Thoughts from Kansas

After 8 years of having an Alfred E. Neuman impersonator in the White House, is John McCain really considering this man to be his vice presidential nominee?

Governor Bobby Jindal is not just an Alfred E. Neuman impersonator, though. He is a graduate of Brown University, where he majored in biology. He was accepted to Yale Law and Harvard Medical School, but chose to get a degree in political science on his Rhodes scholarship.

While pondering that decision, he participated in an exorcism of a fellow student. As the female student thrashed around in what Jindal described as a seizure, he applied his pre-med training by ... joining a prayer circle around her. Writing about the event later, he reported that the stricken student "claimed she had felt healed after the group prayer and can remember the sensation of being 'purified,'" not only of the "demon" which she believed caused the seizure, but also of a malignant skin cancer which had been worrying her before the exorcism.

Jindal is not satisfied replacing science with magical thinking in medical contexts, he's also lining up behind a creationist bill which just passed the Louisiana legislature. The bill would open the door to creationism in public schools, as explained admirably by the Louisiana Coalition for Science. As ThinkProgress observes, Jindal has repeated standard ID talking points, has backed teaching ID creationism in public debates, and seems to support the creationist bill, SB 733, which "effectively giv[es] school boards carte blanche to teach scientifically inaccurate ideas, just like Kansas did in 2005, when it rewrote standards to cast doubt on evolution."

Jindal ought to veto the bill, which lets the agendas of politicians and religious activists supercede the expertise of local teachers, and complicates the bureaucracy of the state's educational system all in hopes of opening a crack through which creationist teachings can trickle through. Jindal knows better, both from his scientific training at Brown University, and from the teachings of his church, whose popes have consistently affirmed the compatibility of Catholic faith and evolutionary science.