FU - FairAndUNbalanced.com

Our friend, occasional contributor, and frequent comment participant, T. Paine, at Saving Common Sense, takes on abortion. From a pro-life perspective, T. Paine attempts to come to a rational, scientific, explanation of where life begins.

Wrong question, I think. Life began several billion years ago. It is a continuum. The perpetual question is when life becomes human, and more specifically when life becomes legally equal to fully developed life, the point of full legal personhood. On the other hand, there is no approach to abortion that is not absurd. T. Paine gets extra points for tackling an impossible issue, without noticeable demagoguery.

Mea culpa. I helped to spread yet another right wing falsehood. YAFB at Rumproast sets the record straight, and does so exhaustively. The story, which I repeated, was that a bust of Winston Churchill was on loan from Great Britain to the United States. It had a prominent place in the Oval office until Barack Obama insulted the British by sending it back.

Turns out the story of the bust is a bust. There is a bust. It was on loan. It needed repair. A duplicate was sent by Britain to the US while the original was repaired. The duplicate was returned when repairs were complete and the original came back. A bust of Abraham Lincoln was placed in the Oval Office, and the bust of Winston Churchill was moved to the family residence part of the White House, where President Obama showed it off to a delighted David Cameron the last time the Prime Minister visited. The lie about insulting the British was repeated this week by Mitt Romney. So the Republican candidate and I have something in common.

Breitbarting is the taking of innocent statements and editing them down until all that remains is the opposite of what was actually said. Infidel 753 looks at a statement made by President Obama and how conservatives have tried to make it look as if he denied that business owners are responsible for their own success.

It's been an interesting week in the madcap diplomacy of Mitt Romney's tour of the world. The very bad day in London, leads Gary William Green of Mad Mike's America to a review of past writings of the Republican candidate. Turns out his devotion to his Anglo-Saxon heritage has, at times, taken a surprisingly negative tone.

The amazing advisors to Mitt Romney do not confine astonishing comments to "racially insensitive" remarks to British dailies. Tommy Christopher, of Mediaite fame, reports yet another of the Romney group with a wild view of the recent mass killings in Colorado. It would be hilarious in most contexts, but multiple murders don't crack me up the way other topics do. Many thanks to Tommy Christopher for low key reporting of an offensive perspective.

Dave Dubya explores a few more extreme conservative reactions to the Colorado mass shootings. Example of one link: It was all part of an Obama plot to panic the country into confiscating everyone's firearms.

The Heathen Republican finds 11 reasons Romney can't win and 9 reasons Obama can't win. Most of the anti-Romney reasons are wretchedly unfair (Bain outsourced after he left. Nothing about all the "job creation" after he left) while all the anti-Obama reasons are objective and neutral. But, Heathen has a point of view and we're not engaged in peer reviewed academic dissertations. Right? Besides, the guy writes really well.

Papamoka at Papamoka Straight Talk discovers a sinister pattern in the Republican approach to the economy, and documents his suspicions, in part by quoting conservative sources.

Jack Jodell, friend of the working blogger at THE SATURDAY AFTERNOON POST, has been getting loads of push poll materials by mail, unintentional humor from right wing fundraising groups. Jack is less than amused.

In Waukesha, Wisconsin, the County Board of Public Works wants to partially privatize garbage collection. At least that's my interpretation. Conservative James Wigderson opposes the move. He discovers that taxpayer dollars will be used to promote the idea. James puts a stop to it. "It" being the ad campaign.

Nancy Hanks at The Hankster has a friend who wrote a book. Turns out to be a very good book, and it's about politically independent voters and the evils of political parties. It's a bit of departure from Nancy's usual reporting, but it is certainly on topic.

Ryan is a frequent contributor and a constant particpant here. He is also a friend. At Secular Ethics, Ryan takes on a host of weighty topics in an interesting, informative way. This week he educates us in a continuing debate over how, and whether, to define morality. See what I mean?

PZ Myers, writing for Pharyngula, with the help of a very good article in Discover Magazine and a follow up video by Richard Dawkins dismantles creationism, then vivisects the corpse. The only issue I have with the approach is the frequent conflation of Christianity with literalism.

Tim McGaha at Tim's Thoughtful Spot reviews two amazing people. One has a hobby, ballooning to as close to 20 miles high as he can, then jumping out. The other is a Marine pilot who fell 3 miles without a working parachute. Two true free fall individuals.