stcynic
Posts by this author
August 10, 2005
Last evening, Genie Scott was on Hardball on MSNBC along with Bruce Chapman, president of the Discovery Institute. Chapman offered the standard argument that the DI doesn't want ID taught, but only wants the "evidence against evolution" taught in schools. But when challenged to name that evidence…
August 10, 2005
Here comes Chris Buttars again, putting his rank ignorance and utter lack of critical reasoning skills on display in an op-ed piece in USA Today. Buttars has it all figured out, folks. Evolution is all about destroying God and that's that. We might as well close up the Evil Atheist Conspiracy right…
August 9, 2005
Readers of the Worldnutdaily are by now familiar with a columnist who goes by the pseudonym Vox Day. His real name is Theodore Beale and his rich father is on the board of directors of the Worldnutdaily, which is the only explanation for how he got his position as a columnist there. It's bad…
August 9, 2005
Or so Star Parker would have us believe. In an incredibly ridiculous column at - where else? - the Worldnutdaily, Parker actually implies that stopping gay marriage is the key to the very survival of the black community in America. I assume she's not kidding and managed to type this nonsense with a…
August 9, 2005
One recurring argument that anyone involved in the evolution debate encounters frequently goes like this:
Darwinism is impossible. If Darwinism is true, then you have to believe that the big bang exploded and the result was the universe around us. That's like a tornado blowing through a junkyard…
August 8, 2005
I think some of my readers will find this quite amusing. Over on In the Agora, the comments after a post about Bush's statement on teaching ID in schools has spawned about 100 entries. About half way down the discussion is joined by someone with the nickname "lawyerchik" and it really gets funny.…
August 8, 2005
The Pew Research Center and Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, one of the most objective and reasonable organizations studying the subject, has released a massive poll of American attitudes on various legal issues and the results are fascinating. The poll was conducted before the John Roberts…
August 8, 2005
I've written quite a bit about the French law forbidding students from wearing "visible religious symbols" or clothing. Howard Friedman is reporting that the French government has now decided, after much lobbying, that Sikhs can wear patkas (an under-turban) or headscarves, but not turbans, in…
August 8, 2005
A state senator in South Carolina has submitted a bill to require that ID be taught along with evolution in state public school science classrooms. They had a conference in Greenville this weekend to promote the idea, attended by some movers and shakers in South Carolina politics. Among those who…
August 6, 2005
One of the standard arguments we hear from the Hate the ACLU crowd is that the ACLU is that they are "getting rich on taxpayer money" because, in some cases, Federal law allows plaintiffs who sue government agencies successfully to recover their legal fees. It's an argument based primarily on…
August 6, 2005
No, not the sitcom. A couple hours ago I was flipping channels and I see my friend Nick Matzke on the screen. Nick works for the National Center for Science Education and is a contributor to the Panda's Thumb. I had the good fortune to meet him a couple years ago at a conference at Berkeley (and…
August 5, 2005
Just when you thought we'd heard the last of Utah's reigning ignoramus, State Senator Chris Buttars, President Bush's recent statements on ID seem to have brought him back to life. He's moving forward once again to root out the evils of evolution from Utah schools, and in the process he pretty much…
August 5, 2005
Vikram Amar has an excellent essay on Findlaw debunking this notion that you can't ask judicial nominees about specific cases. He points out that confirmation hearings should dig much deeper than the usual judicial cliches about "legislating from the bench" and "judicial restraint" because those…
August 4, 2005
Thanks to Jon Rowe for pointing me to this article about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' involvement in the Romer v Evans decision in 1996. This was a very important gay rights decision that overturned a Colorado law that forbid "all legislative, executive, or judicial action at any level of…
August 4, 2005
Marty Lederman has an essay on Jack Balkin's page arguing that the recess appointment of John Bolton as our Ambassador to the UN is unconstitutional, as are almost all such appointments made not just by Bush but by Clinton and most presidents before him. I fully agree with him. Lederman authored…
August 4, 2005
Much has been written over the last couple days about President Bush's comments endorsing the teaching of ID in public schools. In his typical folksy (read: not terribly thoughtful) manner he said that students should be exposed to "different ideas" and "different schools of thought." One has to…
August 4, 2005
The latest edition of the Skeptic's Circle is available at Be Lambic or Green. It has links to lots of interesting posts in the skeptical vein.
August 3, 2005
I have just received a surprising and surely too generous gift from a reader named Damon Katz. In appreciation for the work I do here, he has given me a $100 Amazon gift certificate, along with the admonition that I should use it for something fun rather than something intellectually related. It's…
August 3, 2005
Our intrepid creationist, William Gibbons, is back again. You might remember him from a year ago when I challenged him to explain the evidence from biostratigraphy, a challenge he has still not even attempted to meet. A couple weeks ago, he was back with a long reply of plagiarized and uncredited…
August 2, 2005
The deeper I dig into this, the more astonished I am at just how shoddy this bible curriculum is. I spent much of the afternoon exchanging emails on the ReligionLaw listserv with Jim Henderson, senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, Pat Robertson's legal group that has endorsed…
August 1, 2005
The full report on the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools' Bible course curriculum is now available from the Texas Freedom Network. The report was written by Mark Chancey, a professor of Biblical studies at Southern Methodist University. As Chancey notes, the National Council on…
August 1, 2005
One of the growing trends around the country is school boards allowing schools to teach an elective course on the bible. The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS) has been very active in lobbyign school boards to do so and selling them their textbooks for such a class in…
August 1, 2005
For a perfect example of why I tend not to take either the pedestrian left or pedestrian right at all seriously, compare these two statements. From Democrats.com:
Bush has violated the public trust, not just by stealing the election, but also by selling America out to a neo-Nazi-esque secretive…
August 1, 2005
It appears for now that President Bush's plans for social security reform are on the back burner. The idea proved to be politically unpopular, according to many polls, but I've never quite understood why. I've also never quite understood why privatization is viewed as such a bad idea by those who…
August 1, 2005
Patterico has a post up about Howard Dean's latest stupid comment, this one about the Kelo decision. I agree with him that Dean's comments are absurd, but not with his "oh my god, the media is so liberal for not reporting this" stance. First, the substance. Here is what Dean said:
"The president…
July 29, 2005
Timothy Sandefur has a review of Randy Barnett's book Restoring the Lost Constitution available on SSRN. It's an excellent review that adds some additional background to Barnett's work and the importance of the presumption of liberty. There are a couple of points I want to highlight from that…
July 29, 2005
The White House released some 75,000 documents from John Roberts' early work in the Reagan Department of Justice, which has his opponents pouring over them looking for something to use against him during the nomination. I haven't seen any of them, of course, but I really like this quote from one…
July 28, 2005
My best friend just called to tell me that his daughter Kara, who I went and saw play softball a few weeks ago, just won the state all star team championship and, in the process, pitched a no-hitter with 10 strikeouts in 4 innings (they won 19-0, so the game was called due to a mercy rule). The…
July 28, 2005
Well, the new group blog at Positive Liberty has hit the ground running. I posted my essay about the 9th amendment and unenumerated rights over there as well, which drew the attention of Randy Barnett at the Volokh Conspiracy (to whom I once again owe thanks for his unexpected praise). That send…
July 27, 2005
I'm on the ReligionLaw listserv moderated by Eugene Volokh, an email list of dozens of law profs around the country with the discussion focused on areas where religion and law intersect. Yesterday a discussion kind of veered off that subject and into the 9th amendment and libertarian legal theory,…