stcynic
Posts by this author
There's been quite a bit of press attention on alleged euthanasia of terminally ill patients stuck in hospitals in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina came through. The Louisiana attorney general's office is investigating several possible instances of this. Crispin Sartwell has a compelling column…
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an article about various college professors around the country teaching about ID in freshmen seminars. In the process, they attributed much of the growth in the ID movement to the Templeton Foundation and did so wrongly. Long quote begins below the fold:
Still,…
Today may be the best day of the year. It's the start of college basketball season, with my Duke Blue Devils (yeah, yeah, forward me your hate mail - I'm not a bandwagon fan, i've been a fan since I was 14) taking on Boston University on ESPN at 7:30. Duke is the overwhelming preseason choice for…
There are two very fascinating stories out at the moment that involve one of my favorite subjects, the judiciary. The first is in the New York Observer and it's about the "Little Supremes" - 30 something whiz kids, all of them former law clerks and now either tenure-track law profs or government…
Suspecting that there might be some press coverage in it, Jesse Jackson couldn't resist opening his mouth and making a fool of himself yet again. This time, he's claiming that Terrell Owens is being treated unfairly: And he's being joined by fellow camera-loving glory hound Ralph Nader, who has…
My longtime readers will know that I have often mentioned David Barton, a pseudo-historian who is astonishingly popular with the religious right, and usually with contempt. Barton is probably responsible for more popular myths about church and state and the views of our founding fathers than any…
Ilya Somin of the Cato Institute has a report on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito noting that he has a decidedly libertarian streak in many of his rulings. Somin writes:
Most debate about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito has focused on his propensity to vote to overrule Roe v. Wade and the…
Jim Anderson of Decorabilia, who coaches debate out in Washington, notes that Timothy Sandefur was cited during a Lincoln-Douglas debate he saw recently. I've never been cited in a debate, that I know of, but I have judged debates and had friends cited. And I remember judging a debate involving a…
Yesterday I asked the rhetorical question, would Dembski continue to embarrass himself in this situation regarding Shallit's testimony? Well, we have our answer. Not only is he continuing to embarrass himself, he's digging the hole even deeper. He's now compounding his dishonesty with an attempt to…
Lo and behold, Dembski has finally managed to find Shallit's deposition transcript, months after it was available if he'd really wanted to find it. If this was a scavenger hunt, he'd have finished last. Now, since I've been perfect in predicting his behavior so far, let me try another one. He will…
Richard Epstein, who would certainly be on my short list of supreme court nominees if I was President, has written an interesting essay evaluating the arguments against confirming Samuel Alito so far. This was written before the conflict of interest stuff came out, so it's based only on his…
Juan Non-Volokh and Ann Althouse have both written of Tom Monaghan's plan to move his Ave Maria Law School to a town in Florida - a town where he owns everything. Monaghan, you may remember, is not only the founder of Domino's Pizza, he is also the founder of the Thomas More Law Center, which is…
Dembski has responded - kind of - yet again. He's seen my previous post and noted my statement that Shallit's deposition is included as an appendix in the plaintiff's response to the defense motion for summary judgement. He writes:
Ed Brayton at http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/11/…
It seems that William Dembski can be shamed into more obfuscation, but can't be shamed into actually being honest. First, a little background. On October 29th, Dembski posted an item on his blog in which he claimed the following:
Ask yourself why, after submitting almost 200 pages of materials…
According to the Christian Science Monitor, the Israeli governmemt is donating 125 acres to a group of American evangelical leaders, including Pat Robertson, to build a Biblical theme park right where the Jordan river meets the Sea of Galilee. That's just perfect. Let's take the Holy Land and…
Here's an amusing exchange between Bill O'Reilly and a guest on his show about this mythical war on Christmas at department stores:
O'REILLY: See, I think you're, I think you're crazy. And here's why. I think the backlash against stores that don't say "Merry Christmas" is enormous because now…
A potential glitch in the Alito nomination has arisen. He is taking some criticism for not recusing himself from a 2003 appeals court case involving the Vanguard Group, a mutual fund company. In his 1990 confirmation hearing for the appeals court, he promised to recuse himself from any cases…
If the Dover situation was a joke, this would be the punchline. Pat Robertson says that by voting out the pro-ID school board, the people of Dover have lost their protection from God:
"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just…
November's Robert O'Brien Trophy (formerly known as the Idiot of the Month Award) will, for the first time, be awarded to a group of people rather than to a specific person. In fact, it will be awarded not to a specific organization or group, but to a rather amorphous and undefined group of people…
I don't think this has gotten much attention, but I think it's important to publicize it. There's a scandal going on in the poker world over a tournament going on right now, the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions. You may remember that last year after the WSOP they had a made-for-TV…
I'm not sure why I'm compelled to write about this, but I am. I think it's because past experiences in my life have showed some exact parallels with the kind of fake apology that he offered on TV the other day. And far too many people, at least far too many people I've known, can't distinguish…
I've been pursuing most of the morning an answer to the question of how the elections last night may change the outcome of the Dover trial. Some have suggested that with the new school board and a presumed change in policy, the case is moot - the policy is reversed, there is no need for a ruling in…
Here's some good news. In the wake of the Dover trial, there were elections for the Dover school board held last night. The result? How about all 8 board members who supported the intelligent design policy got voted out and all 8 challengers who opposed the policy were voted in, including one of…
The Baltimore police last weekend busted 80 poker players in the city who were participating in a charity tournament. Turns out that the laws in Maryland are so vague in this regard that the police and the prosecutors can't even agree on whether they broke the law or not:
Illustrating the confusion…
This has been in the works for a few days, but now it's official. I am joining forces with Burt Humburg to write a detailed history of the Dover trial for Skeptic magazine. Burt, as I noted before, is the Typhoid Mary of the ID movement. He's not afflicted himself, but he appears to be a carrier;…
Jack Balkin has an interesting post picking up on David Bernstein's comments on Samuel Alito and originalism. There are many different issues jumbled together in the post, some of which I don't agree with, but I want to point out one statement that I think will come as a surprise to many people,…
The Anti-Defamation League has now weighed in on the NCBCPS' revised bible curriculum and come out strongly against it. In a press release, they say:
"This wholly inappropriate curriculum blatantly crosses the line by teaching fundamental Protestant doctrine," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National…
Having spent considerable time pointing out the inconsistencies and problems in Michael Behe's testimony in the Dover trial, I was curious to see how he felt about it. And here he is on an ID blog giving his perspective on it:
The cross examination was fun too, and showed that the other side really…
This blog is reporting on a massive protest of 150,000 Muslims in Morocco on Sunday, gathered to protest against Al Qaeda and their decision to murder two Moroccan relief workers in Iraq. This is very important and we need more of this. I firmly believe that the vast, vast majority of Muslims are…
Politics is, by and large, the art of taking seemingly contradictory positions and pretending to take both of them on the basis of principle. That's true of both parties most of the time. But rarely have I seen an example so blatant and brazen as the Bush administration's position on torture. "We…