Trending Up

Contra-ceptives: During Wednesday’s Republican debate in Mesa, Ariz., most of the candidates, the exception being Ron Paul (sort of), spoke about the immorality of contraception. Newt Gingrich called President Barack Obama’s recent call for insurance companies to provide free-of-charge contraception an endorsement of “infanticide.” Too true. If you don’t make babies, then you’re killing babies. But regardless of your position on the issue, you have to give Gingrich credit for being loyal to his conservative principles. After all, that’s about the only thing he’s ever been loyal to.

The great white hope: The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that may change the way affirmative action is applied in schools and universities. The case involves a white, Texan woman who alleges that she was not admitted to the University of Texas at Austin in lieu of less qualified minority candidates. Sad, really. When will the subjugation of white, Texan women stop?
In all seriousness, though, the university has a policy that automatically admits students that graduate in the top 10 percent, and then makes up the rest of its enrollment, about 25 percent, by a process that includes race as a factor. Sorry, but if you can’t make it into the bottom fourth of an enrollment cohort, there might be something other than race that went into it.

Trending Down

For the Bible, and teacher, tell me so:The Arizona House of Representatives voted to permit elective courses that will teach students about the influence of the Bible on civilization and culture in Western society. Obviously this move was enacted to combat the ever-heightening War on Religion, one that hits Arizona particularly hard, given that there are no state laws barring teachers from using any religious texts in classes so long as they are for non-religious purposes. But hey, isn’t it great that children can finally learn about the Bible’s impact on the United States? Like last year’s House Bill 2582, which would have banned the implementation of any religious laws in Arizona outside of Anglo-American traditions or “the principles on which the United States was founded.” And what could be more American than a lack of religious tolerance?

A new page in international relations:Gen. John R. Allen, the head of international forces in Afghanistan, issued a formal apology for U.S. troops accidentally burning copies of the Quran. In response to the perfectly logical question of, “How in the hell did you accidentally burn copies of a religious text?” Allen answered that the books were erroneously taken to an incineration facility. This is the latest PR flub for the military, which is still enduring protests for mistakenly using a Torah scroll as a tablecloth prop in the USO production of “Springtime for Hitler.”