Jake Hebert, writing for the Institute for Creation Research:

ICR, together with the rest of the creation science movement, has made great strides in the last 40 years. In many areas, the superiority of the creation worldview has been clearly demonstrated. Even now, ICR is making exciting discoveries in the fields of biology and geology, and we have started new research initiatives in the field of astronomy. However, there is much work that still needs to be done, and this work is hindered by a lack of trained scientists.

Real shocker that trained scientists aren’t working for these guys. Shocker.

The Daily Show recently interviewed Matt Slick, seen above, founder of the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry. His daughter Rachel, now an atheist,describes what it was like to be raised by such a man, offering a disturbing glimpse into the fundamentalist psyche:

Conversation with him was a daily challenge. He would frequently make blatantly false statements — such as “purple dogs exist” — and force me to disprove him through debate. He would respond to things I said demanding technical accuracy, so that I had to narrow my definitions and my terms to give him the correct response. It was mind-twisting, but it encouraged extreme clarity of thought, critical thinking, and concise use of language. I remember all this beginning around the age of five.

I have two sisters, three and seven years younger than myself, and we were all homeschooled in a highly strict, regulated environment. Our A Beka schoolbooks taught the danger of evolution. Our friends were “good influences” on us, fellow homeschoolers whose mothers thought much alike. Obedience was paramount — if we did not respond immediately to being called, we were spanked ten to fifteen times with a strip of leather cut from the stuff they used to make shoe soles. Bad attitudes, lying, or slow obedience usually warranted the same — the slogan was “All the way, right away, and with a happy spirit.” We were extremely well-behaved children, and my dad would sometimes show us off to people he met in public by issuing commands that we automatically rushed to obey. The training was not just external; God commanded that our feelings and thoughts be pure, and this resulted in high self-discipline.

She goes on to chart her fall from faith, and closes with these striking thoughts:

Someone once asked me if I would trade in my childhood for another, if I had the chance, and my answer was no, not for anything. My reason is that, without that childhood, I wouldn’t understand what freedom truly is — freedom from a life centered around obedience and submission, freedom to think anything, freedom from guilt and shame, freedom from the perpetual heavy obligation to keep every thought pure. Nothing I’ve ever encountered in my life has been so breathtakingly beautiful.

Freedom is my God now, and I love this one a thousand times more than I ever loved the last one.

In April, I reported on an investigation out in California into the source of a mysterious $11 million donation that the state elections watchdog called "the largest contribution ever disclosed as campaign money laundering in California history." That $11 million donation, made in October 2012 by a little-known nonprofit called Americans for Responsible Leadership, went toward defeating Proposition 30, which would have raised taxes on wealthy Californians, and passing Proposition 32, which would have curbed unions' campaign spending. But when the California Supreme Court intervened, we learned that money didn't originate with Americans for Responsible Leadership, but rather from a different nonprofit based in Virginia called Americans for Job Security. Conservatives worried, as I reported, that the probe into the true source of the $11 million might cast unwanted light on all the dark money sloshing around conservative politics.

Now, the plot thickens. Writing for the Daily Beast, Peter Stone reports that a grand jury has been convened in California's dark-money investigation. Stone notes that the existence of a grand jury likely means the state's probe is intensifying as it tries to unmask the true source of that $11 million donation, be it a single wealthy donor, several individual donors, a company, etc.

Stone also reports that billionaire investor Charles Schwab or an entity affiliated with Schwab has received a subpoena as part of the California probe. In November 2011, Mother Jones reported that Schwab was part of a club of donors who'd given more than $1 million to groups and causes backed by Charles and David Koch. A spokesman for Schwab did not comment for Stone's story.

The stakes of California's investigation are very high, as Stone notes:

If prosecutors do move forward, their investigation could shine light on parts of the burgeoning network of conservative "social welfare" outfits that spent hundreds of millions in the last two elections. Under IRS rules, social-welfare groups can engage in political activities so long as that work is not their primary purpose, a loosely enforced rule often interpreted to mean that 49 percent of a group’s spending can go toward political work.

One of the three groups that allegedly channeled the funds to California was the Arizona-based Center to Protect Patient Rights, founded in 2009 by Koch operative Sean Noble, who has emerged in recent cycles as a big player in conservative political and fundraising circles. Noble has spoken at least twice at the billionaire brothers’ biannual conferences aimed at tapping other wealthy conservatives for their favorite projects, and he has been a key strategist at small Washington meetings with other GOP allied groups such as the Karl Rove-founded American Crossroads.

"Sean is the wizard behind the screen" for the Kochs and their network of wealthy donors, said one GOP operative familiar with Noble's political work.

In 2010 and 2012, Noble's Center appeared to act mainly as a cash conduit, shipping millions to allied conservative groups. In the 2010 cycle, for instance, it channeled almost $55 million—a sum almost identical to its revenues—to a couple dozen conservative bastions including Americans for Tax Reform and the American Future Fund, according to the group's filings with the IRS. Most of that largess went to pay for advertising backing GOP candidates or attacking Democrats.

"We had no involvement whatsoever, financial or otherwise, neither directly nor indirectly, on anything to do with Prop. 30 or Prop. 32," a spokesman for Koch Industries, Rob Tappan, said in an email. Tappan, however, indicated he spoke only for Koch and not “independent entities,” such as Noble’s Center. Asked if the Kochs had received subpoenas from the grand jury, Tappan said it was company policy not to comment on “the existence or nonexistence of investigations.” Noble did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Officials with California's Fair Political Practices Commission and the state AG's office have refused to comment on the progress of their probes. But in a brief interview in April, Ann Ravel, the chairwoman of the FPPC, said she fully intends to find out who truly was behind that $11 million. "The most important factor of any investigation of this sort is getting the names of who's contributing to campaigns in California," she said. "Because that's the law."

Many of us already view the financial industry as little more than a gigantic shakedown of the American public. But even so, there are still days when we can be dumbfounded by the sheer scale and gall of their machinations. Today is one of those days.

The New York Times reports that Goldman Sachs, apparently unhappy with the profits to be made solely in the financial markets, decided a few years ago to buy an aluminum storage business called Metro International. Their business strategy is to shuttle that aluminum around from one warehouse to another, something that's earned Goldman $5 billion over the past three years. If you don't understand how this is possible, well, it means you're just not very smart:

Before Goldman bought Metro International three years ago, warehouse customers used to wait an average of six weeks for their purchases to be located, retrieved by forklift and delivered to factories. But now that Goldman owns the company, the wait has grown more than 20-fold — to more than 16 months, according to industry records.

Longer waits might be written off as an aggravation, but they also make aluminum more expensive nearly everywhere in the country because of the arcane formula used to determine the cost of the metal on the spot market. The delays are so acute that Coca-Cola and many other manufacturers avoid buying aluminum stored here. Nonetheless, they still pay the higher price.

....Interviews with several current and former Metro employees, as well as someone with direct knowledge of the company’s business plan, suggest the longer waiting times are part of the company’s strategy and help Goldman increase its profits from the warehouses....Because Metro International charges rent each day for the stored metal, the long queues caused by shifting aluminum among its facilities means larger profits for Goldman. And because storage cost is a major component of the “premium” added to the price of all aluminum sold on the spot market, the delays mean higher prices for nearly everyone, even though most of the metal never passes through one of Goldman’s warehouses.

Aluminum industry analysts say that the lengthy delays at Metro International since Goldman took over are a major reason the premium on all aluminum sold in the spot market has doubled since 2010. The result is an additional cost of about $2 for the 35 pounds of aluminum used to manufacture 1,000 beverage cans, investment analysts say, and about $12 for the 200 pounds of aluminum in the average American-made car.

Did you follow that? Some genius at Goldman apparently had a brainstorm after reading the detailed rules that determine the spot price of aluminum. They figured that if storage times could be artificially lengthened, prices would go up and Goldman could make a killing. So they bought an aluminum storage business with the explicit goal of making customers wait a longer time for their aluminum. And they made a killing.

The Times hastens to add that Goldman has done nothing illegal. Of course not. Why bother when "special exemptions" granted by the Federal Reserve and "relaxed regulations" approved by Congress allow you to make billions legally? But perhaps considering the industry's track record, the Fed is thinking of reversing its rule that allows investment banks to buy nonfinancial commodities businesses? Don't be silly:

All of this could come to an end if the Federal Reserve Board declines to extend the exemptions that allowed Goldman and Morgan Stanley to make major investments in nonfinancial businesses — although there are indications in Washington that the Fed will let the arrangement stand. Wall Street banks, meanwhile, have focused their attention on another commodity. After a sustained lobbying effort, the Securities and Exchange Commission late last year approved a plan that will allow JPMorgan Chase, Goldman and BlackRock to buy up to 80 percent of the copper available on the market.

I hope you don't have any copper tubing or wiring in your house. If you do, you're going to get badly screwed the next time you have to replace it. But don't worry. It's all for a good cause.