Ted Cruz Will Defend Your TV-Watching Rights And Other News You Can Maybe Use

Today's news is filled with Dudes Who Will Never Be President. Also science. And a special Yr Editrix treat for morning dessert!

• Did you know your God-given uninalienableable rights to watch teevee are under attack ? Be grateful Sen. Ted Cruz, who will never be president, is here to make sure Actual President Obama can never pry your teevee from your cold dead hands:

  Do you watch TV? Of course, you do! Which is why you should be naming your next pet/luxury yacht/child after your new hero and patron saint—Sen. Ted Cruz.

  Cruz’s vigorous defense of your rights and freedoms as a TV-watching American on the floor of the Senate yesterday is likely to bring a tear to your eye. Probably from laughter.

  According to Cruz, Democrats are going to sentence the entire cast of Saturday Night Live to a FEMA internment camp gulag and guillotine Tina Fey (NOOOOOO!) if they’re allowed to prevent Wal-Mart from pouring unlimited amounts of money into political campaigns.

• You should read Harry Potter. It's science !

  [W]hile it might sound far-fetched, new research suggests that Rowling’s world of house-elves, half-giants and three-headed dogs has the potential to make us nicer people. [...]

  For decades it's been known that an effective means of improving negative attitudes and prejudices between differing groups of people is through intergroup contact – particularly through contact between “in-groups,” or a social group to which someone identifies, and “out-groups,” or a group they don’t identify with or perceive as threatening. Even reading short stories about friendship between in- and out-group characters is enough to improve attitudes toward stigmatized groups in children. A new study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology found that reading the Harry Potter books in particular has similar effects, likely in part because Potter is continually in contact with stigmatized groups. The “muggles” get no respect in the wizarding world as they lack any magical ability. The “half-bloods,” or “mud-bloods” – wizards and witches descended from only one magical parent – don’t fare much better, while the Lord Voldemort character believes that power should only be held by “pure-blood” wizards. He’s Hitler in a cloak.

• Speaking of science, here's something that is not. Dr. Ben Carson (yes, please run for president, we need the laughs!) has some thoughts on evolution :

  He claimed that “no one has the knowledge” of the age of the earth “based on the Bible,” adding that “carbon dating and all of these things really don’t mean anything to a God who has the ability to create anything at any point in time.”

• And while we're on the subject of dudes who will never be president :

  Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Wednesday that President Obama’s foreign policy has put America “in a place of danger unlike anything we knew prior to 9/11.”

  And if you don't count anything that happened in American history prior to 9/11, it's almost true.

• Meh, details :

  After three years of nearly constantSturm und Drangon the part of U.S. bishops over the contraception mandate comes word that some of the same Catholic universities have been covering abortions all along. Loyola Marymount’s insurance plan, as its president recently confirmed , has included elective abortion coverage for the past 25 years.

  The revelation comes with the news that the California Department of Health and Human Services has reversed itself and rescinded permission for two Catholic universities in California to remove elective abortion coverage from their employee insurance plans. It turns out that even as the bishops have been screaming that any attempt to force Catholic-affiliated organizations to cover contraception would be a heinous insult to Catholicism, Loyola Marymount and Santa Clara Universities have been covering abortions—including elective abortions—as California law requires coverage of all “medically necessary” services.

• Hey, we know this Rebecca lady !

   Not that this is relevant , but she’s hot as shit and funny as hell. And she wouldn’t mind my calling her hot as shit in a list that has nothing to do with physical appearance. She runs shit, and she once bought my grandmother two glasses of wine and a hamburger while charming the pants off of her. “That Rebecca is such a wonderful character,” my grandmother says whenever I mention Rebecca to her. “You tell her I say hello.” I always do.

  Yes, sheishot as shit AND funny as hell, which is TOTALLY relevant. And we're not just saying that because she is the boss of us.

Okay, kidlets, we showed you ours, now show us yours. Your NEWS, that is. Sheesh. Get your minds out of the gutter.