RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Witnesses and jurors being sworn in at state courthouses can take their oath using any religious text, not just the Bible, a judge ruled Thursday.
Judge Paul Ridgeway said both common law and state Supreme Court precedent allow witnesses and jurors to use the text "most sacred and obligatory upon their conscience."
The ruling came after the American Civil Liberties Union argued that limiting that text to the Bible was unconstitutional because it favored Christianity over other religions.
The issue surfaced when Muslims tried to donate copies of the Quran to Guilford County's two courthouses. Two judges declined to accept the texts, saying that taking an oath on the Quran was illegal under state law.
State law allows witnesses preparing to testify in court to take their oath by laying a hand over "the Holy Scriptures," by saying "so help me God" without the use of a religious book or by an affirmation using no religious symbols.
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The group sought a court order declaring the statute unconstitutional or clarifying that it was broad enough to allow the use of ...   more »

by Hannah Nordhaus 
The perilous existence of a migratory beekeeper amid a great bee die-off
By the time John Miller realized just how many of his bees were dying, the almonds were in bloom and there was nothing to be done. It was February 2005, and the hives should have been singing with activity, plump brown honeybees working doggedly to carry pollen from blossom to blossom. Instead they were wandering in drunken circles at the base of the hive doors, wingless, desiccated, sluggish, blasé. Miller is accustomed to death on a large scale. “The insect kingdom enjoys little cell repair,” he will often remind you. Even when things are going well, a hive can lose 1,000 bees a day. But the extent of his losses that winter defied even his insect-borne realism. In a matter of weeks, Miller lost almost half of his 13,000 hives — around 300 million bees.
When it happened, Miller was in California’s Central Valley, where each February, when the almond trees burst into extravagant pink-and-white bloom, hundreds of beekeepers descend with billions of bees. More than 580,000 acres of almonds flower simultaneously there, and wild pollinators such as bumblebees, beetles, bats and wasps simply cannot ...   more »

By Vox Day
We're fighting a war on terror because the enemy attacked us first and hit us hard. Scarcely 50 miles from this place, we saw thousands of our fellow citizens murdered, and 16 acres of a great city turned to ashes. ... These are events we can never forget. And they are scenes the enemy would like to see played out in this country over and over again, on a larger and larger scale. Al-Qaida's leadership has said they have the right to "kill four million Americans, two million of them children, and to exile twice as many and to wound and cripple thousands." We know they are looking for ways of doing just that – by plotting in secret, by slipping into the country and exploiting any vulnerability they can find.
And that's why the president of the United States is encouraging both houses of Congress to pass an immigration amnesty that will grant them Z-visas and probationary U.S. citizen status, because if we can't beat them, we might as well let them join us.
– Dick Cheney's commencement address at West Point, May 26, 2007
OK, so I may have added that last bit.
Nevertheless, that's ...   more »

By Dianne Matthews
Memorial Day, formerly known as Decoration Day, was instituted to honor Civil War dead. Local observances were held as early as 1866, many of them in the South where most of the war dead were buried. The first official and large observance took place on May 30, 1868, at Arlington National Cemetary, which held the remains of twenty thousand Union soldiers and several Confederate dead. Five thousand people attended the ceremony.
New York was the first state to declare the holiday, in 1873; other states quickly followed. After World War I, citizens expanded the observances to honor those who died in all Americans wars. In 1971, Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday and changed the date to the last Monday in May. In recent years, many use the occasion to decorate the graves of loved ones.
Under God's direction, the Israelites had "Memorial Day" celebrations to help them remember major events in their history. They celebrated Passover each year to commemorate their miraculous deliverance from slavery in Egypt. When Jesus ate his last Passover meal, he instituted a new memorial to commemorate the deliverance from slavery to sin that he would accomplish for all believers through ...   more »