Long-term unemployment extension fails in Senate again, this time by 58-40. That's 58 votes in favor of extending long-term unemployment benefits, since a majority can't get anything done in Congress anymore. I'd say this is the kiss of death for Republicans running for re-election, given the popularity of unemployment benefits among even fairly conservative folk, but Republicans were a lot more obnoxious about unemployment benefits in 2010, and we remember how that turned out.
Creationist Ken Ham, fresh off his debate with Bill Nye, compares Mr. Nye either to Eve or the serpent in the garden of Eden, damned if I can tell what the hell he's saying. Seriously, though: has Ken Ham considered that the serpent is the good guy in the Gnostic version of the Garden of Even story? Just kidding: a guy like Ken Ham doesn't consider anything, and is proud of it. Even Pat Robertson would like Ken Ham to shut his yap.
National Labor Relations Board moves to shorten period between a petition for a government-supervised union election and the actual union election, which corporations hate, because they're haters. OK, they hate it because the move would give them less time to propagandize and/or harass their workers into voting the way they want them to vote, but some pro-labor analysts wonder whether it'll do any good, since corporations can just schedule more intense anti-union meetings with their workers. I don't agree -- at some point, all these meetings just interfere with the job, and managers will complain about it.
Think Progress tells us about Tunisia's new constitution, which guarantees freedoms our own Constitution doesn't even have. The Tunisian National Assembly apparently wrote environmental protections, equal pay rights, access to health care, and safe working conditions (among other things) into their nation's constitution -- even in America, we're left to infer most of these from our Constitution's text. Of course plenty of countries have plenty of terrific laws they don't or can't enforce, but this is still a happy event -- except, perhaps, for right-wing attention hounds looking for something to scream SHARIA!!!!! at.
Finally, scientists develop a bionic hand that would actually its wearer to feel sensations in his or her fingers. The hand is kind of bulky and can't currently operate without a slew of external wires, but scientists can work on that, even if the Ken Hams of the world say it offends God.