“As soon as I got down on the ground, I noticed it was a Bible verse, and I was like holy crap,” McCord said in a phone interview on Tuesday night. “It was in a puddle of water. I said, ‘I want to take care of this the best way I can,’ so I gently scooped it up and carried it out the best I could.” MORE

Pope Francis said: “Through humility, soul searching, and prayerful contemplation we have gained a new understanding of certain dogmas. The church no longer believes in a literal hell where people suffer as this doctrine is incompatible with the infinite love of God.

“God is not a judge but a friend and a lover of humanity and God seeks not to condemn but only to embrace. Like the fable of Adam and Eve, we see hell as a literary device and hell is merely a metaphor for the isolated soul, which like all souls ultimately will be united in love with God.” MORE

” . . . if there is an afterlife . . . I will unreservedly choose to go to hell . . . . Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I’ve been with the have-nots. Over here, if you’re a have-not, you’re short of dough. If you’re a have-not in hell, you’re short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I’ll start organizing the have-nots over there. They’re my kind of people.“ MORE and VIDEO

Los Angeles County will bury 1,430 individuals in a mass grave Wednesday.

“This holiday season, many of us are reminded how fortunate we are to be surrounded by loved ones,” Supervisor Don Knabe said at a gathering at the downtown Hall of Administration on the eve of the burial. “Sadly, not everyone shares this blessing.” MORE

California is taking its fight against global warming to the farm.

The nation’s leading agricultural state is now targeting greenhouse gases produced by dairy cows and other livestock.

Despite strong opposition from farmers, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation in September that for the first time regulates heat-trapping gases from livestock operations and landfills. MORE

From the earliest days of his campaign, Donald J. Trump made keeping manufacturing jobs in the United States his signature economic issue, and the decision by Carrier, the big air-conditioner company, to move over 2,000 of them from Indiana to Mexico was a tailor-made talking point for him on the stump. MORE

California’s northern Sierra Nevada mountain range, home to some of the state’s largest reservoirs, had the wettest first two months of the water year since 1984, the National Weather Service said Tuesday.

Between October and November, the eight measuring stations along the northern range received an average of 18 inches of precipitation, or about 200% above average for the first two months of the state’s water year, said meteorologist Eric Kurth of the National Weather Service in Sacramento. MORE

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Motorists fleeing wildfires in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge packed roads in and out of the resort towns Monday night as flames and choking smoke driven by wind swept across the area.

The Gatlinburg Fire Department ordered the mandatory evacuation of downtown Gatlinburg as wind conditions worsened and several fires grew increasingly unpredictable and dangerous. MORE

Russia and the Philippines have agreed to closer ties when it comes to defense, according to Russian news outlet RT.

The Kremlin-funded T.V. network said a decree signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev now appears on a Russian government website, stating the following: MORE

Flash flooding in northwest Italy has forced evacuations in several cities and may be responsible for at least two deaths.

An expansive, lumbering storm centered over the Iberian Peninsula pumped deep moisture into northwest Italy, said weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman, and run off from the resulting torrential rains swept quickly out of the mountainous terrain.

Russia and Turkey have joined Greece, Italy, Croatia and Cyprus in the firefighting efforts, sending a total of 10 planes to Israel.

The two countries resumed full diplomatic ties last week with the mutual naming of new ambassadors, after six years of downgraded ties following the Mavi Marmara incident. Turkey sent two planes to Israel in December 2010 to fight the Carmel forest fire, at the height of the diplomatic crisis between the two countries. MORE

In one of the most shocking flip-flops in recent political history, German Chancellor Angela Merkel now says she will deport about 10% of recently arrived migrants — 100,000 of them.

But more than that, her tone on granting asylum to migrants has radically changed. MORE

The Electoral College & the Liberal Bigots
In response to Edwen Chemerinsky Breeze 11-17-16

Changed title to: Liberal policies defy our founding principles

One of the main reasons we kept the Electoral college that still matters is to give extremely small states some say in the election. Today if we were to go by the popular vote the 12 to 15 most populated states could dominate any national election. That’s one third of the States could rule the country. Continue reading →