Jody Allard

Here are five things to understand about the case to help you avoid being a complete asshole about it.

The more I told him that something hurt me, the more that he did it.

Image: ABC News

Well played, Amazon. Well played.

It took five years for my daughter to be diagnosed with autism. There were dozens of red flags, beginning from the time she was about 10 months old, but her pediatrician always told me that she was fine. "She made eye contact with me," she reassured me. "She can't be on the spectrum." Besides, most children with autism, she reminded me, are boys.

"It's simple, really. If you can muddy the waters enough, and espouse concern for the rights of those poor defenseless embryos enough, what should be a simple statement about the rights of women to make choices for their own bodies becomes, instead, a convoluted argument around viability and fetal stages that puts the presumed "rights" of fetuses on an equal footing with the actual rights of adult women."

If imagining the Oregon militia huddled together for warmth now that the Feds have cut off their power fills you with Brokeback Mountain inspired nostalgia, you aren't alone.

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Boyce

I don't know what your family has told you, but it isn't normal for a brother to fondle his sisters as they sleep or while he reads them a story.

Now, you might be wondering how on Earth a teacher thought that a simple circuit board attached to a clock display was a bomb. And that would be a reasonable thing to wonder –– until you learn that the student detained was Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim whose father immigrated from Sudan.