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Those who rely on some fantasy about suffering from a made up God for their morality, are the absolute least moral people around.

Do you have some F-22's for sale?

Where were you in November/December 2008? The only difference is today the attention is apprehensive instead of optimistic.

Pastor John Kilpatrick of the Evangel Temple in Meridian, Mississippi who told his congregation that God used Hurricane Katrina to attack New Orleans because President George W. Bush had told Israel to “give up Gaza.” was again in the news for using his pulpit to celebrate the election of Donald Trump and the defeat of Hillary Clinton by speaking in tongues. “The last eight years, we have had in our government as system that has tried to capture the minds of Americans. It has tried to tell us what we think, what we can say, what we must not say. It has tried to tell us how we feel about terrorism, Islamic terrorism. It’s tried to tell us how we should feel about abortion. We’ve had an election now, things are going to open up, God’s spirit is going to begin to move again in America, Sha yi ya yi ya yi ya ya. Praise him! Woo! Sha ba ba la ba ta la rosa ta la la! Freedom! Freedom again! Freedom! Freedom to lift your voice. Freedom to praise the Lord. Woo hoo! Aye yay yay yay. Ha ra da sa da da.” This speaking in tongues continued for 15 minutes.

The Evansville’s Liberty Missionary Baptist Church was vandalized overnight Thursday/Friday. On the church's back door the message “Kill All Koons” was written, and on the church van the message “Koons Inside” was scrawled.

Our Savior Lutheran Church in Tacoma Washington had three fires (one in the lobby and two in the sanctuary) set in it on Friday. There were no injuries, but there was extensive fire and smoke damage to the building.

Atheism is not a movement, it is not anti-anything. It is simply the lack of belief in a God. There is no justification of good or bad with atheism, those are completely tangental issues. Unlike a religion (yes religion, not just theism) the has scriptures, doctrine, and clergy that tell you what is right and what is wrong, and how to live your life, atheism has nothing to do with that. It is like saying people who wear blue shirts are bad, completely and totally irrelevant.

What? Atheism is simply a lack of belief in a God. There is no "understanding of life", or doctrine associated with atheism. There is no Atheist church, scripture, doctrine, dogma, etc. Atheism does not rule ones life. One's political, racial, and nationalistic views, nor ones morality, are not guided by atheism.

Certainly during the 20th century there were several political leaders (e.g. Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot) who committed mass atrocities and genocides, but these were committed for political, racial and nationalistic reasons and not due to any atheistic dogma. Linking their actions to atheism is the same as linking them to their gender.

I seem to have misplaced my copy of the atheist scriptures. Could you tell me what passage influences atheists to commit specific crimes.

I have been saying that since 2009 when Harper changed the rules to ensure that fair political party funding went away and which increased the focus on these other type events. You should take your beef with with Mr. bar-b-qua circuit himself.

You mean like your hero Donald Trump who does this 5 times a day on twitter, and at least once a day in speeches.

Yes, by losing the A-12 the navy severely restricted the operating range of carriers. Carrier based refuelling tankers are also in limited supply, that is why they are looking at a tanker as one of the high priority drone programs.

I'm not sure what source you are citing, but it is important to understand that in Canada many (probably most) doctors are not salaried. Doctors bill for services, and then run their small business paying for staff, supplies, rent, etc. Their take home pay is far less than what they bill. Family physicians bill about $275k on average, and specialists generally bill more (eg. surgeons about $450k).

Did you watch the debate? Very refreshing after the recent Presidential clown show. I don't think the view that strategic resources would be better spent on other naval vessels is a fringe viewpoint. When you have to park a $15 billion carrier over 1000 miles offshore, and have aircraft that can only operate in a less than 500 mile radius it seems like a massive waste of resources. The US doesn't want to put these expensive carriers into war zones, and endanger the lives of 5,200 sailors. Yes there are anti-missile defences, but if it can only withstand three and half minutes then it is not much use. From what I read about funding for the Ford class, all that was given was $2.5 billion to start work on the second ship. I wouldn't call that funding restored to the program, it will take another $12.5 billion to complete that second ship. One of the audience questions in the debate was on humanitarian use of aircraft carriers, watch and hear the response.

Many more millions of people are full of sh** when they make outright false claims like healthcare taking 70% of our tax dollars when it is more like 15%. We can start having a grownup conversation about reality when real data is discussed and not the falsehoods that are propagated by the children.

Not to derail this too much more, but as the topic of carriers seems to be occurring frequently here I though it might be worth interjecting that even the US is beginning to debate if they are the most effective use of resources. While there is a new generation of carriers (Gearld R. Ford) being built now, they may never deploy as many as the current Nimitz class. It may also be the last class of carriers the US ever builds. Here is an interesting debate on the subject.

Wow, asking a question and I get a 'wrong' declaration from Derek. I guess I will run along now. While US defence companies regularly challenge the pentagon on decisions, it is rare they challenge overseas government. It seems as if in this case Boeing is going to challenge Denmark because that short term decision process you so admire was flawed.

I'm not surprised that Michael Trucano is often met with polite but blank stares. It is far from clear what he is advocating from a practical standpoint. Yes, there might be some, as he suggests, that are against better transparency because they have something to gain, but I don't see that as the fundamental problem. Education is an immensely complex subject, and results of which take decades to evaluate. Certainly some of the mechanics are [partly] understood, and we could even suggest simple, but the entirety of the task is beyond measure. What we think of as metrics during the process might be [I suggest are] totally irrelevant at end of task. How do you measure the inspiration a teacher gives to his/her students, yet that might be the absolute most important long term success in their future development. Remembering back to the dark ages of my own public education, how should I evaluate the mechanics versus the inspiration. Yes, learning the alphabet and 2+2 are some of the fundamentals that are very important, but the desire to do learn and do better and how to learn have served me far more in my adult life. I was lucky to have many good teachers, but there is one I remember above all others and yet I couldn't tell you a single fact, formula, or whatever I learned in her class. Mrs. Brown (grade 5) however taught me to love learning, how to learn, and how to work in groups to achieve success for the entire group. While she was a strict teacher, she also made education fun and certainly I and I know a lot of others in our class always enjoyed her teaching. When reading Mr. Trucano's article, I couldn't help but thinking of the efficiency experts of the 60's who thought (or at least claimed) they could simplify everything and magically transform the workplace. Yes our education system can improve, and there are already many processes in place to help with that improvement and newer/better ones will evolve over time. The model we don't want to fall into however is building the magic box that will determine the outcome for children based on their DNA test when they enter pre-pre-kindergarten, yet that is the feeling I am getting from the article.

You couldn't be further from the mark. First we are talking about non-proliferation so the major powers are not the concern here. Second, leading by example is the best form of leading - period. Canada could have been a very early nuclear power if we wished, we had the expertise and materials. Canada could certainly been ahead of France, and more than likely the UK as well. Canada choose wisely.

Without Canada's leadership in non-proliferation, I think the chances are fairly good we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I have highlighted the operative word. I think there were many covert operations all along, only when the results would have really made them obviously overt were they avoided.

While Canada was heavily involved in the development of the nuclear bomb, we wisely choose early on not to pursue nuclear weapons development after WW II. While during the early years of the cold war there were nuclear weapons on Canadian soil, including ones that the Canadian Forces were involved in deploying (ie. more than just allowing Americans to stage weapons here) that was slowly wound down and all weapons of mass destruction removed from Canada by the early 70's. This is nothing to do with today's politically-correct sunshine and kumbaya world, this is about continuing the conscious choices of intelligent Canadians for generations.

Yes, there were discussions later on about keeping 10,000 troops in Iraq but that deal fell apart because the Iraqi Parliament would not accept the demand that American troops be given immunity from prosecution by Iraqis. Are you saying that Obama should have conceded, and allowed American Military personnel be subject to prosecution by Iraq? While not perfect, United States soldiers are held to account by the Uniform Code of Military Justice and not foreign laws.

BSc in math & physics, and BA in philosophy He served over 30 years in the Canadian Army, starting as a second lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps and retired at the rank of brigadier-general. He however lied to Parliament about Afghan prisoners, and was rightfully removed from his post.