On Saturday, June 4, 2016, the Reason Rally 2016, an event at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., is expected to be the largest gathering of nonreligious persons in American history, with perhaps 30,000 in attendance. The Reason Rally website encourages those who “think public policy should be based on scientific evidence, not religious beliefs” or “support the separation of church and state” should join the march. Further,

The goal of Reason Rally 2016 is to showcase the presence and power of the nonreligious voting bloc, and to demand that reason be put at the forefront of our public and political discourse. We want to excite and empower attendees about that message so they bring it back home and apply it at the local and state levels.

Not only are we celebrating our secular, atheist, agnostic, humanist, freethinking, and nonreligious identities, we are preparing to exercise our power at the voting box to bring good sense back to government.

There are many prominent figures on the speaking schedule: science educator Bill Nye, magician Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller, pastor-turned-atheist Dan Barker, physicist Lawrence Krauss, biologist Cara Santa Maria, and actor John de Lancie. Both evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and actor Johnny Depp had planned to attend and speak at the Reason Rally but were forced to cancel.

Christian evangelist Ray Comfort was also planning to attend — along with hundreds of other Christians — to try to convert atheists and agnostics at the event. Comfort had to cancel when the D.C. police called his plan a protest and required him to get a permit.

Two members of Congress, Bobby Scott and Tulsi Gabbard, will also speak.

About one-fourth of Americans are now atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular.”

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

Wednesday morning, June 8, 2016, a petition to remove California Judge Aaron Persky was garnering at least 500 signatures every 60 seconds, with 630,000 total signatures. At this rate, the petition will likely hit 1 million signatures by tonight.

Persky is under fire for sentencing Brock Turner, a Stanford University student convicted of raping an unconscious woman, to only 6 months in jail (he won’t go to state prison). Turner has the opportunity, also, to reduce his sentence by months with decent behavior.

While prosecutors pushed for 6 years in prison, the defense asked for 4 months. Persky, a Stanford graduate, said the fact that Turner was intoxicated meant he had “less moral culpability” and that “a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.”

The New York Times writes that Persky seemed “to accept the defendant’s account (Mr. Turner said the victim consented)…. The judge said: ‘I take him at his word that subjectively that’s his version of his events…. I’m not convinced that his lack of complete acquiescence to the verdict should count against him.’”

The petition creator, Maria Ruiz of Miami, writes:

Judge Persky failed to see that the fact that Brock Turner is a white male star athlete at a prestigious university does not entitle him to leniency. He also failed to send the message that sexual assault is against the law regardless of social class, race, gender or other factors. Please help rectify this travesty to justice.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

On Wednesday, June 8, 2016, at least two armed men opened fire in the Sharona Market in Tel Aviv, Israel. Three people were killed and at least seven wounded — one in critical condition, four in serious condition.

The attack, according to an Israeli spokeswoman, occurred in two different locations in the market, which is full of upscale shops and restaurants. Israeli police “neutralized” two gunmen, meaning either detained or killed them; one is reportedly being treated at a hospital in Tel Aviv. Hareetz reports that the gunmen are Palestinian, “said to be disguised as ultra-Orthodox Jews” before opening fire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an emergency security meeting when informed of the incident. It is being called a terror attack.

The attack is likely one in a long line of terror attacks against Israel by Palestinians enraged over Israeli military incursion into Palestinian territory in the West Bank and Gaza, the discrimination toward and second-class citizenship status of Palestinians in Israel, and other issues.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

In an interview published Thursday, June 9, 2016, Democracy Now! asked Jill Stein, contender for the Green Party nomination for president: “You’ve been trying for months to reach out to Bernie Sanders, because you acknowledge that there are many similarities in your program and his, to join forces. What’s been the response from the Sanders campaign, and what are you hopeful for now?”

Stein replied:

Well, the response over the last several weeks has been the same as the response over the last several years. And in fact, the Green Party reached out to Bernie Sanders before the last election to see if he might be interested in running on the Green Party ballot line. And that was in 2011. And basically, we haven’t heard back yet, so I’m not holding my breath that we are going to.

And in fact, I think it was just yesterday that Senator Sanders announced that he would be meeting with President Obama to basically stay the course and to essentially move his campaign inside of the Democratic Party, which I think is a mistake and would be essentially an abandonment of the movement that has been built. We’ve seen many very principled and powerful efforts to reform the Democratic Party from within over the course of many years, and Democratic Party keeps marching to the right.

So, you know, my hope, as Senator Sanders himself said, is that this is a movement, it’s not a man. And my hope is that the movement will continue. And we’ve offered — I’ve offered, basically, to put everything on the table and to see how we can work together and explore…what it would take in order for that to happen—to run a joint ticket…

You can read the letter Stein sent to Sanders after the New York primary, calling for “possible collaboration,” here.

Democracy Now! reminded her that Sanders, in July 2015 and elsewhere, promised not to run third party, fearing that would steal votes away from the Democratic candidate and hand the White House to the Republicans.

Yet there may be evidence Sanders’ stance is softening. Salon reported one week ago:

Before a rally in Santa Monica, Senator Bernie Sanders was asked by KABC-TV 7 News political reporter Elex Michaelson about the offer by Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, for him to run with the Green Party. Sanders response left open the door to running as a Green. He could have easily rejected the offer of a Sanders-Stein ticket, instead he said: “Right now, our goal is to win the Democratic nomination.”

Stein told Rolling Stone that Sanders “has been really quite consistent in expressing disinterest in independent third parties over the last many years. After the beating that he is getting — this real, purposeful, I think, sabotage by the DNC — we’ll see if he’ll have a change of heart. I don’t know.”

Stein is heavily courting Sanders supporters, as the Green Party platform closely aligns with Sanders’ beliefs and principles.

Bernie Sanders, for now, refuses to drop out of the Democratic contest.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

As many as 600 witches put a hex — a curse — on convicted rapist Brock Turner, his father, and case judge Aaron Persky on Tuesday night, June 7, 2016. Brock Turner, a student at Stanford University, raped an unconscious, intoxicated woman; his father wrote that a prison sentences was a steep price to pay for “20 minutes of action”; Judge Persky gave Turner only 6 months in jail (a sentence already cut in half), saying Turner had “less moral culpability” since he was drunk, and that “a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.”

Witches from around the world, mostly women but some men, organized on Facebook to coordinate the hex. It was launched by Melanie Elizabeth Hexen, a midwife and bellydance teacher from rural Iowa. She said, “We all felt so much injustice and anger and sadness and the need to connect on a psychological level with other people who felt the same and could do something about it.”

Hexen recommended the following curse:

In the most holy name of Hecate, the Goddess of Life and Death, She who holds the key to the underworld, let this rapist meet justice. Let him be destroyed.

Brock Allen Turner we hex you.
You will be impotent
You will know constant pain of pine needles in your guts
Food will bring you no sustenance
In water, your lungs will fail you
Sleep will only bring nightmares
Shame will be your mantle.
You will meet justice.
My witchcraft is strong. Our witchcraft is powerful. The spell will work. So Mote it be.

One of the male witches explained his process: “I lit a seven-day candle, glued his picture to it, and wrapped it with cording. I meditated and offered blessings to the Goddess, specifically about [how] the lack of justice in his sentence caused harm to women. I then ‘hexed’ the harm onto the candle to be burned out.”

Others incorporated feces, urine, menstrual blood, spit, and other substances into the ceremony — smeared on an image of Turner before burning.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.