Policy and Politics
tfk | April 24, 2009We don't torture. Or at least, we shouldn't, and anyone who did, or who authorized it, or constructed elaborate legal fictions to justify it, should have the courage of their convictions to stand trial. They broke the law: laws of this nation, and moral laws that precede the Bill of Rights, let alone the Torture Convention and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
tfk | April 23, 2009Martin Cothran is upset wroth. I pointed out that his defense of Pat Buchanan against charges of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial are fallacious, and he replies with a post that show no actual signs of having read what I wrote.
Cothran's continued defense of Pat Buchanan against charges of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial is rather stunning. Apparently I "spend[] the majority of [my] time contorting [my]self into various interesting ideological knots trying to justify calling someone an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier who clearly is not."
"Clearly not," huh? That's not what William F…
tfk | April 22, 2009Praise Jebus, I'm not in Texas watching the hearings as Don McLeroy is considered for reappointment as chairman of the Texas Board of Education. Yeah, Don "Someone's got to stand up to the experts" McLeroy.
Praise Jebus also that Texas Freedom Network was there watching. And wouldn't you know it, McLeroy brought the crazy. Asked about his desire to challenge evolution in science classes, McLeroy says:
I think what we’re doing is destroying America’s soul in science.
Set aside that he previously stated that his goal is not religious indoctrination, but I'm pretty sure that saving students…
tfk | April 22, 2009I highlighted a story the other day in which Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu revealed that his security detail does not allow him to bike or ride public transit to work. I pointed out that New York's Mayor Bloomberg rides the subway to work, and he's not the only transit-riding mayor.
Berkeley's Tom Bates is, as the SF Chronicle puts it, "trading in his 2001 Volvo for an AC Transit pass and a sturdy pair of walking shoes." He explains: "I'm trying to reduce my carbon footprint to the absolute minimum. I figure, if I really want to go someplace I can just rent a car."
Speaking to UC…
tfk | April 22, 2009Martin Cothran, presumably upset that I keep pointing out that the supposed logic teacher prefers logical fallacies to honest data, has now sunken to defending Holocaust denial. In replying to his repetition of a screed by Pat Buchanan, I noted that not only was Barack Obama rightly dismissive of that sort of armchair quarterbacking ("Even within this imaginative crowd, I think you would be hard-pressed to paint a scenario in which U.S. interests would be damaged as a consequence of us having a more constructive relationship with Venezuela."), but that it was a bit odd to quote a known…
tfk | April 21, 2009Martin Cothran, Discovery Institute blogger, Focus on the Family stooge, and generally unpleasant person, quotes Patrick Buchanan on Yom HaShoah. Buchanan, in addition to being a failed presidential candidate, is a conspiracy loon and a anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. In any event, Buchanan is on about how President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton didn't create a diplomatic spat when the President of Nicaragua complained about American military involvement with the terrorist Contras.:
After Daniel Ortega finished spitting in our face, accusing us of inhumanity toward Fidel Castro's…
tfk | April 20, 2009Project Steve member, Nobel Prize winner, and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu talks to the Times:
Was anyone in your family impressed when you won the Nobel Prize in Physics?
Probably, but who knows? I called my mother up when they announced the Nobel Prize, waiting until 7 in the morning. She said, âThatâs nice â and when are you going to see me next?â
Is it true you donât drive a car?
My wife does, but I no longer own a car. Let me just say that in most of my jobs, I mostly rode my bicycle.
And now?
My security detail didnât want me to be riding my bicycle or even taking the Metro. I…
tfk | April 17, 2009
John Cronan, Third Engineer of the Maersk Alabama, explains how the crew kept pirates from taking over the ship:
We are American seamen. We are union members. We stuck together, we did our jobs. And that's how we did it.
Or as they like to say:
When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one
For the Union makes us strong
Solidarity Forever.
tfk | April 15, 2009Lindsay Beyerstein rightly thinks there's "Enough dead teen pirate porn already." While we're all glad that Captain Phillips was safely recovered, Lindsay raises some important questions:
Two days after the rescue, the banner headline on the front page of the Washington Post should not read "3 Rounds, 3 Dead Bodies." And if that's the front page headline, surely they don't need a second story about pirate-shooting in the same edition.
The American public is relishing the deaths of the pirates to a degree that's downright unseemly.
This is true. While the technical skill of the SEAL snipers…
tfk | April 15, 2009On Passover, we celebrate freedom. "Once we were slaves in Egypt," we tell children at the table, "but now we are free." As Rabbi Michael Lerner points out, "Egypt, mitzrayim in Hebrew, comes from the word tzar: the 'narrow place,' the constricted place." Ours is a freedom not just from the strictures of forced labor, but from constricted thinking.
In that spirit we can celebrate both the freedom of Captain Phillips from the clutches of pirates, but the freedom of gays and lesbians in Iowa and Vermont to participate more fully in society. We can celebrate new knowledge, and pray for a day…
tfk | April 7, 2009Discovery Institute honcho Bruce Chapman is upset. In answering a question from a reporter identifying herself as "from a little country, Austria, from Austrian Television," Obama quipped:
It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There’s a lot of — I don’t know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing — and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics.
Chapman compares this to such Bushisms as "But oftentimes I'm asked:…
tfk | April 7, 2009John B, of Blog Meridian, notes that an Oklahoma legislator is pushing a bill requiring a Ten Commandments be placed in the state Capitol. Given that Jews, Catholics, and Protestants all define the commandments differently, an enterprising journalist enquired which version he would be endorsing. "Probably an Oklahoma version," said Sen. Randy Brogdon.
John comments:
Gives new meaning to the term "state religion," no?
tfk | April 2, 2009The Sunday before I went to Texas, the girlfriend and I spent a pleasant day in Sonoma Valley, tasting wines and enjoying the spring weather. Then we headed back for a going away party for some friends who are bound for rainier climes.
On our way back from Sonoma, we passed the scene of an horrific car accident. One car was absolutely crushed, the entire engine compartment crushed like a beer can on the head of an avenging god. It looked to have spun at least a full 180, but thanks to seatbelts and careful engineering, the occupants seemed to have exited the car safely. The same couldn't…
tfk | March 30, 2009American auto manufacturing is on death's door, the economy is in the shitter, and creationism is about to be forced into textbooks across the nation. Thus, it makes sense that Larry King wants his viewers' opinions on Madonna's adoption plans.
tfk | March 30, 2009For those in Canadia, you might stop by the Redpath Museum auditorium tomorrow for any of the events in McGill University's symposium on Islam and Evolution. I'll be presenting at 11, and it promises to be a fascinating day of talks and discussion among panelists.
tfk | March 30, 2009John West is gloating about the new Texas science standards, and in doing so, he's lost track of the truth:
Evolutionists typically cast themselves as the champions of secular reason against superstition, but in Texas they tried to inject religion into the debate at every turn.
Indeed, this past week it seemed that they couldn't stop talking about religion. They boasted about their credentials as Sunday School teachers and church elders. They quoted the Bible and appealed to theology. And, of course, they attacked the religious beliefs of their opponents, branding them religious…
tfk | March 28, 2009Berlanga and Nuñez voted against the final TEKS, the other 13 voted to approve them. Texas has new science standards. Those standards are better than the old ones, but those old standards really did suck. As the Fordham Institute put it, giving the standards an F in 2005, "Thematic unities, so persuasively urged in the national guides, have an effect here opposite to that advertised. They produce breadth of assertion instead of depth of understanding. … In the science discipline content here reviewed, Texas provides, by way of scant substance or careless writing or plain errors, something…
tfk | March 27, 2009Craig offers to amend ESS 4:
Earth in Space and Time. The student knows how Earth-based and space-based astronomical observations reveal differing theories about the structure, scale, composition, origin, and history of the universe.
to read:
4) Earth in Space and Time. The student knows how Earth-based and space-based astronomical observations reveal information about the structure, scale, composition, origin, and history of the universe.
This was the recommendation of the ESS writing committee.
Motion fails, 7-8. Agosto breaks with the good guys.
Dunbar offers an amendment to 8(A), which…