Open Thread Nov. 10: Scientology, Mental Illness and an Atheist in Congress

Here’s my question about Roy Moore: What’s with the fucking cowboy hat? You live in Alabama, dipshit. Nobody but a country singer or a phony wears a cowboy hat outside Texas, and Roy Moore ain’t got no guitar. Maybe he thinks it will impress the little girls. No links because he’s not leaving the ballot and he’ll probably win next month’s election.

Every so often Trump says something I’d actually like to see him follow up on — for example, he apparently sent word to actress Leah Remini that he’d like to revoke Scientology’s tax exemption. Unfortunately, he probably won’t remember saying it by tomorrow.

Football fans got more bad news about brains — the players’, not their own — with the release of details about Aaron Hernandez’s autopsy report. The 27-year-old, who hung himself in prison after his murder conviction, had the most serious case of CTE they’ve ever found in someone so young. This New York Times Magazine story is devastating. How much longer will taxpayers fund this at the high-school level?

A Congressman came out of the closet this week, not as gay but as something more reviled in politics — an atheist. OK, Northern California Rep. Jared Huffman says he doesn’t like that label because it implies certainty, but he says he’s had it with the phony religiosity of his peers. Amen, brother.

Everyone realizes that blockheads like Trump who point to “mental illness” as the problem in mass murder are off-base, but here comes science to prove that those people are, as always, wrong. In truth, about 20 percent of mass murderers exhibit signs of mental illness. The rest are just pissed-off assholes.