Pray For The Peace Of Jerusalem (8/21/12)[prayer]

The Girl Guides of England, the British equivalent to the U. S.’ Girl Scouts, have modified their membership pledge to accomodate atheist members and prospective members, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday. “We knew that some people found our Promise confusing on this point and that it discouraged some girls and volunteers from joining us,” Chief Guide Gill Slocombe told the AP.

(Click to enlarge) I find the NSA Prism program -- what I know about it, anyway -- to be problematic. But it does seem there's a disconnect between public reaction to this particular scandal and our tolerance for the selling of highly-personalized data by tech companies in the private sector. I've read over the years about evolving technologies to offer individuals different prices and interest rates based on data collected through the internet; I have no idea how much this is actually happening, but the potential for abuse seems vast. Somewhat amusingly, while I was working on this very cartoon, I watched a music video on YouTube -- The New Pornographers' "Slow Descent into Alcoholism" -- and immediately afterward was served Google ads for various detox programs.

A Brazilian congressional human rights committee voted on Tuesday to approve legislation that would lift a ban on so-called gay "conversion therapy" and allow therapists to treat homosexuality as a pathology. The move was widely criticized by gay rights advocates, human rights groups and the country's psychologists' council. Evangelical pastor Marco Feliciano -- who has called AIDS a "gay cancer" in the past -- heads the commission and led the initiative to reinstitute the discredited treatment."In practice, [the initiative's] result would be that a person over 18 years of age, responsible for his actions, who is homosexual and wants to reorient his sexuality, can be attended by a psychologist," lawmaker Joao Campos, an evangelical member of Brazil's lower house, told the Associated Press.

From the June 19 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:Previously: Fox Helps Gov. Perry Hype Texas While Ignoring Its Problems Fox's Doocy Ignores Problems With Texas Economy To Hype It As Model For Rest Of Nation

In case you lost track of the IRS scandal, here's where it's at right now: House Oversight Committee members are releasing dueling transcripts of witness testimony to the press. There is a big fight about it. It is maybe kind of boring. Darrell Issa, Republican chairmain of the committee, has been selectively releasing snippets of testimony to the press, all of it designed to support his contention that the IRS targeting of conservative groups for additional scrutiny of their nonprofit status was a political maneuver ordered or somehow directed by the White House.