SAR #14100

Are you sure there are only four horsemen?

Over There: Iraqi politicians are legalizing the marriage of nine-year old girls. Sure, the law applies to boys, too, but there's not much demand for child grooms. The same law makes 'marital rape' legal because wives must comply with the sexual demands of their owners. Remind me what we got for all the blood and money.

Rounded Up: Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Round-Up, is found in American mothers' breast milk in concentrations ten time higher than in European moms' milk. But Monsanto has proven it is safe for baby rats, or something like that. 
 
Appointed, Not Anointed: Citing the unwritten law of political pay-back, a NJ Superior Court Judge has “found no basis to force” the Republican appointees most likely to have the goods on Christie to honor a subpoena from a committee investigating their roles in Bridgegate. 
 
Math Quiz: If the UN's IPCC report is correct and in order to prevent climate Armageddon later this century we have to cut our use of fossil fuels by 50% in the next 35 years, while we're adding another 2 billion people to the world, what's gotta give?
Codewords: John Boehner is blocking a bill that would restore extended unemployment benefits for a couple of million Americans because it doesn't include enough tax breaks for the rich. That's not how he phrased it, he claims he wants more measures to “stimulate job growth”, but what he means is tax cuts for the rich.

Learning By Example: A Pennsylvania high school sophomore – who suffers from comprehension delay disorder, ADHD, and an anxiety disorder – recorded other students bullying him. The school, on learning of the incident, threatened to charge the student with felony wiretapping. The kid was arrested and tried and found guilty of disorderly conduct in district court. We wish him and his family well in their lawsuit against the idiots.

The Wayback Machine: The Tennessee State Senate, citing the dangers faced daily by the pioneers out there in the wilderness, has passed a bill legalizing the open carrying of firearms without any permit being required. Y'never know when you'll have to shoot a liberal.

Innocence Is Never A Defense: Twenty-five years ago a man was convicted of a murder he did not commit. He claimed that at the time of the murder in New York he was in Florida. Unfortunately he did not have evidence that would prove his alibi. The prosecution did and hid it. For twenty-five years. The man has been released. The prosecutors cannot be prosecuted because they...
 
Size Matters: Without public input, the USDA caved in to pressure from major food corporations and changed the official definition of “organic” to permit non-organic materials and products to be part of “organic” foods.

Same, Only Different: The same release from the Mortgage Bankers' Association was headlined “Mortgage apps drop for 4th consecutive week” and Mortgage Purchase Applications Increase. It is not a case of you pays your money and takes your choice, because the data clearly shows that mortgage applications fell for the fourth consecutive week.

Why Bother? Telling folks the continuing increase in atmospheric CO2 – it has reached 402 ppm for the first time in over 800,000 years - caused mostly by their auto based comfortable lifestyle is going to melt all the ice, flood the coastlines and drown major cities, cause historic droughts and ruin our economy is not the way to motivate people to do anything to stop it. But if there isn't a clear reason to give up my car and my electronics, why should I? And if everyone isn't going to suffer, I'm not going to be first. No one is.

Barefoot And Pregnant: Republicans in the Senate have blocked a bill that would have helped women get equal pay for equal work, because they were sure the Democrats were trying to pass the bill just to get women to vote for them. This will get the GOP lots of votes. Male ones.

The Parting Shot: