ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 295

Ryan Reinstates House Chaplain After Priest Decided to Fight Dismissal

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and ELIZABETH DIAS

WASHINGTON — Speaker Paul D. Ryan reinstated the Rev. Patrick J. Conroy as the chaplain of the House of Representatives on Thursday, after the chaplain sent him a letter rescinding his forced resignation and daring the speaker to fire him.

“I have accepted Father Conroy’s letter and decided that he will remain in his position as chaplain of the House,” Mr. Ryan said in a statement. He added, “It is my job as speaker to do what is best for this body, and I know that this body is not well served by a protracted fight over such an important post.”

Father Conroy, a Catholic priest who has been the chaplain since 2011, intimated in a letter to Mr. Ryan on Thursday that the speaker did not have the authority to fire him, noting that the chaplain, who is selected by the speaker, is elected by the members of the House. He suggested his Catholic faith had contributed to his dismissal.

And in an interview, Father Conroy said he had hired a lawyer to press his case. “This is so contentious, and I think it is so historic,” Father Conroy said, adding, “It’s not over.”

After Mr. Ryan reversed course, the chaplain accepted some responsibility in the debacle.

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Powerful Investors Push Big Companies to Plan for Climate Change

By David S. Rauf

Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron and Kinder Morgan are facing renewed pressure from climate-focused activist investors. This year some of the most powerful shareholders, which include giant mutual funds, are supporting the push for businesses to respond to climate change. And the prodding has had more effect than ever before.

The coming weeks are dubbed “proxy season” by corporate governance experts. Most publicly traded companies hold annual meetings in which shareholders, via nonbinding resolutions, signal their approval or dislike of proposed company policies. This year initiatives on climate change are among the most popular ballot items: Of the more than 420 shareholder resolutions initially proposed, about 20 percent focused on climate, tied for the largest of any proposal category, according to a report by the group Proxy Impact. Some reolutions ask companies to adopt greenhouse gas emission targets whereas others ask for reports on ways businesses could be affected by the Paris climate agreement’s global temperature goals.

Already, several companies have bowed to investor demands before votes are held. Why? Several major asset managers—like BlackRock and Vanguard Group—are now putting their heft behind climate resolutions, says Aaron Ziulkowski, a manager at Boston-based Walden Asset Management who works on shareholder engagement initiatives. It is a signal, he says, that Wall Street’s skepticism of climate science has dwindled: “It’s now widely recognized that climate change is a legitimate risk.” Still, some observers caution corporate reports do not equal policy changes.

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Hobby Lobby’s Smuggled Artifacts Will Be Returned To Iraq

By Sasha Ingber

Nearly 4,000 ill-gotten artifacts will be returned to Iraq on Wednesday, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says. The ancient objects were bought by Hobby Lobby, a national chain of arts and crafts stores, then smuggled into the United States in violation of federal law.

The Oklahoma-based chain of retail stores bought more than 5,500 objects from dealers in the United Arab Emirates and Israel in 2010, said the Department of Justice in a July 2017 document. The purchase was made months after the company was advised by an expert to use caution.

An “expert on cultural property law” had warned Hobby Lobby that artifacts from Iraq, including cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals, could be stolen from archaeological sites. The expert also told the company to search its collections for objects of Iraqi origin and make sure that those materials were properly identified. But despite that warning Hobby Lobby arranged to purchase thousands of antiquities — including cuneiform tablets and bricks, clay bullae and cylinder seals — for $1.6 million.

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Steve Deace: Congressional Freethought Caucus Members Want to “Kill God”

By Hemant Mehta

Last week, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) announced the formation of a Congressional Freethought Caucus.

Since that announcement, we’ve learned a few more details. Huffman and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) will co-chair the caucus. Other members include Rep. Jerry McNerney(D-CA), Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI), and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who announced her membership on Twitter.

What will the caucus do? We already know their goals:

1) to promote public policy formed on the basis of reason, science, and moral values;

2) to protect the secular character of our government by adhering to the strict Constitutional principle of the separation of church and state;

3) to oppose discrimination against atheists, agnostics, humanists, seekers, religious and nonreligious persons, and to champion the value of freedom of thought and conscience worldwide; and

4) to provide a forum for members of Congress to discuss their moral frameworks, ethical values, and personal religious journeys.

To be clear, you don’t even have to be non-religious to join this caucus. As long as you support church/state separation and evidence-based policymaking, you’re pretty much good to go!

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Amid Stormy Daniels news, Trump expected to announce faith-based office on National Day of Prayer

By Sarah Pulliam Bailey

President Trump plans to sign an executive order Thursday to create his version of a faith-based office during a Rose Garden ceremony in front of 200 religious leaders — a move that has caused concerns about church and state under previous administrations.

The timing of the event, on the National Day of Prayer, comes as Trump continues to receive attention for a settlement his lawyer paid to Stormy Daniels, an actress in pornographic films who has said she had a sexual encounter with the president more than a decade ago.

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who serves on Trump’s legal team, said Wednesday that Trump made a series of payments reimbursing his attorney for the settlement. Trump confirmed Thursday that lawyer Michael Cohen was reimbursed, but said that they payments were through a “private agreement” and did not come from campaign funds.

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Gooey, Magma Ocean May Have Once Roiled Inside the Moon

By Stephanie Pappas

The ancient moon may have had a gooey interior: A new study suggests that some 4 billion years ago, Earth’s beloved satellite harbored a secret subsurface ocean of magma.

The churning of this molten ocean may have created a magnetic field similar to the one that protects Earth from charged space particles today. Measurements of moon rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and 1970s prove that the moon once had a strong magnetic field above its surface, but how the satellite managed to sustain this field is a complete mystery.

“We’re trying to understand what could cause this really strong magnetic field,” said Krista Soderlund, a planetary scientist at the University of Texas at Austin and a co-author of the new study.

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Shock and Thaw—Alaskan Sea Ice Just Took a Steep, Unprecedented Dive

By Andrea Thompson

April should be prime walrus hunting season for the native villages that dot Alaska’s remote western coast. In years past the winter sea ice where the animals rest would still be abundant, providing prime targets for subsistence hunters. But this year sea-ice coverage as of late April was more like what would be expected for mid-June, well into the melt season. These conditions are the continuation of a winter-long scarcity of sea ice in the Bering Sea—a decline so stark it has stunned researchers who have spent years watching Arctic sea ice dwindle due to climate change.

Winter sea ice cover in the Bering Sea did not just hit a record low in 2018; it was half that of the previous lowest winter on record (2001), says John Walsh, chief scientist of the International Arctic Research Center at The University of Alaska Fairbanks. “There’s never ever been anything remotely like this for sea ice” in the Bering Sea going back more than 160 years, says Rick Thoman, an Alaska-based climatologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A confluence of conditions—including warm air and ocean temperatures, along with persistent storms—set the stage for this dramatic downturn in a region that to date has not been one of the main contributors to the overall reduction of Arctic sea ice. Whereas a degree of random weather variability teed up this remarkable winter, the background warming of the Arctic is what provides the “extra kick” to reach such unheard-of extremes, Walsh says.

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Highest-Ranking Vatican Official Charged with Sex Abuse Heads to Trial

By David G. McAfee

Australian Cardinal George Pell, the most senior member of the Catholic Church to be charged in the organization’s ongoing sex abuse scandal, is finally heading to trial to face charges.

Pell, who served as a top financial advisor to Pope Francis, was previously chargedwith “historical sex offenses.” He has continually denied abuse allegations against him, and he filed a “not guilty” plea, but ultimately the jury will decide if there’s enough evidence to convict.

Pell is already on a losing streak in this case. His attorneys have been fighting tooth and nail to keep the prosecution from bringing any charges, hoping to keep their client away from a courtroom, but they just lost that fight.

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Why do we need a chaplain in Congress, anyway?

By Rachel K. Laser

Patrick J. Conroy’s forced resignation as chaplain of the House of Representatives — attributed to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) — has opened up a new round of partisan and religious divisions in Congress. But if there’s any upside, it’s this: We now see clearly why it’s time to do away with taxpayer-funded, government-supported congressional chaplains.

The controversy surrounding Conroy’s departure illustrates how chaplains in Congress inevitably sully religion with politics. Some believe that Ryan fired Conroy because Ryan perceived him to have delivered a prayer that was critical of the Republican tax bill. (Ryan has denied this.) Others believe that Conroy was secretly aligned with the Democrats and find proof in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s disagreement with Ryan’s decision to fire Conroy.

The partisan battle over the chaplaincy escalated when Democratic Rep. Joseph Crowley (N.Y.) asked for an investigation into the reason for Conroy’s termination, but Republicans voted it down. Next, in the search for a new chaplain, Republican Rep. Mark Walker (N.C.), a Baptist minister who was on the hiring committee for the new chaplain, announced his preference for a chaplain with children, who he believes could better relate to the experience of most members. Some perceived Walker’s support for this qualification to be a thinly veiled effort to obtain an evangelical Christian chaplain to please one segment of the Republican base.

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Can the U.S. Get 1 Million People to Volunteer Their Genomes?

By Dina Fine Maron

One of the enduring mysteries of medicine is how individual genes, environment and lifestyle may combine to spark sickness or protect us from it. Unraveling this puzzle remains essential for scientists hoping to achieve the elusive goal of offering tailored treatments or personalized prevention plans.

That’s why Pres. Barack Obama in 2015 announced an ambitious plan to roll out a precision medicine initiative that would aim to enroll a diverse group of one million people. Participants would volunteer, either via their doctors or by signing up online, to submit their medical records to the National Institutes of Health. They would also fill out online surveys about their lifestyles, furnish blood and urine samples, and have their genomes sequenced. Later they might also offer other biological data or even wear health trackers that may not yet exist. Researchers—and members of the public—could apply for access to the anonymized patient data and track individuals’ health outcomes, hopefully gleaning insights about how our individual differences affect health and disease risk.

Three years after unveiling that audacious effort—rebranded as “All of Us” about a year ago—it is only now officially getting off the ground. No genomes have yet been sequenced. Instead, federal workers and clinic partners have enrolled “beta testers” in a pilot phase of the project. About 26,000 volunteers have provided blood or urine samples, and filed out surveys about their health care.

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