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You don’t even wanna know what happens if we burn all the fossil fuels

There goes Antarctica!

You don’t even wanna know what happens if we burn all the fossil fuels

By on 11 Sep 2015commentsShare

Breaking: Mother Nature has just possessed a bunch of scientists and delivered this urgent message: “If you keep burning all the fossil fuels, I will eliminate the Antarctic ice sheet, drowning most of what you’ve built and causing mass chaos in the process. Oh, and save the damn red pandas, you monsters.”

Mother Nature then dropped the proverbial mic and left the scientists to write this paper, published today in the journal Science Advances. Researchers warn that burning through the currently available fossil fuels will produce enough heat to melt not only the entire Antarctic ice sheet, but all of Earth’s land ice. To get a sense for what that means, here’s The New York Times:

A sea level rise of 200 feet would put almost all of Florida, much of Louisiana and Texas, the entire East Coast of the United States, large parts of Britain, much of the European Plain, and huge parts of coastal Asia under water. The cities lost would include Miami, New Orleans, Houston, Washington, New York, Amsterdam, Stockholm, London, Paris, Berlin, Venice, Buenos Aires, Beijing, Shanghai, Sydney, Rome and Tokyo.

It would take about a century for serious melting to get underway, but once it does, The New York Times reports, half of the Antarctic ice sheet could disappear in just a thousand years. That might seem like a long time, but it was a surprise to the scientists. Ken Caldeira, a researcher at Stanford and one of the study’s coauthors told the Times: “I didn’t expect it would go so fast … To melt all of Antarctica, I thought it would take something like 10,000 years.”

Besides melting all the world’s land ice, the roughly 20 degree F rise in the average global temperature would wreak havoc on health, food security, and basic living conditions. That, in turn, would drive large swaths of remaining life on Earth to extinction.

Of course, an easy way to avoid such devastation would be to not burn all of the oil, coal, and natural gas at our fingertips. Unfortunately, idiot politicians and greedy energy companies are making that extremely hard to do. In the mean time, coastal cities can (and are) preparing for the early stages of sea level rise. But if this worst-case scenario plays out, then, well … I know nobody likes to talk about this, but if the most important hubs of civilization go under, then all those grizzled off-grid survivalists lurking in the woods will inherit the Earth. And on that point, I’m getting one more message from Mother Nature:

“Please, don’t let the survivalists inherit the Earth.”

Source:

Climate Study Predicts Huge Sea Level Rise if All Fossil Fuels Are Burned

, The New York Times.

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You don’t even wanna know what happens if we burn all the fossil fuels

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Texas Poised to Let An Unfairly Prosecuted Person Walk, For Once

Mother Jones

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The number of criminal charges against Rick Perry has been cut in half, thanks to a Texas court. On Friday, reports the Houston Chronicle, the 3rd Court of Appeals tossed out the charge that the former Texas governor and GOP hopeful had coerced a public official. In effect, the court said Perry was free to trash-talk Texas officials as much as he pleased, even if it meant encouraging one of those officials—the Travis County District Attorney—to leave office.

Perry’s legal troubles date back to a line-item veto he signed in 2013, erasing $7.5 million that had been designated for the Public Integrity Unit in the Travis County District Attorney’s office—a small group tasked with investigating corruption in the state’s political class. At the time, Perry claimed the Integrity Unit could no longer be trusted to fulfill those duties after the district attorney had remained in office following her arrest for drunk driving. (She had also been caught on camera trying to exploit her office to get out of the arrest.) Perry has been accused of overstepping his authority as governor by explicitly tying that veto to his desire to see the district attorney—a locally elected official—removed from office.

His use of the line-item veto is still under review. While the court sided with Perry on one count, it wasn’t ready to dismiss the entire case. Perry still faces one felony indictment for abusing his powers as governor by zeroing out the budget for the state’s corruption watchdog.

Read more about the history of the charges against Perry here.

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Texas Poised to Let An Unfairly Prosecuted Person Walk, For Once

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Scott Walker Is Starting to Look Like a Loser

Mother Jones

It seems that Scott Walker may be having problems. First, there’s this from our own Russ Choma about Walker’s fundraising woes in Texas, home to America’s biggest treasure trove of conservative zillionaires:

The union-busting Wisconsin governor may be a conservative darling, but he’s way behind the curve when it comes to courting Texas’ biggest money men. Bill Miller, a top Texas lobbyist who regularly advises megadonors on their contributions, says he’s heard almost no buzz from the donor class about Walker….”No one is asking about him,” Miller says. “None of our clients. We have a huge client base. It’s oddly quiet for a guy that’s supposedly top three among the potential nominees.”

….Walker campaign aides say he has been to Austin, Houston, and San Antonio as well, and the response has been “enthusiastic.” Future trips to Texas are planned, they say. But if there’s an on-the-ground fundraising operation for Walker, Miller isn’t the only one who has missed it.

….”Scott Walker has no visible organization in my part of the state. He really doesn’t come up,” says Gaylord Hughey, a lawyer who’s known as the “don of East Texas” by Republican operatives. Hughey has worked as a bundler for the campaigns of George W. Bush and John McCain, and he’s currently signed up to raise money for Jeb Bush. “Among the sort of really hard R Republicans, Scott Walker is probably big,” he notes, “but to the business donor group, he has not really resonated.”

Hmmm. Maybe Walker isn’t mean enough for Texas? That’s probably not it. In fact, Paul Waldman thinks the guy is so mean it’s turning into a problem of its own for Walker. Exhibit A: Walker is hell-bent on demanding drug tests for all welfare recipients:

This is why Scott Walker is never going to be president of the United States.

First, some context. The drug testing programs for welfare recipients are usually justified by saying they’ll save money by rooting out all the junkies on the dole, but in practice they’ve been almost comically ineffective. In state after state, testing programs have found that welfare recipients use drugs at lower rates than the general population, finding only a tiny number of welfare recipients who test positive.

But this hasn’t discouraged politicians like Walker….The test is the point, not the result. Walker isn’t trying to solve a practical problem here. He wants to test food stamp recipients as a way of expressing moral condemnation. You can get this benefit, he’s saying, but we want to give you a little humiliation so you know that because you sought the government’s help, we think you’re a rotten person.

….What does this have to do with Walker’s chances of winning a general election? What George W. Bush understood is that the Republican Party is generally considered to be somewhat, well, mean….So when Bush campaigned as a “compassionate conservative”…he was sending a message to moderate voters, one that said: See, I’m different. I’m a nice guy.

….And Scott Walker’s attitude is nothing like George W. Bush’s. He practically oozes malice, for anyone and everyone who might oppose him, or just be the wrong kind of person.

So money in Texas-sized chunks is looking like a problem for Walker in the primaries, and his Cruella de Vil-sized malice is likely to be a problem in the general election.

The conventional wisdom about Walker—which I’ve agreed with in the past—is that he’s the candidate best suited to appeal to both the Republican base, thanks to his hardcore meanspiritedness, and to business-class Republicans, thanks to his executive experience and relatively mild demeanor. The problem is that it’s a tricky act to make both of these personas work at the same time, and so far Walker doesn’t even seem to be trying. He’s just sticking with the Mr. Mean persona, and it’s not clear if that’s even enough to win the primaries, let alone get him into the White House. He’s going to need to change his tune if he ever wants to hear the Marine band playing “Hail to the Chief” for him.

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Scott Walker Is Starting to Look Like a Loser

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Scott Walker Has a Texas-Sized Fundraising Problem

Mother Jones

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Before most GOP presidential contenders set foot in Iowa or New Hampshire, they typically first hit another pivotal state: Texas. The Lonestar State is the undisputed center of the Republican Party’s donor base, so almost all of the GOP hopefuls have trekked regularly there and established extensive fundraising operations in Texas. But there’s one big exception: Scott Walker, who formally announced his presidential bid on Monday.

The union-busting Wisconsin governor may be a conservative darling, but he’s way behind the curve when it comes to courting Texas’ biggest money men. Bill Miller, a top Texas lobbyist who regularly advises megadonors on their contributions, says he’s heard almost no buzz from the donor class about Walker. In the past, Miller has worked with major political benefactors including the late Bob Perry, a Texas home builder who gave more than $70 million to conservative causes over the years and was the major funder behind the 2004 Swiftboat Veterans for Truth group. This year Miller says he’s talked to clients about many of the Republican candidates, but not Walker.

“No one is asking about him,” Miller says. “None of our clients. We have a huge client base. It’s oddly quiet for a guy that’s supposedly top three among the potential nominees.”

Walker has previously received backing from the Koch brothers, and is said to be among the top contenders for support from their extensive donor network during this election cycle. But, if he’s unable to make inroads in Texas’ donor world, it could hurt his chances at the presidency—if only because his most formidable opponents will have the state’s deep reserve of money behind them.

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Scott Walker Has a Texas-Sized Fundraising Problem

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Texas doesn’t give a damn about your reproductive rights

Texas doesn’t give a damn about your reproductive rights

By on 13 May 2015commentsShare

For National Women’s Health Week, we’ll be highlighting women’s health issues in the United States.

Hello! We’re here with your daily reminder that reproductive rights remain regularly challenged here in the United States, which we often mistakenly consider one of the most advanced countries in the world. And also that, as a country made up of very different states that are each uniquely weird and awful in their own ways, the experience of trying to get reproductive healthcare as a woman in America is wildly variable.

Which brings us to Texas. To start: Allow me say that it’s so easy to shit on Texas that I just refuse to engage in it on principle. Fine — it’s the state that brought us both the Bushes and Ashlee Simpson. But it’s also home to many people who are forced to live with its terrible policies without having any say in them, so I’m not going to insult them by lumping them in with a bunch of old crotchety dunderheads in Austin.

A recent study from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Texas at Austin found that 55 percent of women surveyed across the state encountered some sort of barrier to accessing reproductive healthcare. That’s the majority of women in one of the most populous states in the country.

From the Texas Tribune:

Affordability, insurance issues and a lack of nearby providers were among the top barriers women reported facing between 2011 and 2014, according to the study, which included 779 women between the ages of 18 and 49. And young, low-income women with less education — particularly Spanish-speaking Hispanic women who were born in Mexico — faced the most barriers to reproductive services.

And today, as a cherry on top of the Hell Sundae that is the Texas woman’s experience of trying to exercise her reproductive rights, a bill that would restrict minors’ and immigrants’ access to abortions will be put to the vote in the Texas House of Representatives. This bill would further complicate and lengthen the already nightmarish process of attempting to get an abortion without parental consent.

From Houston Press:

Under [this] bill, girls seeking an abortion would have to prove “mental or emotional injury to a child that results in an observable and material impairment in the child’s growth, development, or psychological functioning,” and, “physical injury that results in substantial harm from physical injury to the child.

“Quite literally, this would require some teenage girls to be beaten before they can obtain an abortion,” [Susan] Hays [legal director for Jane’s Due Process] says.

The bill also requires the provision of a government ID to obtain an abortion.

Let’s all take a moment for Texas, and allow Tami Taylor* to comfort us with her marvelous voice, magical hair, and monumental wisdom:

*Connie Britton, the actress who played Tami Taylor on Friday Night Lights, is an outspoken supporter of reproductive rights in Texas.

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Texas doesn’t give a damn about your reproductive rights

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The Mountain Goats’ New Album Takes On the Noble Warriors of Professional Wrestling

Mother Jones

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The Mountain Goats
Beat the Champ
Merge

Don’t be fooled by the easygoing folk-pop melodies and likable everyday-guy vocals: John Darnielle, leader of California’s long-running Mountain Goats, writes some of the sharpest, most thoughtful songs around. On Beat the Champ, he turns to professional wrestling, one of his cultural fixations (another being death metal), and as usual, treats his characters with perceptive compassion, savoring the orchestrated drama of the “sport” without a hint of condescension. While “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” (“I need justice in my life”) highlights the uplift that wrestling’s morality plays provide for the fans, more often Darnielle depicts the daily struggles, emotional and physical, of its participants in and out of the ring. From “Choked Out” (“I can see the future, it’s a real dark place”) to “The Ballad of Bull Ramos” (“Get around fine on one leg/Lose a kidney, then go blind/Sit on my porch in Houston/Let the good times dance across my mind”), his noble hard-luck warriors are not soon forgotten.

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The Mountain Goats’ New Album Takes On the Noble Warriors of Professional Wrestling

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The Government Is Finally Doing Something to End the Rape-Kit Backlog

Mother Jones

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Across the country, an estimated 400,000 rape kits—the DNA swabs, hair, photographs, and detailed information gathered from victims of sexual assault and used as evidence for the prosecution to convict rapists—have never been tested. Testing kits can be expensive, and in many jurisdictions, a lack of funds has resulted in kits being consigned to dusty shelves, stored in abandoned police warehouses, or stowed away in forensic labs—sometimes for years. As a result, survivors may never see their rapists prosecuted, and repeat offenders continue to commit crimes.

But now a new, $41 million Department of Justice program could finally help localities end this backlog. The money from Congress “goes a long way towards solving the problem,” says Linda Fairstein, a former sex crimes prosecutor who serves on the board of the Joyful Heart Foundation, a nonprofit established by Law and Order:SVU actress Mariska Harigtay that does research and advocacy work on the rape-kit backlog.

Last week, the Department of Justice began accepting applications from states, counties, and municipalities that want to use the federal dollars to tackle their rape kit backlogs. Officials in Baltimore, Milwaukee, Detroit, Memphis, Cleveland, and Houston tell Mother Jones that they’re planning on applying for some of the funds. “The grant shows an investment on all levels, national to local,” says Doug McGowen, a coordinator in the sexual assault response unit in Memphis, Tennessee.

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The Government Is Finally Doing Something to End the Rape-Kit Backlog

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Cruz the Politician Champions the Death Penalty. Cruz the Private Lawyer Did Something Else.

Mother Jones

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In December, when a mentally ill Texas man convicted of murder was poised to be executed—and a number of prominent conservatives were calling to postpone the killing—Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) declined to criticize the pending execution. “I trust the criminal-justice system to operate, to protect the rights of the accused, and to administer justice to violent criminals,” Cruz declared. This was not shocking. As a politician and public officeholder, he has long supported capital punishment. While running for Senate in 2012, Cruz repeatedly mentioned his win as Texas solicitor general in a case before the Supreme Court that preserved the death penalty for a Mexican citizen convicted of raping and murdering two Houston teenage girls.

Yet as a lawyer in private practice two years earlier, Cruz had argued that the criminal-justice system, in at least one instance, had gone awry and nearly killed the wrong man. This happened when Cruz was assisting the case of a Louisiana man wrongfully convicted of robbery and murder who spent 18 years in prison—14 of them on death row—before being freed. As an attorney for this man, Cruz argued that local prosecutors could not be trusted, that institutional failures in the justice system had nearly led to his client’s execution, and that this fellow was owed $14 million in restitution because of these miscarriages of justice. But after his experience in this dramatic case—which included coauthoring a passionate brief presented to the Supreme Court—Cruz the politician would still offer a full-throated endorsement of the criminal-justice system and capital punishment.

This case began long before Cruz, fresh off his stint as Texas solicitor general, joined the Houston office of the high-powered Morgan Lewis law firm in 2008 to build its appellate and Supreme Court practice. Twenty-four years earlier, in 1984, a prominent New Orleans businessman was shot and killed outside his home. A month later John Thompson, a 22-year old African American father of two, and Kevin Freeman were arrested and charged with the murder. Afterward, Thompson was charged with attempted armed robbery that had occurred three weeks following the murder. (Thompson was arrested for the attempted theft after the father of the three victims showed them a photo of Thompson that had appeared in the newspaper in connection with the murder case and his children said they believed Thompson was the fellow who had tried to rob them.)

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Cruz the Politician Champions the Death Penalty. Cruz the Private Lawyer Did Something Else.

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These Laws Let Accused Rapists Off the Hook

Mother Jones

On January 23, 2014, Bart Bareither walked into the Marion County Sheriff’s Department in Indianapolis. The 39-year-old computer engineer confessed to having raped a nursing student nine years earlier, while he was a teaching assistant at Indiana University. “He had a sincere demeanor. His head was bowed. It was clearly eating at him; he was apologizing,” recalls university detective Kimberly Minor, who was brought in to take his statement. Minor then contacted Jenny Wendt, who had been 26 at the time of the assault. She had not originally reported the crime because she thought it would be difficult to prove since she’d been on dates with Bareither. But even now, she soon learned, Bareither would not face any charges.

Indiana law classifies sexual assaults into two categories: Class A felony rape, in which an assailant causes serious bodily injury, uses deadly force, or drugs the victim; and Class B felony rape, which includes other types of sexual assault. There is no statute of limitations for Class A offenses, so charges may be filed anytime after a crime is committed. The statute of limitations for Class B offenses—like what happened to Wendt—is five years. Minor says she and the Marion County prosecutor searched for a way to bring Bareither to trial, but it was soon clear that the opportunity had passed. “I think he knew about the statute,” Minor says. (Bareither did not respond to emails and calls from Mother Jones.)

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These Laws Let Accused Rapists Off the Hook

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Man Who Believes God Speaks to Us Through "Duck Dynasty" Is About to Be Texas’ Second-in-Command

Mother Jones

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As a Texas state senator, Dan Patrick has conducted himself in a manner consistent with the shock jock he once was. Patrick—who is now the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor—has railed against everything from separation of church and state to Mexican coyotes who supposedly speak Urdu. He’s even advised his followers that God is speaking to them through Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson.

A former sportscaster who once defended a football player who’d thrown a reporter through a door (Patrick believed it wasn’t the journalist’s job to do “negative reporting”), Patrick became a conservative talk radio host in the early 1990s—Houston’s answer to Rush Limbaugh. In 2006, he parlayed his radio fame into a state Senate seat—and kept the talk show going. In office, he proposed paying women $500 to turn over newborn babies to the state (to reduce abortions), led the charge against creeping liberalism in state textbooks, and pushed wave after wave of new abortion restrictions. For his efforts, Texas Monthly named Patrick one of the worst legislators of 2013.

With a victory on November 4, Patrick, who is leading Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte in the polls, would find himself next in line for the governor’s mansion of the nation’s second-largest state. (Rick Perry, the current Republican governor, was previously lieutenant governor.) But even if Patrick advances no further, he’d be in a position to shape public policy—Texas’ lieutenant governor is sometimes called the “most powerful office in Texas” because of the influence it has on both the legislative and executive branches.

Here are a few of Patrick’s greatest hits:

On Islam: Patrick walked out of the Senate chamber in 2007 rather than listen to a Muslim deliver the opening prayer. “I think that it’s important that we are tolerant as a people of all faiths, but that doesn’t mean we have to endorse all faiths, and that was my decision,” he told the Houston Chronicle. “I surely believe that everyone should have the right to speak, but I didn’t want my attendance on the floor to appear that I was endorsing that.”

Five years later, he did it again. “We are a nation that allows a Muslim to come in with a Koran but does not allow a Christian to take a Bible to school,” Patrick explained, after walking out on another prayer, delivered this time by Imam Yusuf Kavacki. “We are a Judeo-Christian nation, primarily a Christian nation.”

On the border: “While ISIS terrorists threaten to cross our border and kill Americans, my opponent falsely attacks me to hide her failed record on illegal immigration,” he says in his first general-election campaign. Patrick’s website, meanwhile, warns that Pakistanis are crossing the border as well, presumably to do bad things to Americans. “This is an Urdu dictionary found by border volunteers that was dropped by a human smuggler,” Patrick writes beneath a photo of an Urdu-English dictionary. “It is concerning that Mexican coyotes are learning Urdu in order to smuggle illegal immigrants?” sic

On migrants: “They are bringing Third World diseases with them,” he said in 2006, warning that immigrants could bring leprosy and polio to Texas. (This was news to Texas public health officials.) Patrick hired an undocumented worker when he ran a Houston sports bar, and when the worker revealed last spring that he had talked candidly with Patrick about his situation, the candidate insisted: “The worker says I was personally very kind to him and goes on to allege other preposterous events that are not true and for which he offers no evidence.”

On his first book, actually titled The Second Most Important Book You Will Ever Read: “As the author, I am obviously biased,” Patrick wrote in an Amazon review of his own book. But “since God inspired me to write this book,” he added, “He automatically gets 5 stars and the CREDIT!'”

On squashing Wendy Davis’ filibuster: Patrick told Mike Huckabee he had a Christian obligation to ignore Senate rules if the lives of fetuses were at risk. I spoke to my colleagues and said, ‘When Jesus criticized the Pharisees, he criticized them because their laws and their rules were more important than actually taking care of people,'” he said. “And in my view, stopping a debate to save thousands of lives, well, saving the thousands of lives is more important than our tradition of, well, you should never stop someone. I said, ‘Well, are we gonna become the modern-day Pharisees as Republicans of the Senate and just let her talk this bill to death and thousands that could have been saved a horrendous death and also improving health care?'”

On critics of his 2011 bill, which passed, mandating women see a sonogram before getting an abortion: “If those aborted souls were in the gallery right now, what would you say to them?”

On Connie Chung’s TV show, Eye to Eye: Patrick quipped in 1992 that the Asian American journalist’s show should be called “Slanted Eye to Eye.” Although Patrick’s remarks sparked a local media firestorm, he did not change his ways. In 1999, a Houston Press profile noted that “Patrick lapsed into a faux-Chinese accent when he thought he heard a network correspondent call Clinton, in the midst of the Chinese-espionage scandal, ‘President Crinton,'” and later joked that Clinton should get surgery to “make his eyes slanted.”

On MTV: Patrick issued a call to arms against the cable channel in 2004, in an online bulletin:

STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK AGAINST MTV…LET’S TURN OFF MTV IN HOUSTON….JUST TAKE YOUR REMOTE AND GO TO DELETE CHANNELS….DELETE MTV AND CHANGE THE PASSWORD SO YOUR KIDS CAN’T WATCH….STAND UP TO YOUR KIDS…THEY WON’T BE HAPPY,BUT YOU MUST HOLD FIRM…. DO YOU WANT YOUR SONS AND ESPECIALLY YOUR DAUGHTERS EXPOSED TO THIS CONSTANT BARRAGE OF ATTACKS ON YOUR VALUES……..THEN SCROLL BELOW AND CONTACT THE NFL AND CBS….ALSO CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND SENATOR AND DEMAND THAT THE FCC GET TOUGH WITH THOSE WHO WANT TO COME INTO YOUR HOME AND DESTROY YOUR FAMILY VALUES

On creationism: “Our students…must really be confused,” Patrick said at a GOP primary debate last spring. “They go to Sunday School on Sunday and then they go into school on Monday and we tell them they can’t talk about God. I’m sick and tired of a minority in our country who want us to turn our back on God.”

On the separation of church and state: “There is no such thing as separation of church and state.”

On Duck Dynasty: Patrick tried to raise money off of Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson’s comments about homosexuality in GQ, boasting that the bearded reality star was channeling another bearded visionary. “This is an exciting time for Christians,” he wrote on Facebook. “God is speaking to us from the most unlikely voice, Phil Robertson, about God’s Word. God is using pop culture and a highly successful cable TV show to remind us about His teaching.”

On his inspiration for this painting of Christ’s face on the Statue of Liberty:

In teaching myself how to watercolor I was trying different styles. After a beach scene, I decided to try a Peter Max type of painting of the Statue of Liberty. I could not get the fact right and used water to remove the paint on her face. When it dried and I tried to clean it up suddently sic the face of Jesus appeared so clearly. It struck me that Jesus face on the Statue of Liberty sends an incredible message that the real light that our country has sent in the past, and needs to send once again today, is we are a nation that stands on His Word This was only my 4th try at a painting I had no idea of how to paint the face of Jesus, nor was I trying to do so.

On film: “A very popular movie starring Mel Gibson, Signs, has a theme dealing with the concept of coincidence,” Patrick wrote in his book. “If you haven’t seen it, it’s a terrific flick (albeit a little scary). I recommend it.”

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Man Who Believes God Speaks to Us Through "Duck Dynasty" Is About to Be Texas’ Second-in-Command

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