Blog Heap of Links for the day 26 March 2016

Terror alert after Belgian nuclear plant guard is murdered and his security pass is stolen amid concerns terrorists are plotting an attack on power station …

Two Senate Republicans are seeking to understand the Veterans Affairs office practice of reporting veterans to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check system.

Currently a veterans assigned a fiduciary trustee to act on their behalf is automatically declared “mentally defective” and is reported to NICS, the database Federal Firearms Licensees use to determine whether a prospective buyer is eligible to buy guns. As of December 2015, the VA has reported 260,381 individuals to the FBI, effectively making them prohibited firearms possessors under the law.…

Oklahoma Forestry Services set up a unified command Thursday morning in Woods County in the ongoing effort to battle the Oklahoma portion of the Anderson Creek Fire, which has burned about 625 square miles in Oklahoma and Kansas …

Venter’s team painstakingly whittled down the genome of Mycoplasma mycoides, a bacterium that lives in cattle, to reveal a bare-bones set of genetic instructions capable of making life. The result is a tiny organism named syn3.0 that contains just 473 genes. (By comparison, E. coli has about 4,000 to 5,000 genes, and humans have roughly 20,000.)

Yet within those 473 genes lies a gaping hole. Scientists have little idea what roughly a third of them do. Rather than illuminating the essential components of life, syn3.0 has revealed how much we have left to learn about the very basics of biology.…

Friday, Florida became another state to cut abortion funding when Governor Rick Scott signed into law a bill that would cut state funding to clinics that perform abortion.…

…Students at the University of Southern California protested a speech by David Horowitz last Wednesday, not by shouting him down or otherwise disrupting the event, but by duct-taping their own mouths shut and linking together in a pointless human chain at the side of the room in what has been described as the “lamest protest ever.”…

Spending the morning trying to teach a reluctant teenage boy something he needs to know has given me a strong desire to find relief in laughter. This collection of silly stuff, with a few dollops of wisdom, should help…

In Newly Created Life-Form, a Major Mystery
Easter Touches You No Matter What Your Faith
Why education is productive — a parable of men and beasts…

Google Maps Leads Demolition Firm To Wrong House
Could non-citizens decide the U.S. presidential election?
The students who have turned their backs on Enlightenment…

A man suspected of being a terrorist was shot and wounded by armed police in Brussels after taking a woman hostage at a tram stop. The alleged suspect was carrying a rucksack with bomb materials in it, and is thought to be connected with a terror plot in France that was also foiled today.

In other news, an Islamic State leader said to be second-in-command to Caliph al-Baghdadi was surrounded and killed today by U.S. special forces in Syria.…

British Prime Minister David Cameron has called on Christian leaders to “reach out” to Muslim communities in order to help prevent young Muslims from becoming extremists.

In other news, in the wake of the Brussels massacres, Rome has raised its terror alert to the highest levels over the upcoming Easter weekend, since 150,000 visitors are expected and the city is considered a prime target for a jihad attack.…

…I either didn’t have time or heart to blog today. I do however have wonderful posters. This illustrated edition is dedicated to the Second Amendment. I happen to think it’s the most important Amendment as a practical matter because, without it, American citizens have no way to ensure that the government respects any of the other Amendments:…

George W. Bush must be relieved….because now everything is Donald Trump’s fault…

Drew Johnson, appeared to have sent this tweet out last night which was picked up and featured by the website Hollywood Life. ["From what I know, at least 2 of the women named as Cruz mistresses by the National Enquirer are accurate." [sic]] …Washington Times severed their arrangement with Mr. Johnson as one of their columnist soon after. … Either the Times is carrying Ted’s water or Mr. Johnson couldn’t substantiate his tweet.…