stcynic
Posts by this author
June 3, 2006
According to this site, Phil Hellmuth is going to be on the next season of The Surreal Life along with Randy "Macho Man" Savage and, allegedly, Carrot Top. With all due respect to Bill Simmons, this could very well shatter the Unintentional Comedy Scale as we know it. My kingdom for just one scene…
June 3, 2006
Casey Luskin is back with a brand new dance, a tap dance around all those pesky little previous statements by ID advocates that come back to haunt them every time they try and claim that the "intelligent designer" doesn't have to be supernatural. He's complaining that a news article referred to the…
June 3, 2006
In my post yesterday about gay marriage, I said that no one had yet made a coherent and compelling argument for why gay marriage will harm traditional marriages at all. A commenter named jazzhouse thinks he's come up with such an argument and I thought I'd move it up here to answer it so it doesn't…
June 3, 2006
I'm sure most of my readers remember Ray Comfort, Kirk Cameron's evangelistic partner in crime. He's the guy who claims that the fact that a banana fits perfectly in the hand of a monkey is proof of intelligent design (and unlike Paul Nelson, I'm not making that up). Well it turns out that he's in…
June 2, 2006
Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy on ESPN.com, is the best sportswriter alive and here's a perfect example why. As a pop culture fiend, he's noticed, as I have, that David Hasslehoff is suddenly showing up in odd places. In Dodgeball, he shows up in a cameo, berating the German team after they lose to…
June 2, 2006
The religious right's latest meme, which is catching on fact, is summed up in their favorite new catchphrase: "war on Christians". The meme operates as a means to confuse people and positions - if you disagree with them on a policy question, it's because you hate Christians. Here's a perfect…
June 2, 2006
One of the frequent readers here posted a link to my post about their silly guilt-by-association attempt regarding the sex change for prisoners case in Massachusetts, and the author of their article, glib fortuna, has replied. His reply is rather amusing. He writes:
Frances Cohen IS AN ACLU…
June 2, 2006
Not only do they want to know every single phone call you've ever made, they also want to know every single webpage you've ever visited:
The Justice Department is asking Internet companies to keep records on the Web-surfing activities of their customers to aid law enforcement, and may propose…
June 2, 2006
A Federal judge has refused a DOJ motion claiming that the courts cannot hear any suits against the ongoing NSA spy programs because such suits might damage national security. The judge ruled that the case can go on and she won't consider the defense motion until after at least the first hearing to…
June 2, 2006
Jonathan Rauch has a terrific column on the politics of the Federal Marriage Amendment (now apparently called the Marriage Protection Amendment). Why would the Republican leadership bother to bring up a bill for a vote that they know has no chance of passing? Pure demagoguery:
The MPA would amend…
June 2, 2006
It seems that Paul Nelson has managed to distract at least one person's attention away with his frantic handwaving. Andrew Rowell, a British ID supporter, seems to have fallen for the shell game hook, line and sinker. First, Rowell falsely thinks that Nelson admitted to deliberately distorting…
June 2, 2006
I was pleasantly surprised to see that John Rennie, editor-in-chief of Scientific American, noticed my posts about Paul Nelson's dishonest treatment of Keith Miller and linked to them.
June 2, 2006
From the "this child has no chance at all" department: Anna Nicole Smith is going to give birth.
June 1, 2006
Dale Carpenter, a Volokh conspirator, has written a paper for the Cato Institute on the Federal Marriage Amendment and why those who oppose gay marriage should still oppose amending the Constitution to outlaw it.
June 1, 2006
And I mean the state of Washington, not Washington DC. Well, this time anyway. Next week their new law banning internet gambling goes into effect and anyone caught playing poker online could face penalties equivalent to those who are caught possessing child pornography. No, I'm not making that up,…
June 1, 2006
The conservative media is up in arms about a convicted murderer in prison in Boston who wants the state to pay for a sex change operation. Now let me say, first of all, that I agree with them on the substance. No, we shouldn't spend a dime on a sex change operation for this guy and I certainly hope…
June 1, 2006
From the same loonies that brought us the Left Behind series comes the Left Behind video game. In this game, you roam the streets of New York with heavy weaponry and to score points you must either kill the infidels or make them convert. And no, I'm not making this up.
The game is set in New York…
June 1, 2006
No, you probably don't know who Joseph Farber is. He was one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the Dover ID trial last year and was an associate with the Pepper Hamilton law firm. He died of a brain tumor last week at his home at the age of 34. He was a very talented young attorney…
May 31, 2006
I know I spend an inordinate amount of time bashing the Worldnutdaily, but it's just a constant source of amusement for me. It really is mind-boggling to see how transparently irrational their arguments are and how calculated they are to inflame the emotions of their ignorant readers. Here's the…
May 31, 2006
Doug Theobald pointed out to me this morning that there is a larger misrepresentation in Paul Nelson's comments of a couple weeks ago. In his comments he said, in response to the list of theistic evolutionists that included Keith Miller, Howard Van Till, Ken Miller, Terry Gray and John Polkinghorne…
May 31, 2006
As many around the blogosphere have noted, yesterday was the one year anniversary of Dick Cheney's appearance on Larry King Live when he declared of the insurgency in Iraq:
"The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the…
May 31, 2006
When you're emulating the Russians, perhaps it's time to reevaluate your position:
Moscow's influential mayor said on Tuesday the city banned gay activists from holding a parade because it is morally cleaner than the West, which is caught up in "mad licentiousness".
The gay activists tried to hold…
May 31, 2006
Radley Balko links to this hilarious story:
Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.
"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a…
May 30, 2006
Keith Miller has asked me to make available the entire transcript of the exchange between he and Paul Nelson. To do so would require substantial editing on my part to format it here, so I'm just going to make the word file available for download instead. It is unedited by me and Keith assures me…
May 30, 2006
Paul Nelson has left a comment on the previous post that detailed his misrepresentation of the views of Keith Miller during an email exchange. He asked Miller for the full exchange and has now pasted in part of that exchange that, apparently, he believes vindicates his representation of Miller's…
May 30, 2006
The Wall Street Journal has an interview with former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore that contains some predictably absurd statements. Like this one:
Roy Moore makes no apologies. "I'm not trying to dodge or get away from my past," he tells me over lunch at a Montgomery seafood restaurant. "I think…
May 30, 2006
As expected, the Bush administration is asking the courts to ignore possible violations of the constitution stemming from the NSA programs for tracking domestic and international calls without ever looking into the question.
The U.S. government has asked a pair of federal judges to dismiss legal…
May 30, 2006
A California appeals court handed a huge victory to bloggers last week, ruling that from the standpoint of the law, bloggers are essentially the same as regular journalists and entitled to the same protections.
The three-judge panel in San Jose overturned a trial court's ruling last year that to…
May 29, 2006
Thanks to Fishy Fred for tracking down Bravo's list of the top 100 comedy movies of all time. I caught part of it and wanted to comment on the list. For the most part, I thought the list was abysmal. Four Weddings and a Funeral no higher than 96? Preposterous. Dr. Strangelove only at 53? No way.…
May 29, 2006
The Washington Post has a report on religious right poster boy Ralph Reed and his misuse of religion in the service of making himself right. This will surprise no one:
In August 1999, political organizer Ralph Reed's firm sent out a mailer to Alabama conservative Christians asking them to call then…