was an 'outcast' who 'preached his atheism' online. Former classmates say Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, who stormed First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in Texas and opened fire on Sunday, was 'creepy', 'crazy' and 'weird'. Patrick Boyce, who attended New Braunfels High School with the killer, told DailyMail.com: 'He had a kid or two, fairly normal, but kinda quiet and lately seemed depressed. 'He was the first atheist I met. He went Air Force after high school, got discharged but I don't know why. 'I was...

The man who shot and killed 26 people in a Texas church on Sunday is reported to be a creepy, crazy, and weird outcast who preached atheism online. Former classmates of the Texas church shooter, Devin Patrick Kelley, said he was an atheist and outcast who thought Christians were stupid, the Daily Mail reported. “He was always talking about how people who believe in God we’re stupid and trying to preach his atheism,” former New Braunfels High School classmate Nina Rose Nava posted on Facebook. She said she was in “complete shock” after learning Kelley was the killer. “I legit...

The Texas church shooter who mercilessly shot dead 26 people and injured 24 others was an 'outcast' who 'preached his atheism' online. Former classmates say Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, who stormed First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in Texas and opened fire on Sunday, was 'creepy', 'crazy' and 'weird'. Patrick Boyce, who attended New Braunfels High School with the killer, told DailyMail.com: 'He had a kid or two, fairly normal, but kinda quiet and lately seemed depressed. 'He was the first atheist I met. He went Air Force after high school, got discharged but I don't know why. 'I was...

Yesterday, Facebook restricted and then shut down the public pages of Ex-Muslims of North America (24k followers) and Atheist Republic (1,6 million followers) –groups that advocate secularism and provide support to “apostates” (people who leave Islam and who often face persecution). In fact, the ex-Muslim group claims that for the last several years, Facebook has been continuously blocking groups like it. The ex-Muslims have written an open letter to the social media giant, calling on it to “to stop exercising intellectual persecution” against atheist and ex-Muslim organizations and to “whitelist” such vulnerable groups from organized false flagging attacks. On Monday,...

Several days ago, one of my arch nemesis oldfartrants, a senile old hippie bum from West LA who has a YouTube channel advocating socialism has now called for the overthrow of Donald Trump. This, after spending nearly a decade referring to Conservatives as traitors and opponents of Barack Obama as seditionists. He attacks Trump comparing him to Hitler and attacking other conservatives such as Ron Paul, Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Sarah Palin and so on. Yet now its not treason anymore to be in dissent, its no longer treason to want to overthrow an elected official like Trump or...

The Christian women’s blog Sheologians received a powerful testimony recently from an atheist who visited Planned Parenthood looking for adoption information. That’s not what she got. In her letter to Sheologians, she described how the abortion group repeatedly pressured her to abort her unborn child, ignored her desires to make an adoption plan and tried to manipulate her emotionally. The Blaze reports Apologia Studios created a video of blogger Summer White reading the woman’s letter. The woman’s name is not used. “I am a victim of rape, but I’m also a victim of feminism. I was lied to,” the woman...

Pope Francis delivered another criticism of some members of his own Church on Thursday, suggesting it is better to be an atheist than one of "many" Catholics who he said lead a hypocritical double life. In improvised comments in the sermon of his private morning Mass in his residence, he said: "It is a scandal to say one thing and do another. That is a double life." "There are those who say 'I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this and that association'," the head of the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church said, according to...

His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman has announced he will release the long-awaited follow-up to the popular trilogy - sparking an online frenzy from his delighted fans. The next trilogy of books, which the Cambridge-based writer describes as an 'equel' rather than a prequel or sequel, begins with The Book Of Dust which will be published on October 19 by Penguin Random House Children's and David Fickling Books.

[Jazz critic and longtime Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff died Saturday at age 91. Though a self-identified man of the left, he was hard to pigeonhole. This op-ed appeared in the Inquirer on Feb 28, 1988.] ***** As a former board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, I am nonetheless considered a bewildering heretic by many of the ACLU's officers and members. They can't understand how I became pro-life. The lawyer for the ACLU's Reproductive Rights Division refers to me rather contemptuously as having been "born again." Yet I remain an atheist. What changed me on the question of...

MARENGO, Ill. — Officials have identified the pilot killed in a small plane crash over the weekend. 63-year-old Robert Sherman of Poplar Grove, Illinois died when his homebuilt Zenair CH601 crashed into a cornfield near Meyer and Pleasant Grove Rd. Sherman was the only person on board. The cause of the crash is not yet known. Local officials believe it may have gone down overnight, but it wasn’t spotted until around 7 a.m. Saturday. Sherman is an atheist activist known for his court battles dealing with the separation of church and state.

Atheist activist, Green candidate Rob Sherman dies in plane crash Rob Sherman, who died over the weekend in a crash of his small plane in Marengo, operated a business helping people build aircraft from kits. But the 63-year-old was better known as a colorful political activist and Green Party candidate — some might say gadfly — who called journalists and introduced himself as “Rob Sherman, your favorite atheist.” At one time, he had license plates that spelled out ATHEIST. Though he came in for derision as a self-promoter, he challenged the use of government-sponsored Christmas creches and displays and anything...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - An atheist's request for a personalized license plate saying "IM GOD" was denied by the state of Kentucky, which said it might distract other drivers, and would be in bad taste. Bennie Hart says that by announcing "IM GOD" on his license plate, he simply wants to show the impossibility of disproving anyone's claim to being "God." Besides, Hart says, he had the same plate for a dozen years when he lived in Ohio, without causing any problems.

"...The party's leader is at best indifferent to, and often is hostile to, much of the party's recent catechism: limited government, the rule of law, a restrained executive, fiscal probity,..."