MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 Dear readers: As you may have noticed, a recent feature of many Last Days columns has been the update on the Mars Hill mess, with almost every week bringing a fresh revelation on the creepy doings of and ever-growing backlash against the Seattle-based megachurch led by Pastor Mark Driscoll, an unabashed misogynist who’s stated publicly that God created women to house penises. (Worse, we believe he meant it as a compliment.) So let’s just get this week’s Mars Hill stuff out of the way so we can move on. The source of our update: Mars Hill Church itself, which followed up last week’s announcements on the closure of several Mars Hill branches by today announcing additional layoffs and holding forth on the church’s financial challenges on the Mars Hill website. “We are now facing the most serious budget challenge in our history,” wrote church leaders. “Church budgeting is really a simple process in one respect: we are able to provide the level of staff and ministry programs that those who attend our church provide the resources for. In other words, it is ultimately our people, not our leaders, who determine how much ‘church’ we are able to provide.”

“This announcement probably doesn’t help the leaders,” writes Mars Hill beat master Warren Throckmorton at Patheos.com. “The implication of this notice is the layoffs are the fault of the people in the pews.” Bingo, and the blame-the-victim tone was so egregious that within hours Mars Hill leaders posted a clarification on their website: “The original post below failed to acknowledge that the reason for much of the decrease in attendance and giving falls to us, the leadership of Mars Hill. We shoulder the responsibility for our past sins and mistakes—which has caused many to leave.”

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 Speaking of villains getting theirs, the week continues with Ray Rice, the running back for the Baltimore Ravens who first drew serious negative attention back in February, with the release of surveillance video showing Rice dragging his fiancée’s unresponsive body out of an Atlantic City elevator, after he had punched her hard enough to render her unconscious. Following the assault, the NFL gave Rice a two-game ban, the bashed fiancée gave Rice her hand in marriage, and the earth kept spinning—until yesterday, when TMZ posted previously unseen video showing what went down inside the elevator prior to the knockout and rag-doll dragging, and it showed exactly what we'd heard: Rice punches his fiancée in the face, and she crumples to the floor, out cold. This awful video did what mere reporting of the assault could not: made the Ravens and the NFL take domestic assault seriously and take appropriate action against Ray Rice, who was yesterday let go by the Ravens and suspended indefinitely by the NFL. Which brings us to today, when the unwilling participant in this whole fiasco, fiancée-turned-wife Janay Rice, addressed the shit storm on her Instagram. "I woke up this morning feeling like I had a horrible nightmare… To make us relive a moment in our lives that we regret every day is a horrible thing." Out of this miasma of poor choices and lapsed morality and violent assault, a moral emerges: an NFL star was finally properly punished for an act of domestic violence, and all it took was publicly released video of his actual fist actually knocking a woman unconscious, after which he drags her around like it's Weekend at Bernie’s. Condolences to the kaleidoscopically aggrieved Janay Rice, who likely didn’t do the difficult work of forgiving the man who beat her senseless just to wind up married to some unemployed dude.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 In worse news, the week continues in South Carolina, with the God-incriminating saga of Timothy Ray Jones Jr., the allegedly loving father who now stands accused of killing all five of his children. As ABC News reports, the saga began back on August 28, when Timothy Jones picked up his five children—ranging in age from 1 to 8—from their respective school and day care and vanished. Jones and the kids were soon put on a missing persons database, and last Saturday, Jones was stopped at a routine vehicle checkpoint in Mississippi. "When an officer approached him, he seemed very strange, maybe a little disoriented," said Lexington County Acting Sheriff Lewis McCarty to ABC. After officers investigated further, Jones was arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated and possession of the synthetic drug "spice." Soon after that, the apprehended Jones "led police to a dirt road in Alabama where they recovered five garbage bags containing five sets of human remains that authorities believe are the missing children," reports ABC. At a news conference today, Lexington County authorities announced the bodies were scheduled for autopsy this Thursday, and that Timothy Jones now faces five counts of murder. "These children were in the car deceased in garbage bags for some period of time," says Sheriff McCarty. "He has not indicated why he did this."

>> In much better news, today the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it will donate $50 million to help fight Ebola in West Africa, where the deadliest outbreak in history has claimed more than 2,200 lives. As CNN reports, the Gates Foundation says the money will pay for drugs and upgraded medical operations in affected countries, as well as funding "work with public and private sector partners to accelerate the development of therapies, vaccines, and diagnostics that could be effective in treating patients and preventing further transmission of the disease." God bless you, Bill and Melinda Gates.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 The week continues with the 13th anniversary of the worst day in 21st-century US history (knock on wood): 9/11, the anniversary of which happened to fall on the day after President Obama announced a new plan of attack against the American-journalist-beheading terrorists of ISIS. As CNN reports, President Obama’s new strategy—announced last night in a televised speech from the White House—is to fight ISIS by launching air strikes in Iraq and Syria. And as CNN's chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto wrote today, “It is a stunning turnaround from his previous policy. This new strategy represents a turnaround by President Obama on so many levels; there are things the President refused to do that that he is now doing. He had said he would not arm Syrian rebels. He had said there would be no air strikes in Syria. Now the President says the US and its coalition will hunt down ISIS wherever it may be. But it is important to note that the president never used the word ‘war.’ He calls this a counter-terror operation.”

>>Meanwhile in Utah, today a teacher at Westbrook Elementary School in the Salt Lake City suburb of Taylorsville was rushed to the hospital after she shot herself in the faculty bathroom. Details come from the Associated Press, which reports the female teacher is “in good condition after accidentally shooting herself in the leg with a concealed firearm,” which she carried legally— “Utah law allows anyone with a concealed carry permit to wear a gun in a public school,” reports the AP—and which sent a bullet into and out of her leg. School official say no one witnessed the shooting, but faculty and students got to experience the deeply relaxing sound of gunfire in an elementary school.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 Nothing happened today, unless you count the numerous solid-gold reports of the alleged drunken brawl at an Anchorage house party involving Sarah Palin and the majority of her immediate family. As the New York Post reports, the Palin-studded shit show went down last Saturday, when Sarah and Todd Palin, along with their children, attended a birthday party for a champion snowmobile racer and reportedly wound up in the aforementioned brawl. Among the alleged highlights of the brawl: son Track Palin ripping off his shirt to punch people then strut around giving everyone the finger, husband Todd Palin getting a bloody nose, and queen Sarah Palin screeching the million-dollar question, "Don't you know who I am?" "Although there was some discrepancy as to who started the fight, Anchorage police confirmed that a fight occurred, alcohol was a factor and 'some of the Palin family members' were in attendance," reports the Post.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 Nothing happened today.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 Nothing happened today, either (unless you count an abrupt lesson in the fallibility of humans, including those humans who identify as Seahawks).

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