stcynic
Posts by this author
September 1, 2006
Thanks to Ahcuah for sending me this article. Some of you may remember Dave Daubenmire, the former high school football coach who was told by the courts that he could not proselytize his players and engage in religious exercises while doing his job. He then became an evangelist and formed Pass the…
September 1, 2006
It turns out that Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia also had a secret hold on the bill, not just Ted Stevens. That is no surprise to anyone who knows Washington. Byrd is the Democratic doppelganger to the Republican Stevens. His spokesman, amusingly, claims that Byrd didn't really want to stop the…
September 1, 2006
Here's a Washington Post article about the Pentagon offering a $20 million public relations contract for a firm to collect and disseminate good news about the war in Iraq. Now I don't know or care how you feel about the war in Iraq, but the very idea of the government using PR flaks to sell their…
August 31, 2006
The court of appeals for the 2nd circuit ruled in favor of a student who wore a t-shirt calling President Bush the "Chicken Hawk in Chief" and including pictures of Bush with lines of cocaine on a mirror and a martini in his hand. After a complaint from another student, the school told the student…
August 31, 2006
The layers of hypocrisy on the part of the religious right in relation to discrimination laws are many and varied. Let's examine them.
Example #1:
In California, they're screaming bloody murder that a bill adding sexual orientation to the state's anti-discrimination laws don't have an exemption…
August 31, 2006
Mark Plus posted a comment last night that included a great idea for the perfect retort to all this Darwin leads to Hitler crap. Here it is:
And on 9/11, the World Trade Center was knocked down by creationists who hate evolution. What's your point?
August 31, 2006
The ridiculous overreaction to California adding sexual orientation to their anti-discrimination laws continues, documented, naturally, by the Worldnutdaily.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has tossed out all sexual moral conduct codes at colleges, private and Christian schools, daycare…
August 31, 2006
I haven't given out a Robert O'Brien Trophy in a while, but here's someone who really deserves one: Jill Stanek. The award is given for this breathtakingly idiotic column at the Worldnutdaily where she actually claims that legalizing the purchase of Plan B emergency contraception over the counter…
August 31, 2006
This one from South Dakota's governor, Michael Rounds. He issued an executive proclamation declaring July 24-30 as a week to pray for rain. A press release accompanying the proclamation said, "We are a strong people and all can provide help in many ways, whether actually fighting the fires,…
August 31, 2006
Dembski links to a site called Origin of Life Fairness in Pubic Schools, which seems to be trying out a new argument against the teaching of evolution in public schools. I've heard various people use this argument in the past, but no one seriously propose this as a legal argument. It's really quite…
August 30, 2006
The Sports Guy has a column about Tiger Woods and how boring he's become. To some extent, he's right. Tiger never says anything the least bit controversial. He dominates the tour in a manner no one thought possible. He's always on his best behavior and says nothing in interviews. I kind of like…
August 30, 2006
If a STACLU contributor says something in a forest with no one around to hear it, is it still ridiculous? I couldn't let a day go by without pointing out some stupid statement from them, and this one again occurs in the middle of a post on a subject where I actually agree with them on the substance…
August 30, 2006
Senator Ted Stevens' spokesman confirmed that he was indeed the senator that put a "secret hold" on a bill that would increase government transparency and help us find where our tax dollars are going to. Apparently, the memo about committing political suicide got stuck in the tubes when one of his…
August 30, 2006
The Worldnutdaily is reporting that Ken Starr, famous for his prosecution of Clinton in the 90s, has petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of a school in Alaska in the case of Frederick v Morse. The case involves a student who, on a day when students were released from school to watch the olympic…
August 30, 2006
Ahnold signed into law this week a bill that adds sexual orientation to the state's anti-discrimination statutes. Naturally, the religious right is in full freak out mode over it and making absolutely hysterical claims about it. I love the way Agape Press describes the bill:
Shock and dismay --…
August 30, 2006
A bill in the Senate that would increase government transparency and accountability has been put on "secret hold" by one or more Senators, who, by Senate rules, can pretty much kill the bill in this manner:
A bill to promote government transparency faces an uncertain future because of a far-from-…
August 30, 2006
Agape Press reports on an ACLU lawsuit against Doniphan Elementary School in Missouri for opening mandatory school assemblies with Christian prayers. This is a really, really easy case where the school is absolutely certain to lose, but Liberty Counsel, a religious right legal group, has taken the…
August 30, 2006
Remember the story of the couple in Black Jack, Missouri who were told they had to leave town because they weren't married and having three unrelated people living in a home violated zoning laws? The ACLU of Eastern Missouri filed a lawsuit against the city on behalf of the couple and the city…
August 29, 2006
Prof. Volokh has a post about a particularly good brief in a student free speech case, filed by the ACLU of Southern California and partly written by a former student of his. The case involves a student who wrote two opinion pieces for a school newspaper, one of which a "expressed unfavorable…
August 29, 2006
I swear, by the time Christmas gets here I'm gonna be on a clock tower with a high powered rifle if this crap keeps up. The Worldnutdaily has this report on Sam's Club and their horribly offensive "holiday" advertising. The American Family Association threw a hissy fit because Sam's Club's in-house…
August 29, 2006
Keith Miller, the Christian geologist whose words were so egregiously misrepresented by Paul Nelson recently, has an interesting post to the ASA listserv (the ASA is the American Scientific Affiliation, a group of predominately pro-evolution Christian scientists) about Jonathan Wells. Wells is a DI…
August 29, 2006
Radley Balko has a very interesting post about the war on terrorism and why we should not allow it to close up our free society and violate our constitutional protections. He bases this in part on an article by James Fallows in The Atlantic, which I have not read. But I find Balko's logic quite…
August 29, 2006
Not that this will surprise anyone, but even when he's right, he can't seem to avoid misrepresenting what the ACLU says or does. In this post at STACLU, he cites a column by Nat Hentoff (one of my absolute favorite writers) where Hentoff takes the ACLU to task for inconsistency in a pair of cases,…
August 29, 2006
Rob Boston of Americans United has an excellent article on the recent ruling in Iowa against public funding of InnerChange Freedom Initiative, a program of Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries. The state of Iowa has funded that program to the tune of $1.5 million over the last few years.…
August 29, 2006
Al Franken wrote a letter to the National Review after being falsely accused of never hiring minorities. It's quite an amusing letter, as expected.
August 28, 2006
From the AP:
The Alabama Democratic Party Executive Committee wants Larry Darby, whose radical views include the belief that the Holocaust did not happen, to stay out of future Democratic Party primaries.
The executive committee passed a resolution Saturday telling Darby, who lost a race for the…
August 28, 2006
Gotta love this post by Balko about a woman who embezzled $2.3 million from her boss while spending $6000 a day on lottery tickets. He cites the article about the situation as saying:
Gambling experts say lottery splurges are among the most common types of compulsive gambling.
And deadpans:
And yet…
August 28, 2006
November 7th is election day around the country, with many Senatorial and Congressional seats up for grabs. But in Ohio, there is also a crucial battle going on for seats on the state board of education. In particular, Deborah Owens Fink, the primary force behind the push to get ID into public…
August 28, 2006
Dembski has a post up at Uncommon Descent about the series of critiques at PT of Wells' new book. He quotes an email from one of his anonymous colleagues:
Like fresh meat tossed into a pit of jackels, Jonathan Wells' newest book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design…
August 28, 2006
Of all the contributors at STACLU, I don't think I've ever fisked Bosun before, but this post is positively begging for it. He credulously repeats the standard religious right rhetoric about this being a Christian nation and, absurdly, cites the Mayflower Compact as evidence. He begins:
This was a…