Where is the outrage from the Catholic Church about this? The victims will probably get another lameass and meaningless apology from Pope Ratzi, like that is supposed to magically make things okay.
DUBLIN – After a nine-year investigation, a commission published a damning report Wednesday on decades of rapes, humiliation and beatings at Catholic Church-run reform schools for Ireland’s castaway children.
The 2,600-page report painted the most detailed and damning portrait yet of church-administered abuse in a country grown weary of revelations about child molestation by priests.
The investigation of the tax-supported schools uncovered previously secret Vatican records that demonstrated church knowledge of pedophiles in their ranks all the way back to the 1930s.
Wednesday’s five-volume report on the probe — which was resisted by Catholic religious orders — concluded that church officials shielded their orders’ pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.
“A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from,” Ireland’s Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded.
Victims of the abuse, who are now in their 50s to 80s, lobbied long and hard for an official investigation. They say that for all its incredible detail, the report doesn’t nail down what really matters — the names of their abusers.
This is fascinating. Fundies want to know where the missing links are, well here is the evidence. Of course they will probably say it’s a trick planted by Satan.
Scientists have discovered an exquisitely preserved ancient primate fossil that they believe forms a crucial “missing link” between our own evolutionary branch of life and the rest of the animal kingdom.
The 47m-year-old primate – named Ida – has been hailed as the fossil equivalent of a “Rosetta Stone” for understanding the critical early stages of primate evolution.
President Obama is expected to name Souter’s replacement soon, and the Religious Right are already preparing negative attacks against anyone and everyone Obama may be considering. In the process, far-right-leaning organizations are hoping to bring in millions of dollars in donations for television, radio and Internet advertisements that might reunite conservatives in a confirmation battle. As Rob Boston states, “One thing Religious Right leaders do best is fling mud.”
However, despite all the negativity and poo-flinging, Obama’s choice will prevail the long, hard way:
We already know how this will end. Most likely, Obama’s court nominee will win Senate approval. Viguerie and company are determined to make the nation endure a summer of slime attacks to get there.
I have to wonder if Viguerie and his ilk even care that Obama is likely to emerge victorious. After all, they get paid either way.
South Bend- The board that runs South Bend’s city bus system has agreed to allow ads on buses from an atheist group.
The ads by the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign read, “You can be good without God.”
The group had hoped to have the ads installed on 20 Transpo buses before President Barack Obama’s appearance at the University of Notre Dame on Sunday. But the advertising agency that handles bus ads said it needed approval from the Transpo board, which met on Monday.
Board chairman Chip Lewis said Transpo has accepted ads from religious organizations, and so to deny the atheist ads would be inconsistent.
I know, I know — the actual slogan is a little on the tame side (i.e., as opposed to the UK one, “There’s probably no God”), but I’ll take it.
Of course, many xian idiots are going to take offense anyway — so, like, that’ll be fun, at least…
Madeline didn’t have to die. She was a victim of negligence based on the beliefs of her devoutly religious mother. A sister-in-law testified that Madeline’s mother did know how gravely ill her daughter was the day before she died, yet the mother chose to walk in circles around her bed while repeating magical incantations to a non-existent god.
“She was afraid,” the sister-in-law said. “She ran upstairs to Kara (Madeline’s nickname) and felt her and was relieved to feel warmth in her arm. Then she said they started praying and praying and praying and didn’t stop praying until supper time.”
Prosecutors contend any reasonable parent would have known something was wrong and Leilani Neumann, who believes healing comes from God, recklessly killed her daughter by praying instead of rushing her to a doctor as the girl became so weak she couldn’t walk or talk. The defense says the family hadn’t known the girl was dying.
How can you not know that your child is dying? It’s obvious, isn’t it? And it had to be obvious to the mother to make her pray so desperately to her imaginary friend.
Susan Neumann testified that she no longer had a relationship with her brother, Dale Neumann, who is Madeline’s father. She said she contacted police about two weeks after the girl’s death fearful for her brother’s other three children and worried that there could be “mass suicide” in the family.
Under cross-examination, the witness was asked whether God told her to go to the police.
She said she prayed about it but “felt in my heart” it was the right thing to do and maybe God answered her prayers.
The sis-in-law is as whacky as the mother is. They still don’t realize that their god IS NOT THERE. If this god didn’t come down to save Madeline, why the hell does this woman still think that God answered her prayer in going to the police? Apparently she is too deluded to ask herself why she didn’t “feel it in her heart” to call DCFS or other authorities BEFORE her niece died. This story really pisses me off because it’s the senseless death of a child.
And has this whole entire nightmare gotten through to the mother about the pointless non-power of prayer? Not at all . . .
Before testimony began Monday, Leilani Neumann read from her Bible and circled the defense and prosecution tables several times in prayer.
I didn’t know that they did in the first place, did any of you? The longer Obama is in office, the more we realize just how entrenched the Religious Right were becoming via the Bush years.
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not know how long the Worldwide Intelligence Update cover sheets quoted from the Bible. Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer, who was responsible for including them, retired in August 2003, according to his biography.
For a period in 2003, at least, the daily reports prepared for President George W. Bush carried quotes from the books of Psalms and Ephesians and the epistles of Peter. At the time, the reports focused largely on the war in Iraq.
The Bible quotes apparently aimed to support Bush at a time when soldiers’ deaths in Iraq were on the rise, according to the June issue of GQ magazine. But they offended at least one Muslim analyst at the Pentagon and worried other employees that the passages were inappropriate.
On Thursday, April 10, 2003, for example, the report quoted the book of Psalms — “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him. … To deliver their soul from death.” — and featured pictures of the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down and celebrating crowds in Baghdad.
“Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand,” read the cover quote two weeks earlier, on March 31, above a picture of a U.S. tank driving through the desert, according to the magazine, which obtained copies of the documents.
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, on Monday said U.S. soldiers “are not Christian crusaders, and they ought not be depicted as such.”
“Depicting the Iraq conflict as some sort of holy war is completely outrageous,” Lynn said in a statement. “It’s contrary to the constitutional separation of religion and government, and it’s tremendously damaging to America’s reputation in the world.” [My emphasis]
About the Muslim analyst who was offended, I find that ironic since his “holy book” contains the same evil crap and is used to justify murdering via suicide bombs on nearly a daily basis.
Ain’t it grand when some inane schmuck goes on an anti-atheist screed? The cool part, of course, is that we’re in it:
…or visit an atheist website or blog (there are zillions of them, bearing such titles as “God Is for Suckers”…
So, officially, GIFS has made the Los Angeles Times opinion column. Start lining up those media spots…
I’d like to take the time to respond to her “points” — I mean, come on, I wouldn’t want to be viewed as just a whiner — but after reading P.Z. Myers’ take on the whole thing, I’ll just let him take over.
We know you work hard to maintain a belief in a loving, personal god in the absence of evidence and the existence of facts that contradict you. We agree with you that it is remarkably unlikely and difficult to understand. We also agree that the existence of god is something you can’t sense — we can’t sense it either. Whenever we engage you seriously this is the same stuff we get, over and over again: we’re just supposed to believe in the absence of your ability to explain why we should.
And I, like P.Z., also cannot understand why the Times would print such drivel.
Oh yes, we atheists don’t use reason at all. We just whine all the time.
Where is the outrage from the Catholic Church about this? The victims will probably get another lameass and meaningless apology from Pope Ratzi, like that is supposed to magically make things okay. 
This is fascinating. Fundies want to know where the missing links are, well here is the evidence. Of course they will probably say it’s a trick planted by Satan. 
President Obama is expected to name Souter’s replacement soon, and the 
I didn’t know that they did in the first place, did any of you? The longer Obama is in office, the more we realize just how entrenched the Religious Right were becoming via the Bush years.
Ain’t it grand when some inane schmuck goes on