stcynic
Posts by this author
June 23, 2006
I knew that being on the STACLU mailing list would be a source of much amusement and it didn't take long to pay off. The second email I got from them referred to a lawsuit filed by a STACLU "supporter" by the name of Bobby Wightman-Cervantes. He's filing a RICO suit against...well, practically…
June 23, 2006
The House Judiciary Committee held hearings yesterday on HR 2679, the "Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005." This bill is being pushed heavily by the religious right because it would prohibit the awarding of legal fees to successful plaintiffs in establishment clause cases. Currently, if you…
June 22, 2006
Some time ago, I posted an essay showing why John Lofton, his website The American View, and the Constitution Party are dyed-in-the-wool theocrats bent on destroying our liberty. I posted it both here and at Positive Liberty. Today I got this comment from Lofton at PL:
Call me, please, Mr. Brayton…
June 22, 2006
Our daily roundup of the absurdity at StopTheACLU starts with this post about the ACLU filing suit to stop government censorship of a book in school libraries.
While I cannot disagree with the Simon's anti-censorship position, I also cannot keep from enjoying the irony in light of their own…
June 22, 2006
As predicted, the Knicks have fired Larry Brown and team President Isiah Thomas has replaced him as head coach, prompting the obvious question: does Thomas have pictures of Knicks owner James Dolan in bed with an underage sheep? It's the only explanation, really. Of course, one could say the same…
June 22, 2006
Did Adolf Hitler say it, or did Ann Coulter say it? How many can you get right? I got 9 out of 14 right.
June 22, 2006
Yep. And there are pictures. In Livonia, Michigan he signed his autograph on a bunch of American flags at a political rally, here's the picture:
That was from 2003. It seems he did the same thing in Austria recently. What does the US Code say about this sort of thing?
TITLE 4 > CHAPTER 1 > Â…
June 22, 2006
Is this a politician who could actually be taken seriously? Even if he doesn't mean it, and I'm sure he doesn't, he's saying something that really needs to be said about our modern democracy, which has devolved into rule-by-catchphrase. From Sen. Chuck Hagel on the floor of the Senate:
The war in…
June 21, 2006
Wow, this is pretty big news and Balko found it. In last week's Hudson ruling, Scalia makes the following argument as a reason why it was not necessary for the judiciary to enforce the knock and announce rule because there are safeguards in place within the law enforcement community to take care of…
June 21, 2006
Okay, not quite. But it may at least bring peace to Israel, or so some are suggesting. There is an international gay pride event scheduled to take place in Jerusalem in a few weeks and that finally gives the bigots on both sides of that country's wars something to agree on. Rabbis and Imams called…
June 21, 2006
In the incredible flood of comments on yesterday's gay marriage post (they were coming at a rate of one every few seconds for a while there), I missed completely Blake's response to the post. I saw several of his later responses to others, but missed the main one to me. I'm moving it up here so it…
June 21, 2006
Phyllis Schlaffly is sort of the old faithful of conservatism - you can count on her to say something stupid every 10 minutes. Her latest stupidity comes from an Agape Press article about Chief Justice John Roberts and the fact that she's already disappointed in him. Now, that's no surprise to me.…
June 21, 2006
At the beginning of the NBA season, I made some predictions. At the halfway point of the season, I was looking like a genius. I predicted that the Pistons would be better under Flip Saunders than under Larry Brown. I predicted that the Heat would start out as underachievers, that they'd force out…
June 21, 2006
I reported a couple weeks ago about the hearings held in the Louisiana state legislature to try and edit the ten commandments to come up with a single set that would satisfy all religions (most people are unaware that there are at least three different versions - one Protestant, one Catholic and…
June 21, 2006
As the Senate prepares to debate a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning, and appears to be only one vote away from passing it, ThinkProgress has put together a short list of statements from veterans who are opposed to such an amendment. I'll just highlight a couple of them. From Colin…
June 20, 2006
The Thomas More Law Center, representing a group called San Diegans for the Mount Soledad National War Memorial, has been rejected by a judge in its attempt to intervene in a 17 year old lawsuit against the government that demands the removal of a giant cross from public property. Regardless of one…
June 20, 2006
I post some of what I write to both Positive Liberty and Dispatches from the Culture Wars, so sometimes I get comments left at one place and not the other. In response to a recent cross-posted item on the religious right and "special rights" rhetoric, I got this comment left at PL. I'm going to…
June 20, 2006
I know, I'm going at this guy like Marvin Hagler on a speed bag, but there's just so much nonsense to refute and so many contradictions to point out. Gribbit's latest demonstration of ignorance and cognitive dissonance is this post about education, wherein he actually claims that only the left lies…
June 20, 2006
Please allow me one more post on the subject of DaveScot's comments about guided vs unguided evolution. This is a familiar refrain from ID advocates, what we might call "ID minimalism" - the position that even if the theory of common descent is absolutely true and all modern life forms are related…
June 20, 2006
Agape Press reports:
The president of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention (Richard Land) says amending the U.S. Constitution to protect traditional marriage will take time, but that such an amendment will eventually be approved on Capitol Hill.
Would you care to place a bet on…
June 20, 2006
Good ol' DaveScot has once again stepped into a big problem, without recognizing it or admitting it. In this post where he takes PZ Myers to task for "projection" - put your irony meters on maximum - he says the following:
So the purveyors of Darwinian dogma continue to hold an exclusive but…
June 19, 2006
It's been a while since I wrote about one of my great passions, BBQ. This weekend I made the best ribs I've ever made with a few minor little experimental adjustments. I tend not to follow the same rules every time, I like to try different things and see how they work out. A great source for such…
June 19, 2006
I haven't yet attempted to answer any of the Ask a Science Blogger questions, but I think I'll give this week's question a shot. The question is:
How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (day jobs) and…
June 19, 2006
Some of you may have seen the story of a Las Vegas high school cutting off a speech by the school's valedictorian because she deviated from the approved script and began talking about her faith in God. And this is one case where I'm going to part ways with the ACLU; the school was wrong, both in…
June 19, 2006
For those who think libertarians are nothing more than, as one wag put it, conservatives who like porn, this exchange demonstrates otherwise. Situations like the Hudson v Michigan court ruling last week put libertarians and conservatives squarely at odds with one another, which is why the National…
June 19, 2006
How can you do anything but laugh about this sort of macho posturing?
As some of you may know, I took a trip to Cleveland on Saturday to give those who call me a liar an opportunity to say that to me to my face. Like I stated before, none of those spreading that libelous lie had the backbone to…
June 19, 2006
The New York Times had an article yesterday about the ACLU board literally debating over their own right to disagree with the rest of the board. They are debating over two proposed rules for the board. The first one would say that "a director may publicly disagree with an A.C.L.U. policy position,…
June 19, 2006
As I mentioned the other day, about 1/3 of Ann Coulter's new book is devoted to "Darwinism". Since she has no background on the subject at all, she had to get some tutoring on the subject and she got it from none other than the Discovery Institute folks. She says in the book, ""I couldn't have…
June 18, 2006
After noticing that there are two different StopTheACLUs (.org and .com), with different names attached to them, I sent an email to the guy behind the .org domain, Nedd Kareiva, and asked if they were connected to the .com folks. He wrote back today and said that yes, they are connected, that .org…