When you think they couldn’t go any lower (updated)

Shorter GOP in Michigan Senate: “It’s okay to bully in the name of Jesus.”

A bill was recently passed by the Michigan Senate. It is a purported anti–bullying bill, but in reality the bill basically protects those who bully based on moral convictions:

This section does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction of a school employee, school volunteer, pupil, or a pupil and parent or guardian.

In other words, it’s a how to bully act.

In addition, while IANAL, the law protects sincerely held beliefs, including those by teachers. If a teachers sincerely believes that people in group X are going to burn in hell forever, this law seems to protect those statements. Hence, the la looks like it also serves as a backdoor way to legalize proselytization in school, therefore violating the Establishment Clause.

Via Lawyers, Guns, and Money.

Update: The section in question has been dropped from the bill (via).

Justice!

Great news! A verdict has been reached in the Angie Zapata murder trial. Allen Ray Andrade is guilty of first-degree murder after he brutally beat Angie Zapata to death using a fire extinguisher. His attempt to use the “trans panic defence” failed. He has been sentenced to the legally-required sentence of life imprisonment. The murder was a hate crime, as were several lesser charges (guilty in those too).

It’s a good thing that justice has been served.

This will make you sick

Pam’s House Blend reports that Jacobo Piñeiro Rial, who allegedly stabbed a Spanish same-sex couple from Vigo 57 times in January 2006 and who set the victims’ apartment ablaze, was acquitted using the gay panic defense.