Link round-up for 22 April 2012

God's power just isn't what it used to be.

Is Easter newsworthy?

Here's an illustrated history of the Hovercat War.

Wow, what a big load of nonsense.

Creationism is too stupid to argue with, so here are some funny pictures instead.

Know the difference between religions and cults.

Here's a handy Republican-to-English translator.

This old post of mine got a new comment about subjective spiritual experiences.  See my reply and also this.

Carolina Parrothead finds suburbia to be a dismal wasteland of McMansions, snoops, and "surface dwelling Morlocks".

I found this brief ode to our fishy heritage evocative.

J. Taylor Wallace crafts the perfect artistic rendering of Sarah Palin.

Ted Nugent gets booted from a concert, probably for derangement.

Here's some letter-to-the-editor fun from Kansas on birth control.

America's future is being submerged by a wave of stupidity.

Orrin Hatch isn't crazy enough for Utah teabaggers.

Green Eagle makes in interesting new case for progressive taxation.

I've known home-schooled kids who turned out superbly, but there are too many cases like this.

Sandra Goodick's path to atheism was her feminism.

Check out which states have the highest and lowest teen birth rates.  Overall the last 20 years have seen real progress.

Zero-class religionists turn a funeral into an opportunity for their usual bullying.  Here's another such case -- read the comments too.

Republican extremism means Democrats have a duty to win.

Could Arizona be in play this November?

The Vatican scolds US nuns for "spending too much time on poverty and social justice concerns and not enough on abortion and gay marriage"; some nuns push back.  Andrew Sullivan has more.

Barney Frank talks about Congress and how things really work.

Is there a Mormon version of taqiyyah?

This website is assembling responses to right-wing talking points (found via Politics Plus).

David Frum isn't worrying much about the deficit.

Yes, we can kill an idea, and we must.

The war on women is real, and here's what it consists of.  It's a war with real casualties.

Romney's flip-flopping doesn't mean he isn't dangerous.

What if the great religion-mongers of the past were just plain old liars?

Here's an episode from the life of Jackie Robinson (found via Green Eagle).

Yet another top NRO figure has white-supremacist ties.

Here are some stories of former Muslims who left Islam.

Here's another voice of sanity on the drug war, this time from the north (found via Preliator pro Causa) -- and there's a glimmer of hope in California too.

Canada now has a glow-in-the-dark dinosaur coin. 

In some fields, the private sector is just naturally less efficient than the public sector.

A Muslim "British" lord puts a £10 million price on Obama's head (found via What Would Jack Do).

Experiences overseas illustrate what Obama is trying to do.

France and Germany want to re-introduce border controls to limit illegal immigration; EU enthusiasts whinge.

Muslim proselytizers in Germany accidentally use the right word.

Even the IMF now recognizes that austerity is wrecking weak economies, not saving them; more here.

A small Swedish town is shocked by a brutal child exorcism committed by fervently-religious immigrants (found via Republic of Gilead).

Czechs stage a massive protest against austerity, while the Dutch Freedom party resists.

Kuwait approves the death penalty for blasphemy (found via Reddit).

Religious fanatics resort to poisoning water to discourage girls from going to school.

The key dividing line in the 21st century is between open and closed societies.  After the ultimate closed society of North Korea bungles yet another missile launch, the world's biggest open society shows how it's done.  Another anti-openness regime is having technological problems.

Shawn Lawrence Otto looks at the feebleness and fakery of global-warming denialism (found via Preliator pro Causa).

Soon you may be able to print your own drugs.