Pennsylvania is the 26th most religious state according to the following Pew Poll:

Which of the 50 states has the most religious population? Since there are many ways to define “religious,” there is no single answer to this question. But to give a sense of how the states stack up, the Pew Research Center’s Forum on  Religion & Public Life used polling data to rank them on four measures: the importance of religion in people’s lives, frequency of attendance at worship services, frequency of prayer and absolute certainty of belief in God. Mississippi stands out on all four, and several other Southern states also rank very high on the measures.

via Pew Forum: How Religious Is Your State?

Where’s yours?

People are killing rich granny with Estate Tax Death Panels Or just simply allowing your loved ones to have the easiest time with a life  lived.

“I have two clients on life support, and the families are struggling with whether to continue heroic measures for a few more days,” says Joshua Rubenstein, a lawyer with Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP in New York. “Do they want to live for the rest of their lives having made serious medical decisions based on estate-tax law?”

Currently, the tax applies to about 5,500 taxpayers a year. So, on average, at least 15 people die every day whose estates would benefit from the the taxs lapse.

The macabre situation stems from 2001, when Congress raised estate-tax exemptions, culminating with the taxs disappearance next year. However, due to budget constraints, lawmakers didnt make the change permanent. So the estate tax is due to come back to life in 2011 — at a higher rate and lower exemption.

To make it easier on their heirs, some clients are putting provisions into their health-care proxies allowing whoever makes end-of-life medical decisions to consider changes in estate-tax law. “We have done this at least a dozen times, and have gotten more calls recently,” says Andrew Katzenstein, a lawyer with Proskauer Rose LLP in Los Angeles.

Of course, plenty of taxpayers themselves are eager to live to see the new year. One wealthy, terminally ill real-estate entrepreneur has told his doctors he is determined to live until the law changes.

[...]

The situation is causing at least one person to add the prospect of euthanasia to his estate-planning mix, according to Mr. Katzenstein of Proskauer Rose. An elderly, infirm client of his recently asked whether undergoing euthanasia next year in Holland, where it’s legal, might allow his estate to dodge the tax.

His answer: Yes.

via Rich Cling to Life to Beat Tax Man – WSJ.com.

I guess its ok when your family “death panels up” for money.

Breckenridge, Colorado based artist John Fellows is interviewed about his craft by FuelTV.

Full Disclosure: I’ve known John since I played rugby with him at Drexel and with Schuylkill River Exiles RFC here in Philadelphia. I took over a sublet from him about 5 or 6 years ago and prints he left behind were always up on the walls.