What Chris Mooney said: Unequivocal: Today’s Right is Overwhelmingly More Anti-Science Than Today’s Left.

As someone who has occasionally invited a door-to-door Jehovah’s Witness (or Latter Day Saint) in to discuss the Bible and/or Book of Mormon, I liked this piece by secular parent Dale McGowan:

She looked down and nodded once. “I can see you’re struggling with this…”

“Ma’am, one of us is struggling, and I don’t think it’s me.”

• An unreliable Witness (part 1)
• An unreliable Witness (part 2)

From Steve Benen, on the “appalling” (NYT editors) execution of a probably-innocent man: Reasonable doubt.

Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing pointed out this interesting series of posts on tracking down a scam artist using Google (among other tools): Anatomy of a Scam Investigation: Chapter One.

I Do Not Want Mercy, I Want You To Join Me.

I’m not saying any of this to ask you for mercy, but to ask you to join me. If you side with Mr Huber and believe that your role is to discourage citizens from holding their government accountable, then you should follow his recommendations and lock me away. I certainly don’t want that. I have no desire to go to prison, and any assertion that I want to be even a temporary martyr is false. I want you to join me in standing up for the right and responsibility of citizens to challenge their government. I want you to join me in valuing this country’s rich history of nonviolent civil disobedience. If you share those values but think my tactics are mistaken, you have the power to redirect them. You can sentence me to a wide range of community service efforts that would point my commitment to a healthy and just world down a different path. You can have me work with troubled teens, as I spent most of my career doing. You can have me help disadvantaged communities or even just pull weeds for the BLM. You can steer that commitment if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it. This is not going away. At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow. The choice you are making today is what side are you on.

After turning down a plea offer that would essentially have let him walk away in return for making a public apology, Tim DeChristopher is serving a 2-year sentence at a federal prison. More about Tim here: Frequently Asked Questions about Tim DeChristopher.