It's settled, then: The founding fathers were not, in fact, "actively involved" in cockfighting. With roosters.

First things first: The crime that brought Clayton Lockett to Oklahoma's death chamber did not present a hard case, as violent murders go. Lockett was sentenced to death almost 15 years ago for the murder of 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman, who he shot and then, with friends, buried alive off a country road. His guilt was not in dispute in his final set of appeals. The arguments were all focussed on the way he was going to die, about the sources and kinds of drugs that were going to kill him.

It's tedious, but if you listen to the entirety of L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling's whiny, racist tirade, caught on tape by his girlfriend V. Stiviano and then widely disseminated this weekend, you can eventually get to the root of the couple's argument. It seems Sterling was upset that Stiviano, reportedly his mistress, had taken a photo with Magic Johnson and then posted that photo to her Instagram account.

A whopping 21 percent of Americans are "extremely or very confident" the Big Bang happened. 51 percent are not too confident or not at all confident the Big Bang happened. I just... no. NO. Quit it. SIT. Bad America. Science good. Don't make us call Neil again.

Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic and Jonathan Chait of New York have, over the past week, been engaged in something equal parts duel and duet in the pixels of their respective magazine's websites. Their debate has plumbed the depths of race and racism in America, working out the questions of civic and historical responsibility in a public forum with respect and grace. As readers and citizens we are privileged to bear witness to this dialogue. They've also thrown some damn good shade at each other, so let's look at that.

Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments on a question that sounds insane: "Do corporations have religious beliefs?"

Richard Nixon was a secretive paranoid bigoted sonofabitch. But we never knew the half of it: It turns out his administration waded neck-deep into efforts to sink a war-crimes investigation against U.S. soldiers who notoriously butchered an entire village in Vietnam.

Remember 2004, when Karl Rove got a dingleberry re-elected president in part by mobilizing conservatives to vote down gay marriage in a bunch of states? Well, it's only taken a decade, but gay marriage is winning. And the pace is picking up.

Donny Reagan runs the Happy Valley Church of Jesus Christ in Johnson City, Tennessee. This weekend, he was marked as "the most racist pastor in America" for the video sermon above. But Reagan's teaching is serious business, and it can teach the uninitiated a lot about American evangelicalism's dirtiest laundry.

The presidents we celebrate today were very different men. Abraham Lincoln loved to talk and debate and write and read books and be boring. George Washington was quiet and dignified, never wasting words. Abraham Lincoln led the United States into war over slavery. George Washington actually owned slaves. And in finances—the most important aspect of American life—Abraham Lincoln was a loser, while George Washington was the richest president ever.

Good news for America's growing ranks of poor people already plagued by heart disease and diabetes: Twinkies, the industrial spooge-tube cakes that will never become stale, will now be sold by discount retailer Big Lots at up to 40% less than grocery store prices.

It's all fun and games, until some LGBT activists say your games are kinda gay.

Updated list of Justin Bieber's vices: weed, pills, cough syrup, pineapple Fanta, stripper boobs.

Snowy, icy, windy conditions rarely seen in Dixieland blew semis off roads, stranded commuters and schoolkids, and sent Southerners from Tuscaloosa to Tallahassee to Biloxi to Brunswick scurrying to hunker down for a cold, confusing Wednesday.

"Take Grinded Nig, an American Nazi band, whose album Freezer Full of N****r Heads features a song entitled Jackhammered N****r P***y." In which a Scottish reporter crosses continents to cover the depressing "global network of neo-Nazi rockers."

For more than a century, the state of Mississippi has allowed the inmates of its prison system to behave as if they are human beings capable of familial relationships, providing well-behaved prisoners the chance to briefly spend time alone with their spouses. On February 1, falling in line with prevailing trends in American justice, the state will stop allowing the visits.

The past does not become the past until we look at the old pictures in the present. Only then do we realize how weird everything was, especially in the shoddy 1980s, right when we thought The Future had arrived, what with the music videos and personal computers and scrambled soft-porn movies delivered directly to our parents' house via cable. America's only perfect website, Internet K-Hole (which has occasional/ridiculous nudity) is a functioning time machine. Use it.

It started before a friend told me that he wanted to date white women and before another friend told me “fuck white people.” It started before two 14-year-old girls on their way to a birthday party were crushed to death on the Yangju Highway, before George Bush put North Korea on the Axis of Evil, and even before either of my parents was born.

New Year's Eve: if it's not impossible to find something fun to do, it always feels like something more fun is going on somewhere else. Like — to pick a name out of thin air here — the Applebee's in Times Square, where you can attend a NYE bash this year for the low, low price of... $375!

A new poll shows that Americans feel that only one-third of other Americans can be trusted, down from fifty percent in 1972.