Hans Fiene at the Federalist comes right out and says it – God did those people killed in Sutherland Springs a favor.

For those with little understanding of and less regard for the Christian faith, there may be no greater image of prayer’s futility than Christians being gunned down mid-supplication. But for those familiar with the Bible’s promises concerning prayer and violence, nothing could be further from the truth. When those saints of First Baptist Church were murdered yesterday, God wasn’t ignoring their prayers. He was answering them.

“Deliver us from evil.” Millions of Christians throughout the world pray these words every Sunday morning. While it doesn’t appear that the Lord’s Prayer is formally a part of the worship services

Corrupt much?

On Monday, November 6, AT&T C.E.O. Randall Stephenson was in Washington, D.C., for a meeting with Makan Delrahim, the Justice Department’s new anti-trust chief, who was confirmed by the Senate in late September. They were there to discuss AT&T’s long-awaited purchase of Time Warner, which has been in the final stages of a protracted regulatory review. According to three people briefed on the conversation, Delrahim told Stephenson that if AT&T wanted the D.O.J. to green-light the $85 billion mega merger, he would have have to either sell Turner Broadcasting, the parent entity of CNN, which AT&T would acquire as part of the deal, or sell DirecTV, the satellite provider AT&T acquired in 2015.

To Stephenson, both

Maine voters approved Medicaid expansion but the governor says they have to pay for it first.

Voters in Maine approved a ballot measure on Tuesday to allow many more low-income residents to qualify for Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, The Associated Press said. The vote was a rebuke of Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican who has repeatedly vetoed legislation to expand Medicaid.

At least 80,000 additional Maine residents will become eligible for Medicaid as a result of the referendum. Maine will be the 32nd state to expand the program under the health law, but the first where voters, not governors or legislators, decided the issue. Other states whose leaders have resisted expanding the program were closely watching the

Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker story is dated two days ago; today the Guardian adds a bit of confirmation:

The former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak has said he introduced the disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein to a Tel Aviv-based investigations firm made up of former spies reportedly hired by the producer to suppress sexual abuse allegations against him.

Weinstein allegedly hired an “army of spies” in an attempt to stop accusers from going public with sexual misconduct claims against him, according to a report in the New Yorker this week.

The magazine claims that among the private security agencies hired by Weinstein, starting from around autumn 2016, was Black Cube, which is largely run by former officers of Israeli

There was this:

But now there isn’t.

It is with regret that we advise that the 2018 Global Atheist Convention has been cancelled. More details at www.atheistconvention.org.au.

Thank you to all ticket purchasers and supporters.

They didn’t sell enough tickets so they canceled.… Read the rest

So maybe it wasn’t that the guy with the big gun wasn’t cray cray after all, despite Trump’s confident assertion that it was. (Where did he get that, by the way? Law enforcement wasn’t saying that, the media wasn’t saying that. Did Trump have Special Inside Presidential Intelligence about it? Or was he just talking at random as usual because he wanted us to shut up about guns.) It maybe was that he had a big mad for his mother-in-law. Angry domineering men often do, I think. Sheds a whole new light on all those mother-in-law jokes, doesn’t it. (Actually no, it doesn’t – it sheds the same old light. Mother-in-law jokes are classic misogyny. Why mother-in-law and not … Read the rest

The Times on Devin Patrick Kelley, the guy who murdered 26 people in a small town church in Texas:

Mr. Kelley was clad in all black, with a ballistic vest strapped to his chest and a military-style rifle in his hands, when he opened fire on parishioners, turning this tiny town east of San Antonio into the scene of the country’s newest mass horror.

He had served in the Air Force at a base in New Mexico but was court-martialed in 2012 on charges of assaulting his wife and child. He was sentenced to 12 months’ confinement and received a “bad conduct” discharge in 2014, according to Ann Stefanek, the chief of Air Force media operations.

What a coincidence … Read the rest

What was that we were saying about how it doesn’t work to send someone a furious abusive email and then announce that it’s confidential? How you can’t just send people shit they didn’t ask for and then order them to keep it secret? Behold Marc Randazza in 2014 saying exactly that, and unlike me he’s a lawyer.

This happens to all of us, from time to time. A lawyer sends you a letter with some threatening language on it that he thinks accomplishes his goal of making it “confidential.” You know, like this:

CONFIDENTIAL LEGAL NOTICE
PUBLICATION OR DISSEMINATION IS PROHIBITED

The correct legal response is “suck my ass” or whatever you want to say. Ok, fine, how about

Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail above a photo of a woman in heavy eye makeup with carefully groomed eyebrows and flawless skin, wearing a niqab.

Behold my proposed new autumn look for women in politics. The black, I think, is flattering and it radiates an air of cool unapproachability. No Minister would put his hand on the knee of anyone dressed like this; indeed, he’d have trouble finding her knee, or anything else.

Well, isn’t this what you want, all you squawking flapping denouncers of groping men and ‘inappropriate’ jokes?

You have lots in common with Militant Islamists on this subject. They, too, believe that all men must be assumed to be slavering predators.

And these beliefs lie behind