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08:59 AM - ACLU vs. Boy Scouts Why is the ACLU "attacking" the Boy Scouts? Simply put, because they believe the American government (at every level) ought to cease subsidizing the BSA's longstanding pratice of religious and sexual discrimination against minority groups such as homosexuals and infidels. As ACLU Executive Director Linda Hills put it, "The Boy Scouts can't have it both ways. If they truly are a private religious organization, free to engage in any form of discrimination they choose, then they are not entitled to a government subsidy. Tax dollars should not be spent to promote intolerance." Perhaps conservatives such as Steve Boggess would like to make the case for having substantial federal, state, and municipal subsidies to private religious groups, but it will be difficult to square such an argument either with existing federal, state, and municipal antidiscrimination laws or with the traditional conservative vision of minimal government in general and highly circumscribed government interference in the marketplace in particular. Far from being "adamant in their goal of erasing God from not only this privately funded organization" the ACLU is trying to ensure that truly religious organizations remain truly private and hence free from both government subsidy and interference. The BSA is quasi-private and quasi-religious, yet they expect the American government to continue publicly funding their activities despite their flagrant disregard of uncounted civil rights laws. You can have the cake or you can eat it, folks. Take your pick. (
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December 29, 2005
02:36 PM - Tanking on the Right Rightank thrice misconstrues the nature of separationist opposition to Judge Alito. Firstly, the AU report does not object to Alito’s “willingness to protect the rights of religious majorities in the public square” but rather his willingness to disregard the rights of religious minorities in the public square. I’ll admit that this is a difficult balancing act, but Alito’s view is unfairly unbalanced, favoring majoritarian religious expressions trumping the rights of religious minorities to freely exercise religion at a time, place, and manner of their own choosing. Free exercise ought to be an individual right, not a majority privilege. Moreover, Alito does not treat “religious speech as protected by the Constititution instead of forbidden,” rather, he treats only the majority view as protected, and hopes to squelch the free exercise of religious minorities in public schools by establishing majoritarianism. Rightank, like Alito in Child Evangelism, makes no “attempt to distinguish between official school activities involving school personnel, on the one hand, and private, after-school religious meetings, on the other.” The former is a form of religious establishment, the latter a form of free exercise. Finally, AU (unlike Justice O’Connor) has never claimed that the First Amendment guarantees “equality of religious expression.” They have not attempted to mandate anything resembling an equal time doctrine for religious minorities in the secular public square generally or the public schools in particular. Quite the opposite, AU prefers to leave religious education to the home and the church, just as the Founders intended. Recall that laudatory “religious freedom that the Founding Fathers intended to bestow upon the American people” belonged properly to the people rather than a coercive government bueracracy. Seeking to empower the latter at the expence of the former is not at all unapologetically conservative; contrapuntally, it is anti-conservative apologetics. (
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December 28, 2005
02:19 PM - Pocketbook Politics WorldNetDaily posted up a hit piece early this morning, largely based on Congressman John Hostettler's recent podcast promoting H.R.2679, a piece of legislation specifically intended to financially cripple civil rights groups defending against religious establishment, such as the ACLU and Americans United. The podcast starts off with an announcer boldly claiming that under current law, a public official could be made to pay the legal expenses resulting from a lawsuit brought against him for publicly echoing Dickens' famous line "God bless us, every one." When asked whether this is an exaggeration, Hostettler answers in the negative and goes on to claim that "public officials are scared to death" to recognize "our Christian roots" for fear of a lawsuit, but fails to back up his claim with any actual cases in which officials have been personally censured or fined for doing so, despite the annual presidential and gubernatorial practice of officially declaring a day of prayer, very often with specific references to the Abrahamic religious traditions. Hostettler's bill would amend the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Act of 1976, which allows for the remuneration of plaintiff's attorneys who win cases for clients deprived of constitutional civil rights. Hostettler characterizes this law as having been perverted to protect "freedom from religion" a right which he claims can be "found nowhere in the Constitution." As an example of this alleged abuse, the congressman cites Lee v. Weisman, the case in which the Supreme Court prohibited schools from turning secular graduation ceremonies into religious baccalaureate services, and the ICLU's attempts to enforce this decision by forewarning school districts and officials that they will sue (and most likely win) in the event that that the schools decide to deliberately ignore the high court in this matter. As a result of the aforementioned federal law, the plaintiff's attorney's fees would be paid for by the school district if they lost the case. Hostettler characterizes this remuneration of citizens for legal fees incurred in the defense of their constitutional rights as "extortion," because of the possibility that school officials may have to pay out of pocket on account of what he calls the "evolution of the 19th century civil rights code." Oddly enough, he provides no historical examples of such abuse to support his serious and oft repeated contention of extortion, though he does mention a case filed against Gibson county in which the defendants eventually prevailed in their efforts to maintain a sectarian monument on state property. Although the county itself was explicitly named as the defendant (rather than any individual officials) the congressman claims that the county commissioners may have been held personally liable for the plaintiff’s attorney's fees if the county had lost the case. Thusly, a factual counterexample is transformed into a cautionary example by means of a counterfactual -- and we thought plaintiff’s lawyers were tricky! It strikes me a particularly odd that the Congressman cannot come up with a single case in which an individual was legally required to pay the ACLU’s fees, since he himself claims that the “anecdotes are legion” in which officials were legally bound to discontinue endorsement of religion. Could it be that the argument from personal extortion is merely smokescreen? (
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December 23, 2005
11:45 PM - Munich After viewing portions of a television documentary on the Mossad's efforts to mete out vengeance (i.e. forcefully impose deterrence) upon those responsible for the Munich massacre, I was most eager to see such events fictionalized in feature film. I reasoned that such compelling events could not fail to produce a masterwork in the hands of a critically acclaimed director such as Spielberg. That said, my only reservation going into this movie was that the director might engage in some fairly contrived and heavy-handed moralizing, as he has been known to do in his previous efforts at serious film. Recall the Krakow ghetto liquidation scene in Schindler's List, during which as SS officer sits down at a piano and bangs out a few bars of Bach's Prelude to English Suite #2 in A Minor: "Ist das Bach?" "Nein. Mozart." Turns out SS officers are not quite so cultured as they pretend to be. Now, despite the incontrovertible grandeur of the work taken as a whole, I balked at scenes such as this where it seemed Spielberg was driving home a fine point (i.e. coexistence of lofty civilization and base barbarism in a single person and an entire people) with a railroad sledge. My fears were realized all too well, as the movie provides us with a fairly awkwardly contrived scene in which the Israeli protagonist and his Palestinian antagonist meet and talk in a stairwell between assassination attempts, each making the case for their respective causes. Matters of alleged moral equivalence aside (we utilitarians have every right to shove them aside when discussing a mere artifact of popular culture) this discussion has the feel of the sledge. If only Jews and Arabs could meet and dialogue, they would finally "give peace a chance" and thereby put an end to an intergenerational blood feud. I'm reaching for a tissue and tuning my guitar for another round of kum-bah-yah. (
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December 22, 2005
11:04 AM - Ben Franklin a Christian? I do not know how they vet speakers over at the Pew Forum but they ought not be propagating the rumor (among others) that Franklin was a believing Christian in light of his well documented thoroughgoing deism. (
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December 21, 2005
03:10 PM - Incoherent Babble (indeed) Props to the ACLU for being an equal-opportunity offender this holiday season, going after the old school tradition of celebrating a pre-Christian seasonal miracle which is allegedly part of our nation's proud Judeo-Christian heritage. I suppose that the executive director of the Tennessee ACLU (Ms. Weinberg) might well be a Jewess herself, and if so, make that mad props. You have to love someone who insists on religious neutrality even when their own religious tradition is the one getting deferential treatment from the State. (
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December 20, 2005
11:45 PM - Intelligently Designed Jurisprudence Judge Jones handed down the Kitzmiller decision earlier today, chocked full groundbreaking legal reasoning which will doubtlessly enrage the Intelligent Design (read: taxpayer-supported Sunday School) movement: (
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December 19, 2005
02:12 AM - Parting shot Rep. Slaughter closed her remarks by deploring the abuse of process and an apparent "plot" to slip these bills through in the dead of night, when "we know that nobody's going to be listening to this, not even those that love us most." Hey, Louise, I'm watching, and I've no love for the lot of you. :p Tags:U.S. House 02:00 AM - The hand that feeds me Finally, the House is finally getting around to the meat of the matter, the defense authorization bill itself. Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) leads off with a little speech about the DoD (and its relationship to Mom and Apple Pie) and then goes into some of the mid-level overview of the appropriations bill. Oooh, this is going to be good. Rep. Louis Slaughter (D-NY) fires across the bow, blasting the lack of deliberation over the bill’s details and the excessive waiving of procedural rules (this is becoming a running theme tonight). She goes on to condemn torture and flaunt her ignorance of the American use of torture in previous global conflicts. Ah well… Rep. Michael Conaway (R-TX) speaks out in favor of drilling ANWR in an "environmental sensitive and responsible manner" for the sake of alleviating the trade deficit. He is probably not taking into account the fact that said reserves become more valuable every year as the more plentiful oilfields around the world are gradually drilled down. Rep. David Obey is going off on the extraneous (non-DoD) bits of the bill, including ANWR and pharm tort reform. He condemns the corruption of due deliberative process by “a couple of musclemen” in the Senate. Preach it, Dave. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) characterizes the provision for drilling in the “ahhhtic” nation wildlife refuge as a “can’t pass” measure added to a “must pass” measure, in order to provide an early Xmas gift to the GOP’s oil buddies. He goes on to make the inevitable “wars over oil” connection, which does not sound so silly in the midst of debating an oil drilling provision in a defense appropriations bill. Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) roundly condemns the indemnification of pharmacuetical companies added to the bill at the 11th hour. Rep. Jim Morgan (D-VA) heatedly objects to the false dilemma “between supporting the troops and protecting the environment” and the 11th hour addition of the ANWR provision to the defense appropriations bill. Rep. Richard Pombo is showing off his shortsightedness regarding energy policy. He seems to think that we ought to drill our fields now so as to give oil-rich nations even economic more power over us in the long term. Go, go, GOP! The pattern is now set. The right side of the aisle defends the oil industry and the ANWR provision as a matter of national security, while the left side argues an abuse of process and the environment. I'm looking forward to hearing some new points. Technorati Tags: House of Represenatives, Department of Defense 01:19 AM - Unanimous Consent and its Discontents Rep. David Obey (D-WI) just started going off on the matter of whether there may be an adeqate deliberation on these last minute bills currently getting rammed through the House. Rep. Richard Pombo is getting defensive. Good stuff. Now Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) is characterizing this early morning session and the upcoming deliberation over the defense appropriations bill as one of the most preposterous situations the House has ever been in. Now I'm awake. 12:50 AM - HR 1815 The blogsphere has been all abuzz this evening over Mr. Bush's latest speech, despite the fact that it produced nothing truly novel either in terms of form or content. Come the wee hours of the night, though, a vastly more substantive discussion was afoot as the U.S. House of Representatives met for an after midnight session regarding all manner of last minute authorization bills. Generally and with few exceptions (e.g. Rep. Kucinich) Congresspersons on both sides of the floor patted themselves on the back for getting through a bill which strongly funds the DoD in general and the Iraqi efforts in particular, while requiring certain safeguards respecting the use of coercive interrogation techniques. After the bouts of self-congradulatory auto-adulation came the more critical and interesting bits. Rep. John Spratt warned against an There were a few other criticisms, mostly regarding process and timeline, but to give the men and women in harms way what they need to carry out their duty. (
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December 17, 2005
12:34 PM - While you were sleeping Somebody please explain to me why so-called liberals (barring the occasional notable exception) are lining up to mock Iraqi elections while alleged conservatives are giving tyranny the finger? I thought the left was supposed to protect civil liberties while the right tries to suppress them. Did I miss something, or has our traditional conceptual model of left/right political dichotomy failed us (again)? (
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December 16, 2005
12:00 AM - Democracy in the Heartland Avidly watching the 24-hour news cycle winding down this evening, I was filled with cheer to see the bulk of the Iraqi people peacefully taking hold of their own destiny. The folks over a Homeland Stupidity and Hammer of Truth are crying humbug, however, over the unfortunate fact that we Americans have fewer geniune democratic options here in the States (particularly here in Oklahoma) than the Iraqis proudly sporting their newly purpled fingers. Both bloggers make good and necessary points, but I'm afraid that they are less than fully diagnostic. The root problem in American democracy is not the (admittedly serious) issue of ballot access but rather our archaic "one candidate per voter and winner-take-all" system of democracy, which has been historically shown to lead fairly straightforwardly to two dominant coalitions built upon an emergent "lesser of evils" psychology which motivates a rational electorate to vote against their worst fears rather than in favor of their best hopes. (
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December 15, 2005
10:41 PM - Welcome to democracy, bitch! Seriously, though, I've been quite encouraged by the Iraqi voting roundup. Most of my peacenik liberal friends had hoped (for reasons unbeknownst to me) to keep the warmongering Baathists firmly enthroned in Baghdad, but I doubt whether this remains a live option, even if my comrades in arms are ordered to pull out sooner rather than later. Baathist insurgents' and Islamist terrorists' fondest hopes for an early withdrawl notwithstanding, it would seem that the U.S. is "staying the course" and Iraq is starting to chart its own. Naturally, this raises the question of when the U.S. troops should begin to withdraw in earnest, leaving the Iraqi people to their own devices. Although the answer seems blindingly obvious, I've yet to hear it mentioned in our copious mainstream media coverage of the issue. Here it is - WE LEAVE WHENEVER THE IRAQIS TELL US TO DO SO. Simple, eh? Now that they have decided upon their first federal Constitution (less than perfect, but huge step forward) and their first representative government thereunder, it is rightfully the place of their democratic leadership to tell our troops when to skedaddle. To leave any sooner would be to abdicate our moral responsibility towards the increasingly free and brave people of Iraq who strive against the dual forces of Baathist insurgency and Islamist terrorism. Put simply in terms of mudane cliché - "You break it, you bought it." (
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December 14, 2005
08:55 AM - Mr. Plow Conservatives generally call for less government and more personal responsibility. Religious biases aside, this would imply that private entities ought not be entitled to any government largesse without so much as paying into the system. Oddly, though, such fundamental conservative principles seem to go right out the window when the subject of said largesse happens to be houses of worship. (
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December 13, 2005
11:45 PM - Another Offensive in the War on Christmas One of the most popular and relevant myths bandied about by conservative Christians this time of year (aside from the claim that the winter holiday season was originally rooted in Christian history and theology) is the dangerous conflation of the legal notion of government neutrality towards religious establishments and the commerical notion of reaching the broadest possible market by refraining from giving offense to religious minorities. The rule of law prevents the state from either promoting or hindering religious faith, and is strongly supported by the likes of the ACLU and AU, while the latter notion is merely commerical common sense. There is a wide gulf between disestablishmentarian and separationist legal principles laid down and elaborated upon for the sake of preventing a sectarian power struggle within the government on the one hand, and the commonsense principle of business which avoids insulting the customer. For the sake of waging an effective war on (behalf of) Christmas, it is incumbent upon the defenders of all that is good and/or holy to make it clear exactly which of these battlefronts they intend to target in any given rhetorical volley. On the commerical front, we have the following excerpt from Bill O'Reilly's show: The basic idea here is to get Christian shoppers in enough of a tizzy that they will faithfully boycott any stores which promote a more inclusive approach to the holiday season. This is a fundamentally sound idea, if one accepts the notion that Christians ought to influence the culture by promoting an intolerance of religious tolerance, that is, religious intolerance. It is difficult to see how this squares with the Golden Rule, considering that none of the evangelicals I've met would be at all comfortable shopping at a megamart with a massive Ramadan banner hanging out front, however wonderful the selection and pricing might be. (
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December 12, 2005
02:51 PM - Family Bed No More (II) Long ago I wrote that we were giving up the family bed but starting tonight I think we actually might actually do so. Happy 5th birthday, Cæl Boo! 09:55 AM - Anti-ChristMas A bit like shitting in one's Cheerios, is it not? Tags: War on Christmas, Faux News (
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December 11, 2005
04:16 PM - Narnia as Evangelism I got to disagree with Chris Heard regarding the allegedly Janus-faced nature of Disney's marketing scheme. Lion is at heart a retelling of the ancient pre-Christian myth of the dying/rising god/man martyr/hero which touches deeply the minds and hearts of all who care to listen and feel. As such, it certainly ought to be as mass-marketed to everyone, regardless of their particular religious affiliation. If, instead, we take a narrower view and characterize it strictly as allegorical evangelion, then it ought to be mass-marketed for the sake of Christian evangelism. Either way, Disney ought not focus exclusively on the Passion crowd. (
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December 10, 2005
09:02 AM - Narnia With the possible exception of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, no movies have ever quite managed to faithfully capture the magic of the novels of my youth. For a long time, I'd pretty much written off the possibility. Every previous screen rendition of the Chronicles lived down to my low expectations, and while the new movie has been given fairly good press, I was nevertheless surprised and truly awed by how well The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe translated to the big screen. When Lucy (the true heroine of the story, for the uniniated) stepped through a wardrobe into another world, we were drawn right in with her. I've got to commend the producers for their bang-on casting of this crux role, which must have been a fairly tricky job considering they were constrained to remarkably young British actresses with charming smiles. There is much else that the got right here, most particularly stretching out just the right bits of the rather slender original novel to create the impression of an epic adventure. Not an easy feat, that. Of course some critics will doubtlessly say this movie leans too heavily on the Lord of the Rings for inspiration, and perhaps rightly so, but epic is as epic does, after all - certain techniques are best for conveying certain impressions. More to come... (
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December 09, 2005
02:22 PM - ID v. UC Thanks to Chris Heard without whom I may never have heard of the Christian schools complaint against the University of California. To return the favor, I will attempt to answer his question about the current legal status of the suit. According to a document currently existing online only as part of Google's cache, there will be a hearing of a motion to dismiss before the Honorable S. James Otero this coming Monday at 10am. Oddly, though, nothing is slated on the judge's official calendar. So, um, stay tuned. 10:06 AM - What’s in a Report Card? MikeGene has attempted a simple test of the hypothesis that "excellent science standards in an educational system will produce students with a better understanding of science" by comparing state ACT scores to state ratings from the Fordham Foundation's State of State Science Standards report. While I truly appreciate any effort to "approach the problem like scientists" this analysis fails to address the actual problem at hand... ...that is, the concerns expressed by some leaders "that the failure to produce students well-prepared in science is undermining the country’s production of scientists and engineers and putting the nation’s economic future in jeopardy." As it happens, our "country’s production of scientists and engineers" draws quite heavily (though not exclusively) upon those students who get rather higher than average science ACT scores, the key metric which MikeGene used as his benchmark. Mean ACT scores are correlated with (and causally dependant upon) various socioeconomic factors apart from formal education, but the real concern here not how average students are doing, but rather what particular conception of science is being systematically inculcated into those children (like myself) who ate science for breakfast, aced the ACT science test, and went on to major in hard sciences and obtain advanced degrees in science or engineering. The kids who remained awake, alert, and attentive in science classes are those most directly affected by state science standards and curricula, most especially by the results of glaring omissions such as those of my home state. 12:00 AM - Kansan Disinformation According to an AP article supposedly detailing the results of a study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, "Kansas has the nation’s worst science standards for public schools." Actually, that dubious distinction went to Alaska with a mere 19% on their report card. Kansas, by contrast, received 65% on their 2005 standards draft, roundly trouncing my home state of Oklahoma. Once again (and even more vigorously than usual) the mainstream media raises the question of whether they are incorporating personal biases into their work or else merely incompetent. Could it be that journalism is skewed by laughing stock? Why are we focusing on Kansas, anyway? It is of note that Kansas was reevaluated and given an "F" only after a final redaction of both the state science standards and the Institute's rating thereof: Similarly, the AP article claims that Kansas "new definition" of science "avoids limiting explanations to natural ones." If this were true, it would be a scathing indictment, indeed. Here is how the standards actually characterize the practice of science: As to whether supernatural explanations of the natural world (e.g. ID) may be tested against the natural world, I'll leave that as an excercise to the reader. (
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December 08, 2005
08:20 PM - Crossing the Line When should separationists refrain from legal action against a religious display on government property which enjoys widespread popular support? According to Skeptico, whenever the display enjoys "very little support among the public, will make atheists look mean and foolish, and is likely to provoke a backlash." So, um, pretty much every time? 09:19 AM - Red Crystal During NPR's segment, Paul Walker, a former director of the international Red Cross, stated that one problem lay "within Israel" where the "relief society there felt unable to use the cross or the crescent as a symbol" and thus humanitarian workers were denied the protections of international law afforded to those willing to use the other emblems. He later downplayed the religious significance of the existing symbols, "The cross was never meant to be a religious Christian cross, it's the reverse of the Swiss flag." However, whether the Swiss flag was originally based on the symbol of the Arma Christi or the Theban Legion of the patron saints of Zurich, it is nevertheless rooted in ancient Christian symbology. The true believer will no doubt question how and why irreligious symbology is necessary to humanitarian efforts. The answer, according to the Swiss foreign minister, is the need for a clearly neutral "instrument for the protection of both civilian and military health services on the field of battle" wherever the current symbols "are not sufficiently recognised and respected." To cite perpetually war-torn SW Asia as but one example, Islamists often regard the Red Cross as a "Crusader" symbol, Westerners tend to see the crescent as an Islamic or Arab national symbol (or both), while Israel's primary aid society has kept to the sidelines of the Red Cross / Red Crescent movement on account of an understandable unwillingness to adopt either Christian or Muslim symbology. Despite the obvious necessity for a universal and neutral symbology available to humanitarians of any (a)political or (ir)religious orientation, it is only a matter of time before the oversized talking heads in our right-wing media start to blast the international community for adopting such a symbol. They will, no doubt, place the blame firmly on the scourge of "secular humanism" allegedly running rampant across the globe (other than Red State America and Red Cresent nations) and waging war against the Cross, Christians, Christmas and all that is holy. Technorati Tags: (
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December 07, 2005
08:07 PM - Days of Infamy Today is one of the several days when we Americans honor our fallen comrades, and one of two days of infamy when we recall devastating surprise attacks upon our homeland. The magnitudes of the attacks were roughly equal, but they may be distinguished in a few ways. Formerly, the enemy flew a national flag, presented a military target, and was formally allied with an coalition of other expansionistic national powers. The more recent attacks lacked all of these characteristics, though Al Qaeda and other Islamic jihadists have been informally allied with various Arab nations on occasion, e.g. Saddam's support of Palestinian terrorists. Technorati Tags: (
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December 06, 2005
10:32 AM - Sound familiar? Ran across a disturbingly prescient passage at a friend's blog while lying in bed last night: Ein Volk, ein Gott, ein Weltanschauung! (
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December 05, 2005
03:38 PM - Cultural tyranny curdles cheer Gerard Baker (a reporter so expert on American culture as to hold the exalted position of "US Editor" at the Times) has recently complained about alleged "attempt[s] at taking religion out of Christmas" such as when Boston recently refused to continue a time-honored tradition of officially elevating Christian seasonal traditions over those of other religions. Like most conservatives here in the States, Mr. Baker utterly fails to see the distinction between private exercise of religious freedom and official imposition or endorsement of a particular religious tradition. As a Briton, he perhaps may be excused from an expectation of familiarity with the inner workings of our Bill of Rights, but as a journalist covering the U.S. such an oversight is negligent at best and disingenuous at worst. It should be made clear to the English (and those Americans as yet unfamiliar with their own distinguished history) that the City of Boston’s refusal to elevate Christianity over other religious traditions is not in any sense “taking religion out of Christmas” but rather taking religion out of government, the logical end result of a remarkable principle that a few enlightened thinkers on this side of the pond originally implemented in order to avert the perpetual religious and ethnic strife which has bathed Europe in blood for centuries. Britons, in particular, ought never forget the bloodbaths their ancestors perpetuated over the matter of which sect ought to enjoy the sanction of the crown. Fie and shame upon this Englishman who mocks our noble American values of individual religious liberty and government neutrality towards all sects, and may the Church of England continue to sink under the rising tide apostasy which it so richly deserves. Technorati Tags: (
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December 04, 2005
12:34 PM - Preach on!
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December 03, 2005
05:12 AM - Prince of Peace v. Sword of Truth According to the Christian Peacemaker Teams’ website, just prior to the war against the Baathist regime, they journeyed to Iraq in order to “support the UN Weapons Inspection Program as an alternative to war” and “expose the injustice and deaths from the US-led economic sanctions.” Had they prevailed at the time, not only would the maniacal former dictator (currently in the dock) and his former minions (currently waging insurgency) continue to this day in their established pattern of exploitation, domination, torture, rape, and murder of the Iraqi people, but they would even now be reconstituting their defunct weapons programs, a task greatly eased by the lifting of international sanctions. The U.N. inspection process, of course, would remain as toothless as ever. Bearing this in mind, consider the unintentional but unarguable irony of the following statement issued by the CPT after the kidnappings: Update - December 06, 2005 Accordingly to a sympathetic blog, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades have asked "the kidnappers to release those hostages in order for them to go back and stand by the side of justice and peace, and by the side of the persecuted nations, notwithstanding the actions of their governments who are directly responsible for all the violence in the region." Talk about strange bedfellows! Christian pacifists and Islamic militants have united against the American religious right's backing of the Iraqi secular left. Mind-buggering stuff... Technorati Tags: (
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December 02, 2005
12:02 PM - KU vs. academic freedom WaPo reported today that the planned University of Kansas course on "Intelligent Design and Creationism" has been scuttled because Professor Paul Mirecki was less than flattering towards the anti-scientific "fundies" who have been working overtime to replace science with mythology in Kansas and across the nation. Apparently, by openly proclaiming his intent to piss off the religious right, the esteemed "Evil Dr. P" stepped on the wrong toes, resulting in a reactionary backlash and ultimately the cancellation of a class which would have (at long last) treated the mythology of intelligent design as such. It is sadly unsurprising that teaching creationist mythology as science is less controversial in Kansas than teaching creation science as mythology. One must wonder, though, whether the folks at KU will ever provide anything more than lip service to the concept of academic freedom. How pathetic. More info: Technorati Tags: (
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December 01, 2005
04:16 PM - “Holiday” Trees People do not generally enjoy being marginalized, but I suppose some conservatives have difficulty understanding what it would be like to be in a geniunely marginalized minority, persecution complexes notwithstanding. Rightank wrote: Technorati Tags: |
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( Please forgive my vulgarity. If it helps assauge any ruffled feathers, I was just quoting Jon Stewart's asessment of today's Big News... )
I've been hearing much unmerrymaking over the so-called 
I heard a fascinating