stcynic
Posts by this author
January 9, 2005
Richard Thompson, chief counsel for the Thomas More Law Center, has replied to the open letter written by a group of scientists and philosophers from the University of Pennsylvania to the Dover school board. See Thompson's letter here. It is amazingly vitriolic for something written by a lawyer and…
January 9, 2005
Amy Sullivan has this delightful little passage in an article about Robert Novak, the reporter/commentator who passed on information from "senior administration officials" about the identity of Valerie Plame, ending her CIA career, damaging years of undercover work on WMD programs and putting the…
January 9, 2005
Steven Gey, Matthew Brauer and Barbara Forrest have published a new working paper on SSRN, Is It Science Yet? Intelligent Design Creationism and the Constitution. Here is the abstract:
On several occasions during the last eighty years states have attempted to either prohibit the teaching of…
January 8, 2005
I am obviously one of the more staunch advocates of church/state separation one is ever likely to encounter, as volumes of my writing can easily attest. But let me say this: it's time for Michael Newdow to go away. He is the father who filed the lawsuit to have the words "under God" removed from…
January 8, 2005
Two interesting developments over the last few days. First, the science teachers have banded together to ask that they not be required to read the ridiculous statement that the school board passed as a disclaimer to their students. From the York Daily Record:
All but one teacher in the Dover Area…
January 8, 2005
Last night I received a copy of an email that some of you may have seen as well. That is, if you have ignorant friends or relatives who like to forward you breathless and overblown emails with titles like "Reclaim America as a Christian Nation!" or "The ACLU Must Be Stopped!". This particular one…
January 7, 2005
My friend Henry Neufeld, director of the Pacesetter's Bible School, has posted a new essay on the Panda's Thumb that examines the theological underpinnings of creationism and Intelligent Design. In particular, he discusses the question of the different types of literature found in the bible and why…
January 7, 2005
Greg Piper, who says he was associated with the Discovery Institute in the past, is joining forces with Casey Luskin and Seth Cooper (and Dean Esmay, for that matter) in their utterly dishonest campaign about Nazi comparisons from ID opponents. With his full approval, Mr. Piper quotes this…
January 7, 2005
Since I've been busy with Dean Esmay, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, I tagged in my partner Jon Rowe to put the Worldnutdaily's usual nonsense about church and state into a figure four logic lock. Count the pin, 1 2 3. He also hits one of my major pet peeves in this post about the tired cliche "…
January 7, 2005
Dru Stevenson, an associate professor at the South Texas School of Law in Houston, has linked to my post on the ACLU defending the rights of Christians. He also left a comment in response to the post that preceeded that one, which was about John Scalzi's attempt to find Christian lawyers who did…
January 7, 2005
Sandefur continues his posts on the differences between conservatism and libertarianism. The 4th in the series was about Thomas Jefferson. The 5th is about conservative reactions to Jefferson. And the 6th is a long answer to a question posed to him by Joshua White, who comments here at Dispatches…
January 7, 2005
Mr. Esmay replied to my last post. His reply can be found here. I am moving this up here because it will be fairly long and detailed and deserves to be its own post. He writes:
Argh. Because you still choose to hash these out as public arguments on your front page, here is my response:
Perhaps it'…
January 6, 2005
Mr. Luskin has posted a brief addendum to his article, ostensibly to answer criticism of his article, but he completely misses the point. He writes:
There is very little that needs to be said in response how some people on the internet are responding to this article. The fact that some people are…
January 6, 2005
Reading the writings of Christian reconstructionists can be an unsettling activity. Try this on for scary. Would you believe, someone who thinks that Alan Keyes, of all people, doesn't want to impose his religious faith on people enough? Yep, I found one - Andrew Sandlin, director of the National…
January 6, 2005
Like Jon Rowe, Timothy Sandefur has been on quite a roll lately with great writing. Today he has a three-part post on the differences between libertarian thinking (or "classical liberalism") and conservative thinking: part one, part two and part three. Go thither (thanks, Wesley) and read.
January 6, 2005
I posted this in a comment on Dean's blog as well, since he says he will not return here to see it. But I thought my readers might want to see it too. His comment can be found at the bottom of this post. Needless to say he is upset, but I don't think it should be with me. Dean wrote:
Yes, and you…
January 5, 2005
Continuing on the theme from the other day, here are more examples of the innumerable cases where, contrary to the absurd rhetoric of the likes of Joseph Farah, the ACLU has defended the free exercise rights of Christians and Christian organizations. Here's a story about how the ACLU of Nevada has…
January 5, 2005
I have to confess that I'm beginning to wonder why I had previously thought Dean Esmay was really interested in a reasoned discussion about ID in public schools. Following his post of a few weeks ago asking for someone who is opposed to ID to explain the negative consequences of teaching about ID…
January 5, 2005
Senator Harry Reid, the incoming Senator minority leader, caught a lot of flak for saying that Clarence Thomas' legal opinions are poorly written and that he was "an embarrassment to the court." Some of that flak came from me, in a post where I pointed out that while I am on the opposite side of…
January 4, 2005
Tony Mauro has a column up about the Lofton case I mentioned a few days ago. The ACLU is asking the Supreme Court to hear this case challenging the Florida law that bans gays from adopting children, the only law of its kind in the nation. The case involves a gay couple who have taken in six…
January 4, 2005
Mr. Sandefur has a thorough fisking of a law review article advocating the teaching of ID as constitutional at the Panda's Thumb. Travel hither and read.
January 4, 2005
Casey Luskin, one of the folks behind the IDEA center, has written what is surely the most absurdly misaimed criticisms I have ever seen with his article, A Holiday Truce: A Holocaust Survivor Speaks Out. The purpose of his article is to point the finger at those of us who have compared those who…
January 4, 2005
Jon Rowe is back to blogging at his own place and has kept up the great writing he has been doing the last couple weeks. I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and guess that he hasn't been teaching because of holiday vacation and has had more time to write? Whatever the reason, you should look at this…
January 4, 2005
I have to send out a box full of gratitude to Reed Cartwright, who was kind enough to rescue me from my cluelessness and install the mt-blacklist plugin on my blog. I have tried several times and couldn't seem to get it to work, so I sent Reed and email and asked him for help and he got it working…
January 4, 2005
I'll be gone most of the day on business. Have a great day everyone.
January 3, 2005
Contrary to the hysterically overblown view so common on the religious right (a view intentionally planted there by frauds and hucksters like Pat Robertson), the ACLU regularly goes to court to defend Christian churches and organizations. I've mentioned in the past their work on behalf of Jerry…
January 3, 2005
I find this pretty funny. Someone told John Scalzi that there were no Christian lawyers who worked for the ACLU because the ACLU hates Christianity and wants to stamp it out (typical right wing nonsense, of course). So Scalzi promptly posted a message asking Christian lawyers who work for the ACLU…
January 3, 2005
Sometimes you read something that is so absurd that you think that's just as bad as it could possibly get. Then you go down a level and find out that they can top it. To borrow a phrase from Hindu mythology, it's stupidity all the way down. Such is the case with Kelly Hollowell, intrepid…
January 2, 2005
Chief Justice William Rehnquist has released his annual report on the state of the judiciary, and I was glad to see that he made a point of responding to growing threats to the independence of the courts. With no fewer than four bills pending in Congress that would attempt to strip the court of…
January 2, 2005
A group of over 100 parents in Cupertino, California have put up a website to respond to the innumerable inaccurate media reports of the situation in their schools that is the subject of a lawsuit by teacher Steven Williams, filed by the Alliance Defense Fund. The ADF's highly dishonest press…