You can’t repair churches with public funds in New Jersey

We have become used to religious institutions finding ways to get public funding for their purposes, the main one being tax exemptions for their income and property but also in other ways such as setting up charter schools that can get taxpayer money. Politicians know that there is little to lose in pandering to religion and one of the ways is to siphon money in their direction. But some churches in New Jersey went as far as to use public funds to repair their churches. What was astonishing was that a lower court had allowed the practice. But today the New Jersey supreme court ruled unanimously that such spending was unconstitutional.
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Framed for murder by your own DNA

DNA has become the gold standard for evidence in criminal cases. It has a high reputation for accurately identifying people who had some contact with the scene of a crime and results in many convictions since jurors give great weight to DNA evidence. According to Katie Worth, a “2008 series of studies by researchers at the University of Nevada, Yale and Claremont McKenna College found that jurors rated DNA evidence as 95 percent accurate and 94 percent persuasive of a suspect’s guilt.”
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Does the GOP have room for anyone not totally loyal to Trump?

The answer to that question may be revealed on May 8th in North Carolina. Lee Fang writes about an interesting Republican primary race in a congressional district where Walter Jones, the Republican incumbent who has bucked his party and Donald Trump on several issues, is being challenged by a lobbyist who accuses him of being disloyal to Trump.
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The strange saga of the Rajneeshees

India seems to breed a constant stream of so-called ‘holy men’. These are people who preach some kind of religious mish-mash that followers find appealing enough to give them lots of money. They are not unlike the pastors of the megachurches in the US in fleecing the believers. The main difference is that these Indian mystics tend to run residential programs at places called ashrams where people live 24/7 while the megachurch followers live in their own homes.
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Why wouldn’t we want to be related to them?

Some anti-evolutionists think they are being clever when the point to chimpanzees , monkeys, and apes as evidence that evolution cannot occur, saying things like “if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”. That is stupid enough but even worse is that some seem to think that being biologically related to them is somehow shameful and something that we should be embarrassed about.
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The anti-gay legacy of British colonialism

UK prime minister Theresa May has apologized for the laws criminalizing homosexual acts that were passed by the British during colonial times in the countries they occupied, saying that they were wrong then and wrong now. But the damage done has been, and continues to be, great. Removing those laws after achieving independence has been difficult, with many countries choosing to just avoid the controversy involved with repealing them. 37 of the 53 members of the Commonwealth still have those laws on the books and some, like Nigeria and Uganda, have made them even more severe. Only a few countries, such as South Africa, have made same-sex relationships legal.
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The Talented Mr. Cohen

I am neither the first nor the only person to compare the Trump administration to a soap opera. The resemblance screams at you practically each day. The soap opera elements would be enjoyable as sheer entertainment if the other aspects did not have such serious consequences. But this week comes another comedic turn when a relatively minor character suddenly becomes a major player.
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Why hold business meetings in hotel rooms anyway?

Following the spate of news stories about sexual assault that have taken place in hotel rooms, the Screen Actors Guild has called for an end to holding meetings in hotel rooms.

The Screen Actors Guild has called for an end to private meetings in “high-risk locations” in the wake of a string of sexual assault allegations in Hollywood.

Sag-Aftra, the labor union for actors in film and television, has issued a guideline calling on producers and executives to avoid arranging meetings in hotel rooms or private residences. The document notes that “misconduct … often occurs outside of the formal workplace setting”.
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In the unlikely event that the meeting cannot take place in a more open setting, the document suggests that a “support peer” be present.

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