• From Valerie Tarico, how religion can let loose humanity’s most violent impulses. A thoughtful essay that almost perfectly captures my views on the link between religion and violence.
• Alex Malarkey, a boy who wrote a bestselling Christian book about dying and visiting Heaven, admits he made the whole story up, staining the good name of afterlife memoirs.
• Kent Hovind’s jail term was nearly up, but he’s seemingly bent on extending it as he spirals deeper into the vortex of sovereign-citizen lunacy, by sending a pompous list of threats and demands to the courts.
• Unexpected but extremely welcome news: Eric Holder puts major limitations on asset-seizure laws that have been rampantly abused by police to take cash and property from people who are never charged with a crime.
• The “radical feminism which has assaulted the Church and society since the 1960s has left men very marginalized,” says an official of a church which only allows men to hold or wield power.
• The Supreme Court takes up a case that could settle the same-sex marriage issue once and for all. I admit to feeling a little trepidation: logically, the fact that they’ve let so many pro-marriage lower-court rulings stand is an almost certain indicator of how they’ll rule, but this court is nothing if not capricious.
• Your weekly reminder that Men’s Rights Activists have no idea how ridiculous they sound.