Tim Minchin’s live performance of Woody Allen Jesus at the Coronet in London, November 2012.

I am just amused.

One of the most comical parts of the Dan Rather/Bush National Guard records fiasco came when Rather tried to shift gears after it was finally definitively clear that the records were bogus. Rather did one segment after this became clear where he basically said, ‘Yep, the fact that these were forgeries is a dramatic new turn in the story. And we’re on it!’ Note the single quotes; I’m paraphrasing.

When your story ends up being based on bogus information, that’s not a new development in the story. It means your story was wrong. And you need to say you made a mistake.

More: The Latest Turn of the Screw

CNN’s Howard Kurtz, who knows a little bit about being in the line of media fire for his own work, offered ABC News’s embattled Jon Karl the chance to defend himself on Reliable Sources Sunday. Karl, of course, is in hot water because his “scoop” revealing that the White House tampered with Benghazi talking points relied on doctored email leaked by House Republican sources. That’s not my charge, by the way: CBS’s Major Garrett reported Friday that House GOP staffers peddled the doctored email to him and other reporters.

Karl didn’t appear on CNN, but he gave Kurtz a statement which is brazen and baffling.

Clearly, I regret the email was quoted incorrectly and I regret that it’s become a distraction from the story, which still entirely stands. I should have been clearer about the attribution. We updated our story immediately.

-Jonathan Karl, ABC News Chief White House Correspondent

More: Jon Karl Makes Things Worse

Only 300 points now separate the #1 surfer in the world (Adriano de Souza) and the #3 surfer in the world (Mick Fanning). And this guy, Jordy Smith, is right there between them. And between tubes at Kirra, turns at Bells and airs in Rio, he didn’t get there by surfing safe.

More: JORDY SMITH WINS BILLABONG RIO PRO

Jordy Smith. Photo: Smorgio/ASP

Very good commentary on the AP scandal by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.

“He was misled and I don’t know how you can stand by a story if the story is wrong,” Shuster argued. “He could have put this email out and said, ‘I’ve been debriefed on the email from a Republican congressional source and here’s what they tell me.’ Instead, ABC News said that they ‘obtained’ the emails and Jonathan Karl made it seem if he had read them directly. So, the story was wrong, the attribution was wrong. And he’s still not characterizing the source as a Republican source, even though other news organizations are already doing that.”

“The story was not wrong,” Rubin disagreed.

“Jennifer, it was wrong,” Shuster replied. “Because the overall Republican point here was that the Obama administration was trying to protect the State Department — the Obama administration was trying to protect the State Department and that the White House was somehow trying to characterize the talking points or change the talking points in order to minimize political damage. That Republican idea is just flat out wrong!”

More: Jennifer Rubin Demands CNN ‘Mute’ David Shuster for ‘Media Matters Talking Points’

So apparently if Jennifer Rubin can’t defend her position she simply tries to mute her opponent. Seems like a loss to me.

Editor’s Note: The controversial fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM-5 (a.k.a. the manual formerly known as “DSM-V”) was just released - after a 14-year revision process to update its criteria for defining mental disorders. This opinion is from the former taskforce chairman and leader of previous DSM editions.

Nature takes the long view, mankind the short. Nature picks diversity; we pick standardization. We are homogenizing our crops and homogenizing our people. And Big Pharma seems intent on pursuing a parallel attempt to create its own brand of human monoculture.

Turning difference into illness was among the great strokes of marketing genius in our time.

With an assist from an overly ambitious psychiatry, all human difference is being transmuted into chemical imbalance meant to be treated with a handy pill. Turning difference into illness was among the great strokes of marketing genius accomplished in our time.

All the great characters in myths, novels, and plays have endured the test of time precisely because they drift so colorfully away from the mean. Do we really want to put Oedipus on the couch, give Hamlet a quick course of behavior therapy, start Lear on antipsychotics?

I think not. Human diversity has its purposes or it would not have survived the evolutionary rat race. Our ancestors made it because the tribe combined a wide variety of talents and inclinations. There were leaders high on their own narcissism and followers content enough to be dependent on them; people who were paranoid enough to sniff out hidden threats, compulsive enough to get the job done, and exhibitionistic enough to attract mates. Perhaps the healthiest individuals were those who best balanced all these traits somewhere near the golden mean, but the best bet for the group was to have outliers always ready to step up to the plate as the particular occasion demanded.

More: Let’s Fight Big Pharma’s Crusade to Turn Eccentricity Into Illness

Why I think the man is right-

CDC data shows increase in kids with ADHD

Data from a new CDC report, which was analyzed by “The New York Times,” shows 11% of all school-age children have received an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder diagnosis at some point in their lives - a 16% increase since 2007.

Nearly one in five boys in high school has been diagnosed with ADHD, and nearly two-thirds of children with a current diagnosis of ADHD are taking medication for it, like Ritalin or Adderall.

In this segment with Wolf Blitzer, Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains that the self-reported survey may not accurately indicate the number of children with ADHD.

The crux of the issue is that medical records weren’t used and no patients were directly examined. The method was to call parents and ask them questions about their children, which can be an unreliable way to gather scientific data.

A Travis County district court judge ruled this week that a Houston-based tea party group is not a nonprofit corporation as it claims, but an unregistered political action committee that illegally aided the Republican Party through its poll-watching efforts during the 2010 elections.

The summary judgment by Judge John Dietz upheld several Texas campaign finance laws that had been challenged on constitutional grounds by King Street Patriots, a tea party organization known for its “True the Vote” effort to uncover voter fraud.

Houston Chronicle story

Having failed twice before, Rep. Frank Hoffmann, R-West Monroe, is promoting another stealth creationist bill, House Bill 116, which “provides relative to textbooks and other instructional materials for [public] elementary and secondary schools.”When Rep. Gene Reynolds, D-Dubberly, expressed concern that HB116 could permit adoption of controversial books on evolution and other subjects (Advocate May 13), he was exactly right.

Hoffmann responded, “That is not what this is about. I guarantee you that is not my purpose in bringing this act.” The facts show otherwise. Enabling school boards to buy creationist books is precisely Hoffmann’s purpose, as I documented two years ago at the Louisiana Coalition for Science (LCFS) website: lasciencecoalition.org

More: Letter: HB116 Promotes Creationism