stcynic
Posts by this author
June 18, 2006
Michael Kinsley has a brilliant column about the Bush administration's astonishing legal position that the inherent authority to do whatever they want in the name of pursuing terrorism cannot even be considered by a court to determine their constitutionality.
For years, all the intelligence…
June 18, 2006
Perhaps the most ubiquitous argument we hear from the religious right when fighting against any policy that would provide legal protection on the basis of sexual orientation is that we shouldn't give "special rights" to homosexuals. It's never explained what exactly a "special right" is, but in…
June 18, 2006
Following up on the latest Noah's Ark story, I notice that Howse refers to Bob Cornuke as "Dr". But his bio at the BASE Institute webpage mentions nothing about a doctorate, only his background as a police officer. Is this yet another example of a creationist faking a credential, or perhaps using…
June 18, 2006
Jason Rosenhouse has a thorough and devestating takedown of Sal Cordova's recent post at Dembski's blog about redundancy as proof of ID. I especially like this part:
Hard as it is to believe, Salvador is actually arguing that redundancy in complex systems is what signals design. Which is amusing,…
June 17, 2006
Crooks and Liars and Wonkette have all the dirt on Jack Burkman, a registered lobbyist for the Family Research Council, and his apparent taste for picking up young women and attempting to pay them for sex. I'm sure he only intended to save their souls for Jesus.
June 17, 2006
Jason shows once again why his writing is indispensible with this post about flag burning. In it, he explains in great detail why "an attack on a piece of cloth -- a piece of cloth that you don't even own -- is not an assault on America, or on you, or on the Sacred Idea of Freedom Itself."
June 17, 2006
Boy, just when you think this guy couldn't get any more pathetic, you see something like this. Yes, it was Gribbit who left the comment at Capt. Rational's blog wanting to beat him up tonight at 6 in Cleveland:
I'm off to Cleveland this afternoon to see if a couple of my favorite trolls have the…
June 17, 2006
The folks at Worldview Weekend are busily promoting the latest discovery of Noah's Ark. I say latest because, frankly, the Ark seems to be discovered every few years and yet people keep searching for it. Ron Wyatt claimed to have found it at Durupinar, in Eastern Turkey near Mt. Ararat, but that…
June 17, 2006
Okay, I am officially in love with whoever came up with the concept of Youtube. This absolutely rocks. I did a review a few weeks ago of the Pamela Anderson roast DVD and youtube has the uncensored clip of Jeffrey Ross - the undisputed king of the roasts - at that roast. This you have to see.…
June 16, 2006
I came across this interesting article in Christianity Today by Stephen Carter. Carter is a professor at the Yale Law School and a devout Christian who generally opposes the ACLU's establishment clause position. But he writes in Christianity Today against the unprincipled demonization of the ACLU…
June 16, 2006
After posting my explanation of why Kender got the facts completely wrong in his post about the ACLU and the Faith Leaders for Peace meeting at the Federal Building in San Diego, I checked to make sure the trackback went through and it did. Now it's gone. Apparently, Kender doesn't even want people…
June 16, 2006
I have not yet addressed the Supreme Court's ruling in Hudson v Michigan, where the court essentially reversed itself on the question of no-knock warrants. It's a very odd decision in light of their previous rulings, particularly Wilson v Arkansas, which established that the requirement that police…
June 16, 2006
It is perhaps pointless to give this guy so much attention, but this just keeps getting weirder and weirder. In addition to his various threats that he'll "get" people, Gribbit has now posted all of the web hosting information for the blog Thinking Meat. Why? I have no idea. Perhaps he's hoping one…
June 16, 2006
I haven't written much about the Rev. Moon since moving to ScienceBlogs, mostly because he's been pretty quiet over the last few months (those interested in my previous posts on the subject can go here). Robert Parry, an investigative reporter who has followed Moon very closely over the years, has…
June 16, 2006
The other day I posted about Arlen Specter's "compromise" with the administration on oversight of the NSA's various surveillance programs, the ones they refuse to submit to the FISA court. My post was based on the Washington Post's report on Specter's compromise legislation and included the fact…
June 15, 2006
Okay, enough of being nice and civil in order to give Gribbit a chance to do the right thing and just admit he was wrong about the ACLU, the Equal Access Act and the Good News Club case. I think this post makes it crystal clear that this guy is just an irrational loony who wouldn't know the truth…
June 15, 2006
Larry Arnhart, a conservative philosopher, has written a response to Ann Coulter's ignorant ravings about evolution in her new book. About 1/3 of her book is devoted to criticizing "Darwinism", and she got all of her information about it from the major ID advocates. I suspect this is about to…
June 15, 2006
This time from Kender, who stopped by yesterday to accuse me of "attacking" Gribbit, despite the fact that A) Gribbit was the one doing all the attacking, and B) I was merely correcting Gribbit's inaccurate statements. So I was perusing Kender's blog and found this post, in the long line of…
June 15, 2006
I've written before about Washington's new law against internet gambling, one of the most obnoxious and hypocritical pieces of legislation imaginable. Remember how they assured everyone that they didn't intend to go after the players with this law? Apparently that's because they were planning to go…
June 15, 2006
Yesterday was the 63rd anniversary of one of the most important Supreme Court rulings in our history, West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette. The case dealt with the question of whether the government could force students to salute the flag and recite the pledge of allegiance, and it was…
June 15, 2006
Via Howard Friedman comes this story about a church/state case in South Carolina. Woodland High School has been renting its gym to a Southern Baptist church on Sundays for church services for nearly a year for $250 per week. But the school has been trying to evict the church, claiming that they did…
June 15, 2006
These are great examples of why Jason Kuznicki and Jon Rowe are such valuable voices in the blogosphere. Jason posts here and Jon here about gay marriage, liberty and anti-discrimination laws. While I'm not sure their approach is necessarily correct - I frankly haven't thought this issue through…
June 14, 2006
I just got word that Reed Cartwright, fellow Panda's Thumb contributor and scourge of creationists, has successfully defended this thesis and is now Dr. Reed Cartwright. He will be taking his PhD in genetics from the University of Georgia and moving on to a postdoc appointment soon. Congratulations…
June 14, 2006
I read Seed's interview with Joan Roughgarden on homosexuality and sexual selection last week and found it fascinating. It seemed to me, as it did to many others I discussed it with, that she was caricaturing Darwin's views on the subject, but there was still some important points made in the…
June 14, 2006
Gribbit has responded to my questions. In his response, he admits that he was wrong about the order of the two examples, but misses the larger falsehood in his post. Here's his initial claim, again:
We have seen this already. The ACLU fought to gain equality for after school projects so that a gay…
June 14, 2006
Nat Hentoff has an interesting column in USA Today about a big fight going on within the ACLU over whether to allow members of the board of directors who disagree with a board decision to publicly dissent from those positions. At issue is this policy:
"Where an individual director disagrees with a…
June 14, 2006
Last night I noticed a post at StopTheACLU that included a claim that I highly doubt, but the comments were closed. It was written by Gribbit, so I found the same post on his blog and left two comments. This should actually be a really good test of the intellectual honesty of the StopTheACLU crowd…
June 14, 2006
The trial of Oriana Fallaci, charged in Italy with defaming Islam, began on Monday. Fallaci has said a lot of outrageous things, many of them in my view a bit too broad in her attacks on Islam (she bluntly declares that there is no such thing as a good Muslim), but there is nothing in them that…
June 14, 2006
The trial of an Oklahoma judge accused of using a penis pump under his robe during trial has begun. Reports like this just can't be a mistake:
Thompson's longtime court clerk testified in his preliminary hearing that she saw the judge use a device called a "penis pump" during several trials,…
June 14, 2006
Michael Newdow's latest lawsuit, attempting to get "In God We Trust" taken off the money and prohibited as a national motto, was dismissed by a Federal district court judge yesterday. Access the full opinion here. Whatever one thinks of the merits of this particular case, I just can't get over my…