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A majority of Americans have a negative view of Islam after the terrorist attacks in Paris and California, including a majority of Democrats. Fifty-eight percent of Americans now have an unfavorable opinion of Islam, according to the latest YouGov/Huffpost poll of Americans. That number includes 45 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of Independents and 75 percent of Republicans. Only 27 percent of Democrats have a favorable opinion of Islam while 45 percent, nearly twice as many have an unfavorable view. Only 11 percent of Republicans and 15 percent of Independents have a favorable view of the religion. Only 23 percent...

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump says the United States has "absolutely no choice" but to close down mosques where "some bad things are happening." "Nobody wants to say this and nobody wants to shut down religious institutions or anything, but you know, you understand it," Trump said on Fox News's "Hannity" on Tuesday. "A lot of people understand it. We're going to have no choice." Trump said on Monday he would "strongly consider" closing mosques if elected in response to the terrorist attacks in France last Friday that killed at least 129 people and injured hundreds more. Pressed to explain...

'House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that when Sunday dawns, she is more a praying woman and far less a partisan politician.“I was thinking about it on Sunday when I was praying for the Republicans in church, as I do at least every Sunday,” Ms. Pelosi also said, during a press conference on Capitol Hill. :“I pray for the Democrats and the Republicans, for our country."' Nancy Pelosi: I pray for Republicans ‘every Sunday’(Washington times (June 20, 2014) Yes I believe you on that Nancy, but Satan is too busy in the middle East right now to help you in...

Is God a flying ball of pasta? It's one theory -- just like intelligent design KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE HACKENSACK, N.J. - Unlike a certain other religion in the news, the First United Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't object to cartoon depictions of the supreme being. For one thing, he's easy to draw: a tangle of pasta strands with a meatball body. In some pictures, he is shown reaching out to confer the blessings of life and happiness with what church members like to refer to as his "noodly appendage." Flying Spaghetti Monster could be the next big...

Boy, is this gutsy, huh. Conservatism is a paranoid, fearful personal philosophy and embracing it is a sign of emotional weakness. By its very definition, conservatism is opposed to progress. Conservatives believe we ought to "conserve" existing institutions and social norms, speaking from a positions which is always on the verge of being "led astray," and reflecting with an imperfect memory on the topics of fictional "Greatest Generations" and "Golden Ages." Nothing that sets itself against progress can claim to be on the side of good. Accordingly, conservatives, however nice they might otherwise be, for turning their energies against a...