Ratz

It's difficult to think of any distinct group of people with less moral authority than the Catholic bishops. The Sinaloa drug cartel comes to mind, or the North American Man-Boy Love Association. Come to think of it, NAMBLA is much less hypocritical. Even the people who sit in the pews on Sunday and listen to them recite their meaningless mumbo-jumbo agree with me: 90% of them commit the mortal sin of contraception.

Why then have we spent the past couple of weeks trying to placate them and undertake obsequiously to deny that we would ever give them offense, because they claim that the almighty creator of the universe grants them the absolute right to disobey the law? Worse than that, the whole argument morphs into whether anybody should have access to contraceptives and whether anyone -- well, anyone who is an employer, that is -- should be able to disobey any law they wish if it offends their "moral conscience." Feeling the wave, the freak who is leading in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination starts running against the president's "theology," which he claims is not based in the Bible.

Fortunately, the scientific community is finally recognizing the mortal threat we face from the suddenly resurrected 13th Century, but you have to read a British newspaper to hear about the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which happened unnoticed by Americans. Robin McKie of The Guardian reports that AAAS president Nina Federoff told the gathering:

"We are sliding back into a dark era, and there seems little we can do about it. I am profoundly depressed at just how difficult it has become merely to get a realistic conversation started on issues such as climate change or genetically modified organisms." . . .

As Fedoroff pointed out, university and government researchers are hounded for arguing that rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are changing the climate. Their emails are hacked while Facebook campaigns call for their dismissal from their posts, calls that are often backed by rightwing politicians. At the last Republican party debate in Florida, Rick Santorum insisted he should be the presidential nominee simply because he had cottoned on earlier than his rivals Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney to the "hoax" of global warming.

McKie goes on to discuss how immense business corporations such as Exxon-Mobile, and billionaires such as the Koch brothers, are financing the campaign to destroy the cause of science in pursuit of nothing more than their infinite greed. Now, the Supreme Court has removed all restraints on their activities. Unless these evil bastards are stopped - exposed, disgraced, forever more ignored - and very soon, we are doomed. Rick Santorum? Really?