Gullible School Officials + Psychic Babbling = Trouble For Ontario Mom

  Colleen Leduc, of Barrie, Ontario is a single mother, raising an 11 year-old autistic daughter. She sends her daughter to public school, because that's all she can afford.

  On May 30th, she received a call from her daughter's school, asking her to come in right away. When she got there, she was informed that there were suspicions that her daughter was being sexually abused.

"The teacher looked and me and said: 'We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of "V." And she said 'yes, I do.' And she said, 'well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'"

  Based on this ridiculous cold reading trick, school officials called the Children's Aid Society, which launched an investigation into the allegations.

  Luckily, Leduc was able to satisfy CAS that the abuse was entirely imaginary.

[A] case worker came to the Leduc home to discuss the allegations of sexual misconduct, only to admit there wasn't a shred of evidence that anything had ever happened at all. They labelled Leduc a "diligent" mother doing the best she could for her child under difficult circumstances, closed the file and left, calling the report "ridiculous."

  This, right here, is why belief in spooky mind powers isn't harmless fun. These baseless allegations wasted the time and resources of the school, the CAS and most significantly of Colleen Leduc. She's only lucky that the "psychic" didn't blame her for the non-existent abuse. I hope that Ms. Leduc sues the crap out of the "psychic," and every school official who was involved in perpetrating this farce.

Question #124: Is Our Children Learning? Not For Long!

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Hey LBB, did you hear that Bush's 2009 budget kills the funding for the RIF [Reading Is Fundamental] program? Doesn't that suck?
- Wonk-a Wonk

Dear Wonk-a Wonk,
  Thank you, President Bush. Every time I think it's impossible to despise you and your disastrous presidency any harder, you find some way to become even more loathsome and horrible. It's as if you sense outrage fatigue setting in, and you make up your mind to prevent us from giving up on hating you.

  The latest salvo in the arms race of unconscionableness that is the Bush executive is an item in the President's 2009 budget. More accurately, it's something that's not included in the $3.1 trillion plan. The Bush Administraitor's proposal eliminates federal funding for the Reading Is Fundamental program, which has been part of every budget since 1975. From their website:

RIF is the oldest and largest children's and family nonprofit literacy organization in the United States. RIF’s highest priority is reaching underserved children from birth to age 8. Through community volunteers in every state and U.S. territory, RIF provides 4.5 million children with 16 million new, free books and literacy resources each year.

  I applaud you, sir. It's as if you scoured federal spending for the cutest, cuddliest puppy you could find, and then clubbed it to death on the south lawn as a sacrifice to the Gods of War (Iraq Regional Office).

  Here's an idea, loosely adapted from a lame bumper sticker. RIF is asking for $26 million in federal funding in fiscal year 2009. Each F-22 fighter costs in the neighborhood of $177 million. Maybe the Air Force could get by with one less this year, so some poor kids could get some free books? If you want, you can even use the leftover $151 million to fund some ridiculous and ineffective social program, like abstinence-only sex education.

  Fortunately, the curtain hasn't quite closed on this farce. There's still time to contact your legislators and urge them to restore RIF's funding. President Bush has been at the helm for the ruin of our economy, the trashing of our civil liberties, and the deaths of thousands of American soldiers. Don't let him threaten millions of American children with illiteracy.

Take Back The "U"

  In the middle of an interesting report on the aftermath of the Texas UFO sightings, Sam Ogden of Skepchick.org reports this little tidbit.

"I sat across the aisle from some fellow Texans on the plane ride home from Florida who were very vocal that the reversal by the air force was proof that the government is covering something up."

  This, my friends, is the definition of ambivalence. I love to be right; I hate the credulity. It's a powerful sensation, akin to choking myself to death with delicious cookie dough.

  Folks, it's time we did something ridiculously pedantic as we paddle upstream in the flood of blind belief. We've got to take back the word "unidentified." We've got to stop letting true believers conflate the term with “alien.”

  Here's how we do it. If someone observes a UFO, and then either attempts to gather evidence and make a determination of what it was, or calmly accepts that it can't be precisely identified, then they can call it unidentified. If they’re going to leap to an otherwise unsupported conclusion as to the object's outer spaciness, we have to insist that they use a word like alien or extraterrestrial that clearly indicates the (desperately crazy) conclusion they’ve drawn.

  I'm not nearly so delusional as to think that this semantic quibbling will change the minds of anyone in the woo-niverse, but it might just rescue an innocent word from misappropriation by the tinfoil hat crowd. That's a worthy enough goal all by itself.

One Thing Athiests Never Do:
Pray for the deaths of people who disagree with them.

  When Wiley Drake, pastor of a Baptist church in Buena Park, California, used church letterhead and a church-affiliated radio show to endorse former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's candidacy for president, it raised some red flags. Under federal tax law, non-profit organizations (religious or not) aren't allowed to endorse candidates. Those that do so risk losing their non-profit status, and the attending tax benefits.

  There's a minor piece of oft-ignored legal jargon called the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It's supposed to keep religious zealots from interfering in government, and vice versa. Despite the creeping theocratic bent of the current administration, maintaining federal tax benefits for a religious organization that endorses candidates is still a no-no. So, a group called Americans United for Separation of Church and State asked the IRS to investigate the church's non-profit status.

  Instead of defending his actions, Drake called on his flock to join him in praying to their god for the deaths of two of Americans United's leaders. While I'm pretty confident that there's no grumpy bearded man in the sky, grinding fresh points onto a pair of lightning bolts and aiming for Americans United's headquarters, it does raise some interesting questions.

  Drake is asking for help to petition the omnipotent creator of the Universe to kill two human beings. How is that substantively different from trying to hire a hitman? The question of there actually being an omnipotent creator of the Universe is immaterial; Drake believes a god exists, and he's asked that god to pop a cap in his enemies.

  It's the belief that is the key here. If I believe that I've hired a hitman to kill someone, I've committed a crime. It doesn't matter if my "hitman" is an undercover FBI agent, and my intended target was never in any real danger. I've engaged in a conspiracy to commit murder. In many jurisdictions, the penalty for this crime is on par with what I'd face if I'd actually done some killing.

  I'll say it again, because I think it bears repeating. Drake believes that he and his followers are asking an omnipotent (and not at all imaginary) being to kill his enemies. He has clearly shown the intent to cause the deaths of two people. This has to be a criminal act. If it wasn't all so laughably stupid, I'd say Drake should be prosecuted for his threats.

ReligionNewsBlog
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
LA Times (registration required)

Attention Ladies,
also, people who know ladies.

  If you are pregnant, or are going to be pregnant, and you are going to have a complication which could cause you severe, crippling health problems if you complete the gestation, make sure you have those complications before the middle of the second trimester. Otherwise, the government is going to force you to carry the baby to term.

  President Bush finally has his legacy. His conservative Supreme Court is going to haunt us for decades.