Midweek link dump

[tangaroa]

• The U.S. National Science Foundation has stopped reporting statistics on the proportion of people who believe in evolution and the Big Bang Theory.
• The health insurance reform law that was recently passed in the United States of America appears to strip Congressmen of their health insurance through 2014.
• Nebraska has passed two anti-abortion laws. LB594, requiring that women seeking an abortion have their sanity questioned, passed on a 40-9 vote, while LB1103, restricting abortions to the first twenty weeks of pregnancy, passed on a vote of 44-5.
• Two on drug-related violence in Mexico:
  • Stratfor reports that Mexico has lost control of its north to drug-smuggling gangs.
  • The sheriff of lightly populated Hudspeth County in Texas has told the people to arm themselves as defense against Mexican drug gangs.
• Background on the violence in Thailand:
  • The Economist reports on last month's leading rallies
  • Jessica Olien of the Atlantic describes the situation
  • James Hookway of the Wall Street Journal describes the situation
  • Lorne David Thompson, a Canadian musician residing in Thailand, gives a report to Pajamas Media
• The Senate of the United States of America has unanimously condemned Uganda's proposal to kill homosexuals.
• Jack Shafer of Slate reviews leaders of states who believe in wild and unlikely conspiracy theories.
• David Boaz of Reason Magazine writes of the lack of a "Golden Age of Liberty" in history. As much as a "Golden Age of Liberty" has ever existed, we are in it and it shall last as well as we can keep it.
• Damon Root of Reason Magazine notes the 137th anniversary of the Slaughterhouse Cases, their relevance to the 14th Amendment, and the upcoming McDonald v. Chicago Second Amendment case.
• A leaked memorandum adds evidence for Republican Party promotion of the "Tea Party" movement. Of additional interest, the memo speaks of competing Republican Party factions whose ideology is indistinguishable to me.
• Habibi at Harry's Place has some background information on Anwar Awlaki.
• Michael Ezra at Harry's Place digs up Counterpunch founder Alexander Cockburn's history of anti-semitism.
• American Federation of Labour President Richard L. Trumka declares that "for a generation we have built our economy on a lie -- that we can have a low-wage, high-consumption society and paper over the contradiction with cheap credit". It is also news that Time Magazine is reprinting a labour leader's speech.