stcynic
Posts by this author
June 22, 2005
Michigan Citizens for Science, along with similar groups in several other states, has filed a brief with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in the Cobb County disclaimer case. That brief can be found here (pdf format). On behalf of MCFS, I'd like to thank Lynn Hogue, Catherine Ross, Reed Cartwright…
June 22, 2005
My views on this issue are still in flux, so I'm just going to present a link to this article by Andrew Sullivan without much comment. He documents that the concerns about abuse and torture by our government in the war on terrorism go much deeper than a few complaints by anti-war journalists.…
June 22, 2005
Predictably, the Worldnutdaily has trotted out "experts" - including the uber-fraud Dr. Hammesfahr - to claim that the autopsy didn't show that she was in PVS. I was going to fisk the articles they've had on it myself, but instead I asked Adam Tierney, one of my fellow In the Agora contributors, to…
June 21, 2005
While I'm reminiscing about my father, I just have to tell this story. This may be the single funniest thing my father has ever said or done, and it's even funnier if you know him. My father has a very dry sense of humor, but he's not a guy who tells a lot of jokes or generally tries to make people…
June 21, 2005
This Saturday, we are having a multiple-family reunion of sorts at the home of my parents. We are celebrating four birthdays simultaneously - my brother Rick's 35th, my brother Mike's 45th, my brother Jack's 50th, and most importantly, my father's 70th. All of my family, my father's family, my…
June 20, 2005
I reported yesterday about William Dembski, John Campbell and Stephen Meyer being withdrawn as expert witnesses by the Thomas More Law Center in the Dover lawsuit. There is now developing some contradictory explanations for that withdrawal. The York Daily Record reported that the TMLC refused to…
June 20, 2005
The ACLU is planning to appeal a Federal judge's ruling in Nevada that upheld a Clark County school rule banning religious messages on students' clothing:
"We said from the very beginning this is a decision that would be made at the Court of Appeals," Nevada ACLU lawyer Allen Lichtenstein said…
June 19, 2005
This story has finally been made public so I can talk about it. Within the last couple weeks, three of the main experts for the defense in the Dover ID trial - William Dembski, Stephen Meyer and John Campbell - have all been withdrawn as expert witnesses in the case. The York Daily Record reports…
June 19, 2005
This morning's Washington Post reports that advisers close to the White House think that the short list to replace Rehnquist on the court does not include Michael McConnell:
White House officials have prepared for the prospect by culling long lists of possible candidates, poring through old cases…
June 18, 2005
Majikthise has an excellent fisking of Joan Didion's article in the New York Review of Books about the Schiavo case. In particular, she points out the absurdity of those who are saying that since the autopsy said there's no evidence of bulimia or a "heart attack" in the autopsy, Michael must have…
June 18, 2005
In response to my post about the Schiavo autopsy on In the Agora, an anonymous poster that everyone there refers to as "Leon" left a typically amusing comment. He wrote:
I note also that Mark Furman, author and criminal investigator, has spent a number of weeks going over the totality of the…
June 17, 2005
The Schiavo exploitation continues. Jeb Bush has pushed a prosecutor in Florida to open an investigation of the circumstances involving Michael Schiavo's 911 call the morning that Terri collapsed - an investigation he admits is highly unlikely to find anything:
Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday that a…
June 17, 2005
John Dean (yes, that John Dean) has an interesting column at Findlaw about judicial activism. He argues what I have long argued, that the phrase has become virtually meaningless because it is thrown around so casually and without definition. He notes recent examples of liberal writers accusing…
June 17, 2005
Speaking of Ben Shapiro, who just published a book on the evils of pornography, Radley Balko says:
While on the telly-vision, Ben apparently asked where in the Constitution it says you have the right to look at porn.
Well, Ben, how about the First Amendment? If not there, then certainly in the…
June 16, 2005
If you're looking for the folks for whom the Worldnutdaily exists, look no further than Free Republic. It's basically a central online gathering place for every deluded and ignorant pedestrian right winger in the country. And you just gotta see the total meltdown they're having over the autopsy of…
June 16, 2005
Fans of political absurdity, rejoice! Defrocked judge Roy Moore may be running for governor of the great state of Alabama. And that may cause quite a national stir:
Moore, a Republican who enjoys widespread support in his home state, is poised to run against a vulnerable Republican governor. If he…
June 15, 2005
The autopsy done on Terri Schiavo has been released and to the surprise only of those who listened to the steady stream of nonsense coming from her family and amplified by the media, it confirmed exacly what Michael Schiavo, Judge Greer and the medical experts who examined her had said all along:…
June 15, 2005
I am happy to announce that Jason Kuznicki has returned to blogging, for a time at least. His big translation project is on hold so he's back to showering us with his thoughts. Jason is easily one of the 5 or 10 most engaging and interesting writers on the web. Check out Positive Liberty.
June 15, 2005
The Swift Report has a wicked satire on the Cobb County, Georgia evolution disclaimer stickers and the legal battle over them.
June 14, 2005
Radley Balko is one of the finest bloggers around, and a great lover of liberty. But this depresses me:
The theocrats chip away at freedom from the right. The Nannycrats chip away from the left. They join hands at the Drug War, where their goals of government control over morality and government…
June 14, 2005
Last evening I attended the Gull Lake school board meeting on a sweltering night when they were to decide whether or not to allow two 7th grade science teachers to teach ID as they had been doing for the last couple of years. I am happy to report that after about a year of effort and controversy,…
June 13, 2005
Harvey Wasserman is a well known liberal activist. He's an adviser to Greenpeace, founder of the Liberation News Service and the Free Press and many other causes. He also demonstrates perfectly now not to respond to the religious right in this essay filled with invective and falsehoods. When he…
June 13, 2005
The 11th Circuit Court is set to hear the appeal of the Cobb County evolution disclaimer case soon and the briefs are being filed quickly. The National Center for Science Education is compiling many of those briefs, including the brief that they and People for the American Way filed together last…
June 13, 2005
PZ Myers has an amusing takedown of Jim Pinkoski, a creationist I've had a bit of fun with in the past. Pinkoski is a cartoonist, and for many years he played Robin to Ron Wyatt's Batman. Wyatt, some of you may remember, was the rather loony nurse anesthetist from Tennessee who claimed to have…
June 12, 2005
The SCOTUSblog's Supreme Court Nomination Blog has a profile of Judge Michael McConnell that sheds some light on some of his more prominent rulings. Included is a link to this letter by liberal constitutional scholar Cass Sunstein endorsing McConnell for the 10th circuit. Also this letter from 300…
June 11, 2005
I'll be gone the rest of the day with some old friends in town to talk business, eat BBQ (5 racks of ribs are in the smoker right now) and play poker. But in the meantime, here's an article for you to read. Richard Colling, chairman of the biology department at Olivet Nazarene University in…
June 10, 2005
Radley Balko absolutely shreds a DePaul law prof's support of the decision in Raich.
June 10, 2005
Just in case you weren't feeling old enough...today is Josh Claybourn's birthday. His 24th birthday. And on top of that, my 20th high school reunion is coming up in a few weeks. And tomorrow I have friends coming up that I've known since high school and college, so the day is sure to contain…
June 10, 2005
Andy Schlafly (any relation, I wonder?) has a column in the WorldNutDaily which claims that Michael McConnell is "hostile to conservative legal principles" and would be another David Souter, nominated as a conservative but moderate-liberal on the court. Seems like one more reason to support him in…
June 10, 2005
Via our pals at StopTheACLU.org, I came across this ridiculous brief from the National Legal Foundation in the McCreary Ten Commandments case. The NLF says it is an organization "dedicated to the defense of First Amendment liberties and to the restoration of the moral and religious foundation on…