Just made one for lunch. Ozersky is a genius:

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Title: “The Good Book: A Humanist Bible”

Author: A.C. Grayling

Rank: 21

Blurb: “Few, if any, thinkers and writers today would have the imagination, the breadth of knowledge, the literary skill, and — yes —the audacity to conceive of a powerful, secular alternative to the Bible. But that is exactly what A.C. Grayling has done.”

Review: “Here is a book I am not afraid to let my child read. No stories about daughters banging their drunk dad. No stories about sacrificing unnamed daughters to some god. No cooking food over dung. No genocide. No deaths of all first born sons. No promises of cured illnesses. No appeals to an end of the universe. No masochistic gods having themselves beaten so they can become a zombie. Nope. Just a clean book of good thoughts.”

Customers Also Bought: “The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster”, by Bobby Henderson

Footnote: Any atheist who needs a powerful, secular alternative to the Bible is unclear on the concept.

The Good Book [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Rick Santorum insists that he had “nothing to do” with his 2012 Presidential campaign slogan being plagiarized from a poem written by a pro-union gay black man (Langston Hughes) that said “Let America be America again.”

[ThinkProgress]

[Daily Mail UK, via Comics Alliance]

Our guest columnist is Pennsylvania federal district judge Mary McLaughlin, who writes “boobies” sixty times in the original.

This case involves a middle school’s ban on breast cancer awareness bracelets that bear the slogan “I ♥ Boobies (Keep A Breast)” and similar statements. These bracelets are distributed by the Keep A Breast Foundation, which operates breast cancer education programs and campaigns that are oriented toward young women. On the school’s designated breast cancer awareness day, two female students defied the school’s bracelet prohibition and both were suspended for a day and a half and prohibited from attending an upcoming school dance. The students, by and through their parents, filed this law suit seeking, among other things, a preliminary injunction to enjoin the school district from enforcing the ban…

The “I ♥ Boobies! (Keep A Breast)” bracelets became popular with students at the Easton Area Middle School during the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year, which began on August 30, 2010. In mid- to late-September, approximately four or five of the 120 teachers in the Middle School’s 7-8 building spoke to or electronically contacted [assistant principal] Ms. Braxmeier about the “I ♥ Boobies! (Keep A Breast)” bracelets. The teachers sought instruction regarding how the school would choose to handle the bracelets. The three principals, Mr. Viglianti, Ms. Braxmeier, and Ms. DiVietro, conferred and agreed that the bracelets should be banned.

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*Note: Not the real Statue of Liberty. This one’s from Vegas.

Also: Just to get the wingnut rumors started, let’s misleadingly observe that Forever is crossed out, revealing that the Postal Service doesn’t believe in American Exceptionalism.

Who’s That Lady? New Stamp Features Wrong Statue of Liberty [Time, via flippin eck]

Mr. Obama sought more tax-hike cover under his deficit commission, seeming to embrace its proposal to limit tax deductions and other loopholes. But the commission wanted to do so in order to lower rates for a more efficient and competitive code with a broader base. Mr. Obama wants to pocket the tax increase and devote the revenues to deficit reduction and therefore more spending.

The Presidential Divider
Unsigned Wall Street Journal
Editorial” Aptil 14, 2011

The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines “sophistry” as “subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation.” Under that definition, the passage that we have excerpted from a recent Wall Street Journal editorial on President Barack Obama’s recent speech on deficit reduction hardly qualifies as sophistry. The problem is the word “subtly.” Because really, there’s nothing “subtly deceptive” about a paragraph that argues that directing government revenues to paying down the national debt is just another example of reckless and uncontrolled Democratic spending. Read more »