I Went to Church with Bruce Jenner and Here’s What Caitlyn Taught Me About Jesus. →

Jesus wasn’t one to turn away from those the world had labeled broken. He was the one  who would walk towards them with open arms.  
As we continue this conversation (some would call it an argument) about the LGBTQ community and the church, I pray we can remember our God, read His word, and most of all, pray before we speak. I know plenty of other church leaders who don’t feel comfortable affirming the LGBTQ community. I also know their hearts.
May your heart break for those who are struggling or hurting. May you see what God is doing in the world he has promised to transform. May we live in hope and love.

Flu-Driven Mass Slaughter of Midwest Poultry Conveys the Scale of Our Meat Habit →

Here’s a brief look behind headlines from the Midwest about the scope of the poultry slaughter necessitated by the spread, since last December, of the H5N2 strain of bird flu.
You can keep track of the impact on chicken and turkey farms at an avian influenza web page maintained by the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. (The Poultry Site, an industry news site, is also tracking the latest developments.)
The combined toll in chickens and turkeys is approaching 50 million dead or slaughtered birds.
That is a huge number. But gauge it against the scale of the mass-meat industry and it becomes more like a rounding error. Just one company, Tyson Foods (one of the biggest chicken vendors on the planet) processes 41,000,000 chickens a week.

The True Cost of Fashion →

The thing that bugs me about anti-sweatshop messages is that they often feel like thinly-veiled “buy American” campaigns (although you can substitute “American” nowadays with “any country that’s rich” or sometimes outright “any country that’s not China”). If it’s the welfare of workers abroad we care about, buying stuff they didn’t make doesn’t help. 
...
Confusingly, Morgan then turns around and praises the “buy local” movement, which is an even more regional version of “buy American.” But maybe this is to say that we all recognize there’s a problem, but we don’t really know what to do about it (at least when it comes to actually helping workers abroad).

The Patriot Act's broadest surveillance powers have expired →

From a few days ago, and there's debate about how much this matters. Still, it's the principle of the thing...

Central portions of the Patriot Act are now expired, after a late-night Senate vote failed to extend the provisions. Those portions include Section 215, which applies to business records requests and has been used to justify the bulk collection of American phone and internet records. The previous Patriot Act authorization had set those portions of the law to expire on June 1st if not renewed. NSA officials told CNN that the agency's bulk metadata collection operation was shut down at 7:44pm Sunday night, a few hours in advance of the deadline.

Texas Lawmakers Pass a Bill Allowing Guns at Colleges →

I'm very interested in how this works out, as I am in the effects (pro/con) of gun laws in general. As a former student who attended a college at the time of a mass shooting on campus, part of me wishes I had been there, armed. I like to think I'm way above average in personal responsibility, however...

Students and faculty members at public and private universities in Texas could be allowed to carry concealed handguns into classrooms, dormitories and other buildings under a bill passed over the weekend by the Republican-dominated Legislature. The measure is being hailed as a victory by gun rights advocates and criticized by many students and professors as irresponsible and unnecessary.
The so-called campus-carry bill is expected to be signed into law by the Republican governor, Greg Abbott. It would take effect in August 2016 at universities and August 2017 at community colleges.
Supporters say it will make college campuses safer by not preventing licensed gun owners from defending themselves and possibly saving lives should a mass shooting occur, such as the one that unfolded at Virginia Tech University in 2007.
Opponents say the notion that armed students would make a campus safer is an illusion that will have a chilling effect on campus life. Professors said they worry about inviting a student into their offices to talk about a failing grade if they think that student is armed. And Democratic lawmakers and some university leaders worry about increased security costs and the bill’s effect on recruiting potential teachers and students from other states.

Tesla loses fight with dealers to sell its cars in Texas →

Texans love their middle men!

The Texas State Legislature has failed to vote on two separate bills that would have allowed the electric car company to sell its cars directly to customers. The bills were designed to bypass an older, dealer-backed law on the books that prohibits manufacturers from direct sales. Such laws exist in a number of states, such as West Virginia, Arizona, Connecticut, and Michigan. Musk successfully lobbied to have a similar law reversed in New Jersey, and he was attempting to pull off the same feat in Texas.

Israel Second Most Unequal Economy in World →

And that does not include the occupied territories.

HEVER: OECD is an organization that publishes statistics. It also gives some prestige to its members because it's supposed to be an organization of developed democracies. That's why Israel tried so hard to become a member, and as soon as Israel became a member of the OECD in 2010 the OECD started publishing very unflattering statistics about Israel, and this is one of them. Inequality in Israel is extreme. And that's very interesting considering the fact that Israel used to be, in 1965, one of the most equal economies in the world, at least in the non-communist world. And over these last 69 years Israel became the second-most unequal economy in the developed world. Second after the United States.
But if we look at the statistics a bit deeper we see that also the inequality in Israel and the inequality in the United States is not the same. The United States being one of the most capitalistic economies in the world has very extreme inequality, but the inequality in the United States is focused in the top. There are millionaires and there are billionaires, and the inequality amongst them is very stark. But people who live in poverty in the United States, there are quite a lot of those. They don't have such widely varying income levels compared to each other.
While in Israel it's a different situation. In Israel there is an elite of wealthy millionaires and a few billionaires as well, but the inequality is focused at the bottom. And that's very special, because the people living in poverty in Israel, some of them are actually living in poverty levels comparable to the poverty levels that you see in Western democracies, such as in the United States. But there are also entire populations that live in levels of poverty which are akin to those in developing countries. And that inequality is very clearly traced according to ethnic and national lines because of very entrenched institutional discrimination against minorities in Israel.

US airport screeners missed 95% of weapons, explosives in undercover tests →

As one tweet I saw said, "At $8 billion a year, this is the most expensive theatrical production in in history"...

Transportation Security Administration screeners allowed banned weapons and mock explosives through airport security checkpoints 95 percent of the time, according to the agency's own undercover testing.
ABC News reported the results on Monday, but Ars could not independently confirm them. According to ABC News, a Homeland Security Inspector General report showed that agents failed to detect weapons and explosives in 67 out of 70 undercover operations...