Middleboro Review et al

Democracy Dies in Darkness The truth behind the rhetoric Mike Pence says America has found religion “Religion in America isn’t receding. It’s just the opposite,”  the vice president said at a conservative Christian college in Michigan , citing statistics about the share of Americans who pray, read the Bible and attend church. Alas, this was an apocryphal claim. It all began with an article in the Federalist (“New Harvard Research Says U.S. Christianity Is Not Shrinking, But Growing Stronger”), which discussed findings from two academics. Pence misinterpreted their work. The academics actually found that, except for a core group of true believers ,  religion was fading away in the United States. In fact, their study suggests that as religion has become more politicized in the United States, more moderates have abandoned it — not at all what Pence claimed. “Our data do not support the conclusion that religion is on the rise in the Unite...

Democracy Dies in Darkness The truth behind the rhetoric The holes in Trump’s speech on the Iran nuclear deal President Trump made  a forceful case for pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal , describing it as dangerous and ineffective. But the reasons he gave to support his decision did not quite add up. For example, the president accused Iran of pursuing nuclear research not for peaceful purposes, as it has pledged, but as a cover to gain the knowledge needed to build nuclear weapons. But Trump left out key information that undercuts his argument. Iran has committed to never develop nuclear weapons, and the Trump administration itself certified in 2017 that the country was meeting the terms of the nuclear accord, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Trump cited a new cache of documents obtained by Israel as “definitive proof” that Iran harbored ill intentions. But experts said Israel revealed nothing new, since the documents mos...