{"id":1591,"date":"2009-02-18T19:39:44","date_gmt":"2009-02-19T03:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=1591"},"modified":"2009-02-19T08:10:32","modified_gmt":"2009-02-19T16:10:32","slug":"miscellany-february-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/miscellany-february-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Miscellany, February 18"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>&#8220;UC Berkeley Website on Evolution Sued for Violating Establishment Clause&#8221;. Sued almost certainly without success: the Ninth Circuit has rejected the claim, although the litigant is seeking Supreme Court review. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.citmedialaw.org\/blog\/2009\/uc-berkeley-website-evolution-sued-violating-establishment-clause\">Citizen Media Law<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/nancyfriedman.typepad.com\/away_with_words\/2009\/02\/february-linkfest.html\">Nancy Friedman<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>You know about those <a href=\"http:\/\/www.atheistbus.org.uk\/\">atheist ads on buses in the UK<\/a>, right? (&#8220;There&#8217;s probably no God. Now stop worrying and get on with your life.&#8221;*) Now you can <a href=\"http:\/\/ruletheweb.co.uk\/b3ta\/bus\/\">generate your own<\/a> bus slogan. <a href=\"http:\/\/beancounters.blogs.com\/daydreams\/2009\/02\/bus-slogan-generator.html\">Beancounters shows us how it&#8217;s done<\/a>. And <a href=\"http:\/\/christaallan.com\/\">Christa Allan<\/a> alerts us to the <a href=\"http:\/\/jeffreyhill.typepad.com\/.a\/6a00d8341d417153ef0105370388c4970c-pi\">lookalike poster<\/a> (real? generated?) in an English bus stop: &#8220;There&#8217;s probably no bus. So don&#8217;t just stand here, start walking.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>*They call it atheist. I say the &#8220;probably&#8221; makes it agnostic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>Okay, I take back the last several disobliging things I&#8217;ve said about the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. In a letter to the Arkansas legislature, they called for the repeal of the state&#8217;s (unenforced and unconstitutional) ban on religious unbelievers&#8217; holding office, an anachronism also on the books, apparently, in Tennessee and Texas. &#8220;Arkansas atheists have the same rights as religious believers, to hold office and testify in court and state laws to the contrary should be stricken from the books&#8221;. All credit to them for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.becketfund.org\/index.php\/article\/958.html\">standing on principle<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reason.com\/blog\/show\/131734.html\">via<\/a>). <strong>More<\/strong>: <a href=\"http:\/\/volokh.com\/posts\/1235026375.shtml\">Somin @ Volokh<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The Michigan Law Review\u2019s companion journal First Impressions has published an online symposium on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michiganlawreview.org\/firstimpressions\/vol107\/vaccination.htm\">Liability for Exercising Personal Belief Exemptions from Vaccination<\/a>.&#8221; [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.concurringopinions.com\/archives\/2009\/02\/liability_for_e.html\">Concurring Opinions<\/a>] As a libertarian, and one who&#8217;s highly suspicious about letting the government intrude into the family, I&#8217;m generally inclined to side with the parents against most of these government intrusions, misguided though I think they usually are in refusing vaccination (whether for religious or nonreligious reasons). That doesn&#8217;t mean I&#8217;d defend the family-religious-liberty principle to the very end of the line, with, say, the argued right to reject lifesaving blood transfusions for an infant on religious principle. Pluralism and coexistence of multiple communities is ardently to be pursued, but should not amount to a suicide pact.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;UC Berkeley Website on Evolution Sued for Violating Establishment Clause&#8221;. Sued almost certainly without success: the Ninth Circuit has rejected the claim, although the litigant is seeking Supreme Court review. [Citizen Media Law] Nancy Friedman: You know about those atheist &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/miscellany-february-18\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[127,108],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1591"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1594,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591\/revisions\/1594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}