Welcome to another Weekly Reader post, where I share interesting articles that come across my Facebook newsfeed, or I find while perusing the internet, or get shared to me by whichever means. Read whatever you want, bookmark the page and come back later, whatever makes you happy.
If you have an interesting post or article of your own, drop a link in the comments below.
As He Heads Back To Prison, A Nashville Man Says ‘Goodbye’ To The New Life He Hoped To Build (from Nashville Public Radio): “Charles had already served 21 years before his sentence was cut short as a result of crack guideline changes passed by the Obama administration. But the U.S. Attorney’s office appealed his release on the grounds that Charles was legally considered a “career offender” due to a prior stint in state prison. They said the retroactive change in the law did not apply to him — and a Court of Appeals agreed.”
NFL Adds First Amendment to List of Banned Substances (satire from the New Yorker): “Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the National Football League, said that, by adding the First Amendment to the list of banned substances, the N.F.L was establishing a “policy of zero tolerance on tolerance.””
I was Jordan Peterson’s strongest supporter. Now I think he’s dangerous (from The Star): “That all changed with his rise to celebrity. I am alarmed by his now-questionable relationship to truth, intellectual integrity and common decency, which I had not seen before. His output is voluminous and filled with oversimplifications which obscure or misrepresent complex matters in the service of a message which is difficult to pin down. He can be very persuasive, and toys with facts and with people’s emotions. I believe he is a man with a mission. It is less clear what that mission is.”
Here’s What Happens When A Catholic Hospital Won’t Try To Save You (from the Huffington Post): “At a hospital owned by Ascension, the largest Catholic hospital network in the country and a staunch proponent of a rule that would give nearly any health care worker the right to refuse care, doctors refused to intervene as a woman was undergoing a life-threatening miscarriage because they believed that doing so would be the same as performing an abortion, the documents show. Instead, they carted her out to the hospital parking lot so a relative could drive her to a different emergency room, where she underwent a massive blood transfusion and emergency surgery.”
MS-13, explained (from Vox): “MS-13 has become the face of the Trump administration’s favorite trope: the idea that people from other countries are sneaking into America and importing violence and crime. Talking about the gang has allowed Trump to associate crime with immigration without having to deal with the inconvenient truth that immigrant crime rates are, if anything, lower than those of the native-born.”
What Separating Migrant Families at the Border Actually Looks Like (from Vice): “Stories of extreme violence, sex abuse, death threats, and imprisonment are the norm when talking to these families—time and time again, the women say they only brought their children here to save their lives.”
Pro-Life Is About Oppressing Women. That’s All. (from Driven to Abstraction via Patheos): “For all their talk about when life begins or the humanity of the fetus, pro-life activists aren’t motivated by compassion or love. They’re motivated by misogyny and cynicism. They’ve just been able to focus their rhetoric on the fetus so their contempt for sexually active women isn’t immediately apparent. We need to change that.”
The feds lost — yes, lost — 1,475 migrant children (from USA Today): “Before announcing a plan to separate more children from families, shouldn’t there be a plan to adequately protect the children?”
A Christian Nationalist Blitz (from the New York Times): ““Blitz” accurately describes the spirit of the enterprise, but the mission has little to do with what most Americans would call religious freedom. This is just the latest attempt by religious extremists to use the coercive powers of government to secure a privileged position in society for their version of Christianity.”
Happy reading and be sure to stop by next week, where I’ll have more links to share. Until then!
Iacon East 