Link to me only with thine eyes

•Another example of our government pushing to lock up a foreign journalist who says Bad Things.
•Fundamentalist historian David Barton claims the parable of the vineyard proves Jesus opposes minimum wage.
I’ve heard some conservatives state that Jesus’ parables are all about the importance of the free market, but this is the first example I’ve actually read. And it’s pretty dumb, starting with the fact it’s supposed to be a metaphor for the kingdom of heaven, not a business management text. Even if it was about the free market, isn’t the fact all the workers get paid for a full day’s wages an indication Jesus thinks they should be generous to workers?
Of course, the idea workers deserve anything or even earn anything is antithetical to a lot of right-wingers: The only productive people are the wealth-creators running the companies!
•Echidne points out that polygamy isn’t just about one man having lots of wives, it’s about wives settling for a small fraction of a husband.
•30 percent of young adults live with their parents.
•Anti-intellectualism among conservative evangelicals has a long history. As the article points out, there are conservatives who would sooner take creationist Ken Ham as a scientific authority than Francis Collins, the evangelical Christian who ran the Human Genome Project (and believes in evolution).
•The difference between middle-class and poor (not much) and middle-class and rich (a lot).
•History shows us multiple examples of people quoting scripture to the devil’s purpose. The writer at the link suggests we be careful of not doing the same.
•Trayvon Martin again. One blog discusses the racial issues this stirs up. Roy Edroso likewise looks at cries of racism from rightbloggers (racism against white people of course). The Miami Herald reports that contrary to earlier statements, the cops did want to charge Zimmerman. ThinkProgress asks some questions. The Orlando Sentinel cites some popular misconceptions.
Unfortunately, the worst thing I read about the case was on Echidne of the Snakes’ blog, by a guest-poster. She makes a valid point, that if Zimmerman had raped and killed a woman, it probably wouldn’t generate anywhere as much national attention (though a commenter responded that most white-on-black killings don’t generate this much outrage either). But to drive home how unbalanced things are, she tried to justify Zimmerman’s actions: After all, a lot of black men do commit violent crimes, and they do break into gated communities, and Trayvon Martin probably looked a lot like a thug and he might have been staring at houses as if he were going to break in … so the fact we’re outraged about that and not about rape just proves it, so there!
That’s disgusting (it’s also been taken down but you can find some discussion here). It does reflect a pattern with this particular blogger. Earlier she argued that anyone defending Bradley Manning who allegedly gave classified documents to Wikileaks is just trying to make Wikileaks founder and accused rapist Julian Assange look heroic (as you’ll see at the link, I do defend Manning, and no, I’m not supporting Assange).